Have You Hugged Your Mom Today?

 

So this pic is for you, mom!  I saw it and gotta admit that it made me a little trunky!  It says "Have you already hugged your mom today?"  I think you should set it as your background (and lee and c-bear should do the same because they should always remember to give you a hug!) Not going to lie, the graffiti down here is sick!

Anyway, I'll start out wishing a Happy Birthday to Ellen Lewis this week! Hope you have a great one!

This week was actually way hard! We worked our tails off and a lot of the people who committed to come to church just didn't show up. It was super sad but we did have 4 investigators come, so it was not a total downer! What I'm noticing down here is a lot of the time the kids have way stronger testimonies than the adults! It's crazy. So many kids come to church by themselves and their parents either aren't members or aren't active.  For example, yesterday we went and taught a lesson to this young man who's 11 and it really is incredible the amount of faith he has at just 11 years old! He has gone to church for the past 5 weeks and we hadn't even met him. He just went with his friend once and then wanted to keep going. Now he wants to be baptized and make it a part of his life! Wow! We taught him yesterday and man was he smart. You could just feel his desire to learn and improve his life. The only problem is that his mom thinks he is too young and that he doesn't need baptism yet, so she won't authorize it. We asked him why he wants to be baptized and he said 'because Jesus was baptized and I want to follow his example!'  Incredible man! It was sweet! But as of now, the mom won't let him be baptized so we are going to teach both of them this week again and hopefully the spirit can soften her heart and she can know of the truth as well! 

Dad asked some questions that I will answer! Yes we do go on splits with other elders, usually once or twice a week. It's always a good experience. Our zone leaders decided not to split up the area that we have so instead, both companionships work the same area. They thought it would be more effective that way! And yes we live in the same apartment as the other elders. We are working with the ward members as much as we can, especially the youth. They are starting to become super excited with all the work that we are doing!

As for President Pinho, he is a stud! We had a new missionary training with him this last Tuesday and it was way awesome! He played soccer at BYU and my comp says that he is super athletic! He sure knows how to get the missionaries excited to baptize. I've heard that our mission is like the most obedient mission in Brazil. When Brazilians don't receive their visas, they are sent to our mission because they have so much faith that they will become better missionaries. Way cool. President Pinho really knows his stuff!!  And the good news is that he just told us that starting next week we will have an hour and a half to write e-mails!  Wow.  I love him already!  So next week I will have more time to write and respond to everyone!  We always get on the computer right at 10 (or 7 am Colorado time).   

Well sounds like things are going way well up there! Thanks for all the support! 

Love you all. The church is true!!

Elder Holmes