April 16, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Life is going fine on the mission. I am still in this area. I have not been transferred yet at this moment in time. So this may be the longest I will be in an area. What luck, too, because this area is the largest in the mission (about 8 cities or so) and it has the most hills. I love it. I really do...

We had a zone conference this week and thankfully the president got up and told everyone to follow the teaching patterns of Preach My Gospel and "The District" DVDs 1 and 2, instead of doing the two part lessons that have been used before. I hated the two part lessons. One elder spoke for 20 minutes of the lesson and the other Elder spoke for 45. Sometimes the other elder would give a testimony every now and then. So things are better when we teach. Also, we were told that we need to follow the English version of Preach My Gospel because there are mistranslations in the Portuguese one. For instance, according to the Portuguese PMG: to find out how some of the Lamanites used their time wisely, we can go to chapter 121 of Helaman [for those not familiar with the Book of Mormon, there are only 15 chapters in Helaman].

I saw the last session of conference this Sunday and that was the only session that I will get to see, which I´m fine with, of course, because the way that they do the audio dub here is not so great. It sounded like two people were talking to me and my brain was trying to listen to the talks in Portuguese and English at the same time. I got a terrible headache from trying to concentrate. If ever you have the time you should try listening to conference in a different language. All you do is just switch the language on lds.org and you will have conference in a different language.

Not much has happened in our area besides that. We are still trying to find people to teach. Hopefully this week is the week we will find some people. The gospel is the greatest message on earth today, and people don't want to hear it, and don't always understand when they do. It's irritating at times, it really is.

I love you and love your letters. You guys are awesome!

Love,
Elder Kevin Brady

PS -
Oh and the tarantula was in the baptismal font. I guess it wanted to be baptized...