Sad News and Some Good News

Dearest Peoples,
A lot has happened in the past week.
Not too much happened last P-day.
Tuesday we worked our wings off and got a lot done.
The more exciting stuff happened on Wednesday.
Wednesday we had to leave the house super early to get a CAT scan for Elder De Abreu´s knees. He´s been suffering a lot for the past couple weeks so an appointment to get the problem checked out was set. We had everything set for the appointment in the afternoon, but we got a call at lunch from the doctor saying that we needed Elder De Abreu´s CPF(Brazilian social security number), but since Elder De Abreu has been living in the US for the past eight years, he never applied for a card. In order to get the number, we had to run to the post office,  but at the post office they told us that we had to go to the federal building to apply for the card. Everything had to be done in a number of minutes or else the clinic was going to cancel our appointment. We got the CPF, but then we found out that it was in fact the number of the doctor that had previously treated Elder De Abreu that we needed. We finally got everything turned in with about a minute to spare, but then we had to wait for a couple more hours for our turn using the scanner. It was a frustrating day, but everything worked out.
Thursday, we had a lot of success with our teaching. Thursday was our second English lesson. It was a little harder to teach this week, because a couple people brought their kids and they liked to yell.
Friday we went to pick up the results of the scan. They gave us about ten sheets of scans and a single sheet of the doctor´s observations. The scan revealed that Elder De Abreu has a second degree degeneration of the meniscus, but we didn´t know what that meant. We ended the night by passing by an investigator´s for her birthday. I made a cake. I think that I´ve made about twenty cakes since getting here.
Saturday we sent the test results to the mission doctor and he said that Elder De Abreu will have to go home for treatment and maybe surgery. So Saturday was a pretty sad day.
Sunday was amazing, because the Lord saw fit to bless Elder De Abreu´s last week in Uberaba. We had nine investigators at church. The afternoon was spent saying goodbye to some choice families. A recent convert´s mom told us today that she had decided to leave her church to join ours. It was a really hard decision for her, since she´s been going to her church for almost ten years, but she decided (after much prayer and fasting) that it was the right thing to do.
That´s all I have.
Love,
Elder David Short

David's latest proudly brought to you by www.booksandbigideas.com

Another Week of the Holy Work

Dearest Dear Ones,
Time is a cruel master that likes to pass by too quickly, and this last week has been no exception. It seems like yesterday that I was in Goiânia renewing my visa, but now we´re on the fourth week of the transfer.
Some of the exciting stuff that has happened this week:
We have been working with a high set of goals for about the last eight months or so, but now we have reached several, which means that its time to set new goals. President also shared some of the rewards for meeting those goals. All companionships that baptize six in the month of June get to go to Goiânia for a festa Junina, which is a basically a corn festival in June. Since Elder De Abreu and I baptized six last week, we´ll be going to Goiânia next week for P-day.
President Prieto came to Uberaba to talk about some of these goals. President also came to talk about the strength of our teaching. We reviewed the lessons and practiced some of the principles. We quickly saw that we had a lot of techniques, but we lacked on teaching the heart of the doctrine. We were all dry rub and no steak. Now we´ve made some plans and now we´re going to be better. We Shall Baptize the World! or at least Uberaba.
Thursday we started up our English class again. This time I´m a little more confident in the success we´ll have. The majority of our class is recent converts, but we´ve had a lot of investigators that have said they´d come.
As we have a bunch of recent converts that are seminary age, we have they the responsibility to take them to seminary for the first time. So Saturday we watched seminary and had the privilege to eat the snack with the rest of the kids.
Sunday was ward conference and the stake brought the stake choir with them. Since we meet in a rented house, it was a little tough to fit everyone in together. After church, we had planned to go on splits with the members , but lunch was late and things didn´t work out. Our young man recent convert said he wanted to make visits with us, so he grabbed a tie and he spent the whole day teaching with us. He´s going to be such a great missionary in a year and a half.
That´s about all I have for this week.
Read Jacob 5!
Love,
Elder David Short

Baptisms!!!

This last week had many ups and downs.
Some of the downs included Elder De Abreu getting sick, and we had to wait an entire day to get him checked out at the hospital.
Some of the ups included us baptizing six people on Saturday! We were working to get that huge family baptized and we accomplished our goal a week early. We had everyone baptized and confirmed on Saturday so that they could all watch the Manaus Temple Dedication on Sunday.
Because we hit the mission president´s baptismal goal, we´ll be having a celestial P-Day with president.(it will probably be at the beginning of next month.)
The Temple dedication was amazing. President Uchtdorf presided and gave the dedicatory prayer. Now Brazil has six working temples and another on the way.
Because of this family that we found, we have another four baptisms planned for the beginning of next month.
Besides Elder De Abreu getting sick and the baptisms, I can´t really think of anything too exciting that happened.
One of the members started a chess class on Saturdays, so we passed by and helped with the class a little. I got sucked into playing a couple games and ended up winning. I know that if I had been playing against someone over the age of 15 I would have lost.
I received a couple letters, last week, from some people who haven´t written me in over a year, which made me really happy, but there are many who still have never written me. For those of you in the latter category, I would exhort you to repent quickly, lest ye be burnt as stubble at my coming.
The time is passing by so quickly. I can hardly keep up with it, if I do at all.
That is all I have to report this week.
The church is true, the Lord loves us and wants us to be happy, and the gospel is the only path to eternal life.
Love,
Elder David Short

Transfers

We all knew that this day would come. We didn´t want to come, but it did. Monday night I got the call that Elder Lindsey would be transferred, and that I had to go with him to Goiânia to renew my visa. We were left with very little time to say goodbye. It was all rather sad, but it´s part of missionary life.
We left early Tuesday morning for Goiânia. From Uberaba its about a eight hour drive. About forty minutes into the trip, our bus motor burnt out and we had to wait for a replacement bus to show up. When we finally got Goiânia, I had to say my goodbyes to Elder Lindsey, and went with Elder Thompson, who was also renewing his visa.
We had to get up early Wednesday to get to the mission office and go with the secretaries to the police department, but when we got to the office no one was there. We walked in the street trying to find a payphone to call someone, but we found some other missionaries walked to them to the stake center. This transfer was the largest in President Prieto history. There was about seventy missionaries at the church waiting to see where their next area would be. It was there that I got to see Elder Grandy and Elder Gubler. I also received my new companion, Elder De Abréu. He´s Brazilian, but he moved to the US when he was fifteen. He´s a young entrepreneur and is featured in the book Young Entrepreneur.
Since I wasn´t able to get my visa renewed on Wednesday, I had to stay another night and wait for the next morning to get everything worked out with the federal police.
Since getting back to our area, not too too much has happened. We did find another amazing family, that live two blocks from the church.
We marked baptismal dates with that huge family came to church last week and the rest of the family came to church with them. I´m super excited for them.
This Sunday will be the Manaus temple dedication, so we won´t have any investigators at church, but we might baptize and confirm everyone this Saturday, so that they can watch the dedication.
My mind has gone blank.
The gospel is true. The work is excellent.
The Lord´s love in eternal.
Love,
Elder David Short