Lovin' Life in Porto Alegre! May 7th letter

Dear Family!
English might be a little hard right now...I had to write an email describing each one of our missionaries in our zone in portugues and when you have to write in portugues then in english...well it just gets really ugly :)

Phone call!! So I will have to give a little call to give you all the number and everything, but it will probably be about 7 o clock here. This is so weird, I just talked to you all at Christmas! Don´t get offended, but is it really necessary?? haha   I have all the same calling card info, but I will write all the other stuff down just in case.

This saturday is going to be great! We will have the baptism of Iara, Bruno, Renato, Marcelo, and hopefully Verônika. Marcelo is a kid of 10 years. President Swenson invited him to church months ago and he went! We saw him on the street Sunday morning and we are now accompanying him because he really wants to be baptized! And this will open the doors to his family!

Verônika is a young woman of 18 years. Her boyfriend Oseias is preparing for the mission and has been going to church for a year now. I think just about every missionary has tried to baptize her, but now it is her turn! She just has some fears.  A lot of prayers would be helpfull for her right now.  She already knows that this is all true.

We will have all of these baptisms in our little pool here in the branch :) with a big water heater!! Iara can´t enter in water really cold at her age and status. I want to baptize in the river...but I guess that would be even colder :)

Today we had our zone prep day where we played a lot of soccer and had a huge churrasco! Yum!  It was great! Everyone was jealous of my usa soccer jersey. I am going to be pro when I get back. We had this activity because things in our zone are really getting better and everyone did all their contacts this week.  A contact is when you talk to someone in the street, bus...etc.

This week we have been having Thiago with us the whole time! He is helping to teach and giving a very special spirit to every lesson. It is something very unique to have someone recently baptized bearing testimony. Because of him, we were able to make several new friends and we have several new families to teach.

I am loving my companion! He is the man. Very funny too. It will be sad to see him go in a week, we have a 5 week transfer this time. He has already had quite a few transfers as zone leader and only faults 2 more. So he will probably train now.

Well we had to write a big report about all of our missionaries to help the assistants with the transfers and my time is up!

I am so very grateful for my Salvador Jesus Cristo. I know He lives and is very merciful with us. How many times do we make mistakes or do something wrong in a week? He is never there to put us down or punish, but to lift us up and make us someone better. He was sent to save the world, not condemn it. I am very grateful for this example in my life.

I love you all!
Elder Bradley J. Dawson