You're going to be jealous!

I´ll get to why you´re going to be jealous in a sec.

I love my new comp! We talk a lot in the street, and are getting to be good friends. His name is Elder Mike Cook. He´s from Idaho Falls. He plays the drums like me, and he´s on a professional jumprope team too. I´m not sure exactly what that means, but he says he can do some cool things with a jump rope. Whatev..haha. I haven´t really heard him speak English yet. This whole week we´ve spoken only in Portuguese, and it´s helping my language skills so much. Just because of this week I´m thinking in Portuguese now. I feel like I´m getting stupid though, because all of my thoughts have become really simple; only using the words I know. When I do speak in English I accidentally substitute Portuguese words in a lot. It´s exciting. I´m learning so fast. I can almost literally see changes daily in my confidence in speaking the language. It shouldn´t be long until I start dreaming in Portuguese. We´ll have to see how that goes.

As the saying goes, you don´t know what you´ve got until it´s gone. It turns out that with Elder Snow I had a pretty trunky missionary. In Brazil we have a word, ´fubeca´, I think that's how you spell it. It basically means a lazy missionary. With Elder Cook I´ve been working way harder, and it feels great. Within two days we talked to the same number of investigators I had for 6 weeks with Elder Snow, plus we made a ton of contacts. I´m almost positive that we will baptize this transfer. Probably a family or two. I think it´s pretty rare in our mission to go a whole transfer without baptizing, but that's what happened with Elder Snow. We still have one boy, Nildinho, ready for baptism, but he didn´t come to church again this week. We´ll have to try AGAIN next week. It´s been a solid month I think of trying to get him to come to church. The problem is that he wants more friends to come with him. I think we can bring all his friends to church next week. That would be super nice, because then his friends could see his baptism and join the church too.

Although Nildinho didn´t come to church, we did get one other lady, and I was so impressed by the members. They took her to all the meetings and sat by here and were way friendly! You don´t see that everyday with the members here. I bet Amber can testify of that. We can probably continue to teach this lady through the week, and maybe baptize her next Sunday if things go right with all the commandments. I don´t know if she is married or not.

Funny story/sad story- we were walking down the street and there was a big frog in the road. Elder Cook said, "Have you ever seen a frog fly before?" I said, "Nope" and then he kicked the frog. It flew way up high in the air spinning like a helicopter, then landed about 100 feet away. I started to laugh really hard, and asked, "Why did you do that?" and he said, "Frogs never die. You can do what ever you want to them and they´ll always hop away." We walked up to the frog he kicked, and he said it would still be alive, but it was pancaked flat in the dirt with its legs sprawled out. I started to laugh even more. I don´t know why. He said, "Oh, it´s just knocked out. It will jump away later." and then we walked away. I don´t think my moms will like this story. sorry...

alright. so now i can tell you why you´re going to be way jealous.

ready?

Elder David A Bednar came to my mission today. He came to Joao Pessoa and we had a training with him. It was so cool! I was sitting on the second row of a chapel listening to a prophet speak! He asked us questions about learning by faith, and then we got to ask him questions. He was funny and nice, and gave some great council. He said when we ask the Lord for things, we need to ask with the intent to act. He gave a lot of examples that were great, and he bore a firm testimony that the Father and Son live, that they have tangible bodies of flesh and bone. I know that he is a special witness of Christ.

I too have a testimony that this work is true. Ben said he liked how Amber and I tag on mini testimonies at the end of letters. I didn´t always recognize I was doing it, but here, no matter who we talk to, we bear testimony of a truth, and commit them to do something. Like go to church, or read the Book of Mormon. I hope that you will all follow the council of Elder Bednar. Pray with intent to act. A lot of times we pray for answers then wait for them to appear. This is hypocrisy and shows lack of faith. Our prayers will be answered as we diligently try to seek out the answers.

I love you, and hope you have a great week. sorry i don´t have photos again.

love, Elder Forsyth