one sixth of the mission done! Wow...

This week was great, in short.
In long, it was very , very, very great.

I can´t go into absurd amounts of detail because of the time, but I´ll describe the big stuff.

First of all, Sons of Promise already existed before we started it. I saw a religious group called Filhos da Promessa and just about died. I´m sure their wives love them.

Second, we had 2 baptisms this Sunday! My goal is to get sent home because of hypothermia from being in the baptismal font so much. Actually, my goal is to just baptize and baptize, and come home much later.

We baptized Claudecir da Luz (14 years old, awesome kid; very easy to teach and he commited to everything. Lives in a very humble house - there is literally dirt and mess everywhere, but his house is clean.I need to take some pictures of Boa Vista - it´ll be a shock to some people.) and Dieke Star da Vale da Silva (his name sounds like a blockbuster movie; great kid, very excited to do baptisms for the dead).
One thing that has absolutely been amazing here has been the surprise of the members at our baptizing. Whenever we talk to our Bishop (Bispo Amarál) he asks ´how many´and we tell him. He always gives us the eyebrows raised when we tell him. So far I´ve had the privelage to baptize 9 people, 3 actually in the water with them. It´s awesome. There is literally nothing like it on Earth. You can literally see the spiritual, physical, and mental change take place in them. I think I should like to do this more...and I shall. We have 4 more scheduled for this Sunday.

One thing that I have learned here is to not compare yourself to anyone. As anyone who knows me at all will say, I am a very, very competitive person, almost to a fault at times. This can be a great blessing in the mission and can also be a huge blunder. If you start to compare yourself to others and get down on yourself because of their success, you are being selfish. We need to just work, just invite, and just baptize. If we do that, we are doing just fine.

It has been raining here non-stop, and that gets old. In Oregon it rains consistently, but just a little. Here it rains whenever it darn well pleases and rains with a purpose. We were standing under a bus stop covering and still soaked last week. Welcome to Brasil, Elder Brown.

Seriously, 1/6 of the mission has passed, and honestly I think there hasn´t been a day wasted. There have been hard days, days where we didn´t teach anything, days where no one was home or even on the street, but we persevered. I know that we will continue to see the miracles as we continue to work and go forward. I love you all and pray for you all.

Now SEND ME LETTERS!
(and remember that there´s a slight delay because of the excellent postal system, so it´ll be a while before I get it and before I respond).

Love you all - batizar, batizar, batizar!!!

Elder Brown