Transfers, mission tour, and Thanksgiving

- November 21, 2023

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 Mission Zooms. That was cool.

Today were transfers, but-true to President's words-not many changes [were made]. My current house-with its four missionaries-will stay the same.

One of the days this week, a member of the church picked us up for lunch. He then drove us away from Manaus, (I don't know if we were still in Manaus or not) out of our area (didn't know... 🤷‍♂️ ) to a little town. There we had lunch at a waterfront restaurant. The only problem is... the Amazon River near there is way down... so instead it looked over a green field to some distant water. Probably a much worse view than it could have been. Apparently, we were also close to the place where two rivers [Niger and Amazon] of the Amazon connect and run side by side for a while without interconnecting. But we didn't get to see that point. The food was pretty good, just normal things like beans, rice, spaghetti and beef, along with Farofa (actually super good, but it's super hard to describe. It is pretty funny to see the new missionaries not taking any farofa, knowing that for them it's strange).

This week. on Wednesday the 22nd, is my Thanksgiving. I have always loved the 22nd of November, a day to give thanks for my family, my life, and so much more. I will have survived 2 decades of life. A milestone I guess, though I kind of still feel 18. Adult but unexperienced. But yeah, I will turn 20. I bought a cake mix and some lively food to celebrate. Sadly, I found out the hard way that today is a holiday here, so some of the stores are closed.

That being said, what am I grateful for? In fact, how are we grateful? I remember hearing a story of how news stations started focusing more on the bad in the world to sell papers. It's super easy and exciting to focus on the bad, the problems. But I was thinking on our stability. In life, we all want freedom. We all want protection, to feel safe. We want good things to happen to us. We feel happy when we don't have as many problems, or as we serve others. So, while it may seem exciting to see other people doing things bad, in reality it's better to be grateful. To focus on the good. Satan's plan includes so much for demotivating us. Making us think the world is bad. That everyone is bad. Critiquing ourselves, our lives, amigos and world. But there is so much to be grateful for. When I feel the hot sun, I am grateful that I have light to walk. When it's dark out, I'm grateful for how cool it is. When I get tired of my friends and companions, at least I have someone to talk to. I have food I need. Does it always make itself, and taste good? No. Do I die from lack of food? No. I have a loving family. I have a bed. I don't have air-conditioning () but I do have a fan. Would you rather have a bank account with a positive balance? Or negative? When we are grateful, we add to our figurative bank account. But when we count the things, we don't have, we start subtracting from that balance. Think positive, be grateful.

With that, I invite all of you to not just list what you are grateful for this season but remember those things. Think of what you need to physically live, and what you have more than that. And that's a positive balance.

That's it,

Elder David Olson

MANAUS

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