August 2, 2010

well thanks for the email. ya i've already got a new comp that last transfer went by super fast. when you have a good comp and everything is good the time just flies by. so this past thursday we went over to the airport and picked him up and the new irma cabral. shes cool too. so now i'm with elder johnson.

that's too bad about your car and everything. hope it all works out. that's kind of ridiculous it took that long to get home. wow thats like not even the flight to europe. haha

my new comp is cool. he is two transfers older then me in the mission so he is the senior. i dont mind though. but he seems pretty cool. he's got a great spirit and we have had some good lessons already. but ya im super excited for elder cordeiro. he comes out here this friday for zone conference and he's staying at our house on saturday and sunday i think so it should be fun. and this is his last transfer actually so this will be the last time i see him in a year or a little more then that. but im not exactly sure what he wants to do after his mission i know he said he wants to study and possibly if he can get into a college in the states he said he would like to come here so we will see. but i love that kid.

but ya as for the odenthals theyre legit. we had a cool lesson with them about having a real testimony and explained exactly what a testimony is and why its important and shared some examples in the scriptures with them. it was great and the spirit was strong. we kind of opened them up and saw how they are thinking so it was productive. gabrielas son is coming from germany so she said she will get baptized in september when he goes back home but she just wants to chill with him in august so we will see how that goes. the kids are slowly coming along so i think we can get them as well.

lets see as for the brazilian guy he is cool we went to him one more time and he was talking more about how important the bible was and he challenged us which was funny to read the bible. then we told him we already have our goal to read it and he was impressed then we said ok we will do it for sure if you guys read the book of mormon and they accepted so we are going back this next week and i'm excited to see how it goes. his wife cooked us this really good corn cake which was just like corn bread and it was amazing we had it with chocolate milk. they are really nice its just weird kind of being on the receiving end of teaching and seeing how other people do it. but i like them a lot and hopefully we can make some good progress soon.

we also taught conceicao and tatiana who are amazing. elder johnson was asking them some questions because he's new about baptism and prophets and other things and she was just spitting out perfect answers every time. she is so ready the only problem is she works on sunday and can't go to church. she said she has already asked to move her day off and to just have a few hours off but her boss said no and she's scared to keep asking because she doesn't want to get fired. but i'm confident the lord will help us find the way. we've also continued teaching carla and wow she is hilarious. she is just so hard to teach things seem to go right in and right out. we taught her the second lesson using the wooden puzzle wheel and it was awesome. then at the end we asked her to just quickly go over it as she put it together and she straight up couldnt do it. but we explained it again and i think she was getting it more the second time. im not exaclty sure how shes going to work out but i have faith.

lets see today for pday we just took it easy because next week when president comes out for zone confernce we do a big hike or something so we just played basketball and soccer a little bit. it was fun. then we went grabbed some lunch and now we are here doing some email. in the funchal chapel was irmao goveia from our ward he's the one we always do service at his house and we killed chickens and ducks there. but he was there and i talked to him for a while and its just so cool cuz i can talk to people now for a long time, hold conversations in portuguese its so cool and such a blessing. i am lovin it.

other then that everything is just going amazing and im loving it out here on the island. its really pretty and from what i here the summer is way hotter on the continent. its crazy to think in a year from now i will be in my last week of the mission. it just went by so fast it kind of makes me sad. but its all good im excited to come home and start my life up but i still do have lots of time. anyways i love you guys and thanks for everything. i hope you have a great week and thanks for the pictures too. i love them.

love
elder abreu