Into the Amazon

 Monday, November 27, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil: This week was busy and that was good. We had a bunch of lessons that went well. We shared a lot of scriptures with people too, gotta start basic. I had my birthday; I honestly didn't do too much unusual. I was going to make a cake mix, but somehow bought all the ingredients except the mix itself . But one of the other Elders bought me a little cake. Thanks to all of you who sent me a message, sorry I didn't get a chance to respond to all of you yet. It rained several days this week. Rain is great for making the climate cool, but it's hard to talk to people. And you get soaking wet a lot :) One of the nights our house again flooded a little bit. While the water wasn't actually very deep, it covered most of our house. It happened super-fast, and the rain hadn't stopped. So, we talked with some of the Mission Leadership and ended up driving halfway across Manaus to stay in a missionary house near the Mission Office.

 Monday, November 20, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil: This week we had our yearly Mission Tour, with Elder Eddy and his wife. I believe they are in the Brazil Area Presidency. He gave some awesome advice and messages. I took pages of notes. He spoke a lot on using the Holy Spirit [as our guide]. But he also talked about   Doctrine and Covenants   4, and how the tool to missionary work and the gathering of Israel, is the   Book of Mormon . It was very inspirational. For the Mission Tour, I and my companion were to be in the choir. That was ok, until the day before the mission tour, at 8am we were all asked to attend a choir practice just two hours later. It was a little unexpected and, on the spot, but it went fine.  The tour had two in-person sessions, one here in Manaus and one in another state. Because of that, there were a lot of missionaries from small areas throughout the state of the Amazon that traveled here to Manaus. Some of them I hadn't met in person, just seen during Mi

 Monday, November 13, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil: Olá all of y'all,  One of the days this week I woke up to lightning and rain. I went to get a cup of water, and, as I hopped off the top bunk of my bunk bed... splash. My feet hit water. Still half asleep, I checked the time. 5:30am. I walked into the kitchen to find water covering all the floors. I woke up my companions. We discovered the only dry floor in our house was... the shower. :|  We then spent the next 1.5 hours cleaning up the water. We have a problem where the water enters under our front door. The worst part was my companions' suitcases were on the ground and got soaked with water. This week I had the chance to go to the Manaus Temple, as we do every transfer.  I was able to participate in an Endowment Session. It was super awesome. I was able to think and make some good goals as well as reinforce other past goals. I felt so many waves of the Holy Spirit and peace. The temple is definitely the place to be!!! Wel

 Monday, November 6, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil: Wow! This week had a few very interesting things happen for me... The first is that our Mission President announced a special zoom call for all of the Mission on Wednesday. It seemed very important. When talking to other missionaries, we came up with two possibilities for what it would be. The first and less likely was that for our upcoming Mission Tour [where the Mission President and other leaders tour the Mission], there would be one of the 12 Apostles. We had been told in the past that it would be a member of the Quorum of the Seventy coming. That would be cool, but the second, more supported idea was that maybe the mission would be split up, making two separate missions. Which would be even bigger! In the end though.... The announcement was that the church will be splitting the Brazil Manaus Mission into two missions: Brazil Manaus North Mission and Brazil Manaus South. It will happen next July, so it honestly does not really ch