A Area of My Very Own!

So I didn´t get an email out last week, because we got transfer calls Sunday, and Monday I took the bus to Goiania and then a six hour bus ride to Uberlandia in the state of Minas Gerais(I don´t know if I spelled that correctly). My new companion is Elder Sousa Silva. He hails from São Paulo and has one transfer less than me on the mission. I´m finally in an area that I can call my own. Every other Area I´ve had I´ve been stuck in limbo, but now I´m no longer a greenie and I don´t have to worry about where I´m going to be in six weeks (at least I hope I don´t have to worry). We have a lot of work to do here in the Tibery ward. Our area is pretty massive, so this last week our efforts have been focused on finding new investigators. We taught a lot of lessons and set a lot of baptismal dates, but when it came to Sunday we didn´t have anyone in church. The language is coming faster now that I´m with a Brazilian companion, and I don´t have that temptation to speak english. I just know that I´m going to sound weird when I call at Christmas. I´m doing a lot more street contacting for myself now, and it´s funny the excuses people come up with. I should be writing about some awesome baptisms in a couple weeks. Love you all.

Love,

Elder David Short

A Month in Brazil!

This last week has been pretty fantastic. We baptized pretty much all of our most progressing investigators, so we´ve been spending a lot of time finding new people to teach. What better way to find people than to tract (actually there are tons of better ways, but this can be effective sometimes). It´s weird to go tracting, because it´s something I never did for the first six months of my mission, but I´m starting to like it. For some reason rejection is easier to take in another language. Maybe it´s because I´m already struggling to translate in my mind, so it´s easy to tune out all the negative feelings.

The language is increasingly becoming easier, but it´s harder to practice when you´re in a trio. I´ll probably be transferred in a couple weeks, so hopefully I´ll get placed with a Brazilian, then I´ll be forced to practice. Yesterday I got up and bore my testimony in sacrament meeting. It was funny because afterwards a girl in the ward came up to me and said (translated) ´´It was good to hear your testimony. Before then I´ve never heard you speak.´´ I know I don´t speak a whole lot, but I´m really in trouble if people don´t know what my voice sounds like. My courage to speak is increasing with my ability to understand.

We met an awesome family of four the other day and after teaching them we asked them that if they receive an answer and know that these things we teach are true that they´ll accept baptism, and their answer was ´´well of course´´, so now we just have to teach them and pray that they are open to the spirit. 

We had one more baptism this week, Tallytah, the sister of Fernanda. She would´ve been baptized last week but she didn´t really feel compelled to be baptized, until she saw her sister get baptized, and then she got excited. I love working with families. It´s what the gospel´s all about and it´s so amazing the impact the gospel can have on a family.

Well that´s all I have time for today. 

Love you all 

Love,

Elder David Short