Dear Family,
ESTA SEMANA PASSADA FOI BOM DEMAIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NÓS BATIZAMOS O ARLEI!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOO!!!!!! It was so awesome haha. I´m so happy about it and I was stressing out about it the entire week lolz. But I couldn´t be happier right now because it was Elder Neeley´s first baptism in Brazil. So cool!!! The bishop baptized Arlei on Saturday and he was confirmed yesterday.
Right now though, we´re working with Arlei´s family. He lives with two of his sisters. We´re working with one of his sisters, who actually is his twin. She´s been to church a few times. We´re working on teaching her and we´re hoping that we will continue to baptize in this area.
The members were so happy as well when he got baptized! Like I said, last year there were only three baptisms in the ward, and so they actually haven´t had a baptism in the ward since at least September. They were so happy! The bishop in the ward is AWESOME. He seriously is my favorite bishop that I´ve had on the mission. Although all the bishops have been good. But he wants to change this ward, because pretty much some of the members have lost their faith in missionary work in the ward. We met with him this week to talk about the Ward Mission Plan for the year. We set a lot of really good goals for the ward and he was super excited. But then we had Ward Council Meeting yesterday and the ward just shot down all of our ideas. We want to have a frequency of 90 at the end of the year in the ward, because right now it´s 41, and the bishop actually wanted to have a higher goal than that, but EVERYBODY in the Ward Council shot it down. They were like ´that´s not possible, we should bring it down to 70, because even 70 is pushing it...´ I was like WHAT?! Are you kidding me? Where is your faith? We established the goal of 4 baptisms at least per month, but they shot that down too. They want 2 baptisms a month. I honestly was so upset about it after. I have to respect it because we have to have the ward council´s approval before we can do anything. We´re teaching so many people right now! We could have a lot of baptisms in the upcoming weeks. I just want to be able to excite the members with missionary work here. What do you guys think I could do?
Besides that, nothing really happened this week haha. I´m still trying as hard as I can in this area and I´m hoping that everything will work out. I know it will with all of the people we´re teaching. Pray that we´ll be able to baptize Cristiane this week!
Oh! Haha after my birthday, Irma Paula from the other ward had a surprise birthday thing for me haha and she made a cake for me. It made up for the horrible birthday hahahaha. New Years was like Christmas, nobody wanted to talk to us and everyone was drunk out of their minds in the streets. we didn´t stay up till midnight (Mission Obedience lolz)
Love you guys! I pray for you guys all the time and I hope everything is going well. Tchau!
Elder Hanson
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