17 May Email 2

I have some photos. Like I said we didn't get any photos of the baptisms. Both of the people we baptized should stay strong. We baptized a lady (Betty (pronounced Betch)) who had (has?) cancer and received a priesthood blessing from a member. She was a reference from the same member and received a stong testimony through her experience and peace that the blessing gave to her. Since we have started teaching her she has absorbed everything we have taught her. She even correrected Elder Halford (he was my companion for a day during a division) on who was the father of who, Mormon or Moroni, on the second visit.

The other person we baptized was Claudia. She has already been to church some 10 or 15 times and is great friends with a lot of the young women. I have faith that the young women's program and leaders here will make sure she continues going to church. We are teaching her older brother now who is married and has 2 kids. We haven't got past the 2nd lesson yet. Also the family of Claudia went to the baptism and her mom was even at church on Sunday. Integration with the ward is key.

I think our mission, PAN, has one of the highest retention rates for new converts in all of Brazil. I don't know how good Brasilia's retention rate is.

Anyway we have P-day here until 9:00. Bishop (who makes briefcases (the Prophet and almost all of the 12 Apostles have one (he made sure I knew))) is going to fix my bookbag and also sell me another one that he bought on his last trip to Idaho for 40 R$. All should be good there. I took out 50 Reis from my bank account last week to get me through transportation and the transfer. I should be good and I should have more soon since I sent in my reimbursment 2 weeks ago.

Last Thursday I was on a division with the zone leaders so that they could interview the 2 people we baptized. I went to their area and one of them came to ours - first time I made a division where I left the area ( My companion (District Leader) has left the area I think 4 other times to interview for the other dupla in our district (they baptized like 6 or 7 this transfer)). The work seems to be going pretty fast here. It's a little sad leaving the area. The bishop here spends about 30 hours a week doing work for the ward. They are going to find out if the ward here will split also in the next week or two. They are as of now 1 ward and 1 unofficial group (still takes part of the ward and participates in the Sacrament meeting the first Sunday of every month.) Since it is only a group and not a branch the 2 units (really just one) use the same leadership and because of this it has drained of lot of work and effort from the ward, and a few families from the branch went inactive also because the meeting location there isn't all that great.

Anyway when I was on the division last Thursday we had lunch and then went to our next appointment. There they (ZLs) had baptized a 14 year old boy and were working with his mother. She isn't married to her spouse and they were having problems, and to get baptized you have to either be married or living separate. So the day before they separated. Me and Elder de Maria (ZL) we sitting there conversing with them when the ex-spouse showed up and started kicking the fence and yelling bad words that I didn't understand (we were sitting outside because there wasn't a man present older than 18). Soon after he started throwing bricks at us and so we moved into the house for cover. He kept throwing bricks at us and trying to jump the fence, but he was too drunk to get over, so he kept throwing bricks. One of the bricks bounced off of the half open door to the house and hit Elder de Maria in the leg. He was mostly okay, but we took it easy the rest of the day. About 5 minutes later, after the drunk ex-spouse left, the police showed up and me and Elder de Maria left because we didn't want to deal with having to go into the police. I don't know anything else that has happened there more. The lan house is shutting down so I gotta go now. Love you all!

Until next week,

Elder Steele