Hola Familia?? Que e Bom?

          Wow I haven't heard anything about this storm over there. That's pretty scary!! I'm glad Sarah is alright though. Man that will be some crazy clean up. Good thing Sarah has learned how to work growing up because that could really be a pain.  I did get called on to give a training a couple weeks ago and it was about charity and how we can get the members to feel more Charity and desire the salvation of souls. Ha I had very little preparation time but I had a few good notes to talk about, and that is when I gained a greater testimony of teaching by the Spirit because everything flowed really well. Elder Ragozzine said that I have a silver tongue haha. I don't think that I had ever heard of that before but I thought that it was funny. He gets pretty upset when I tell him he needs to street contact the next person and he doesn't do it. He said that he used to be a mute though so he has come a long way. Sister Jensen ( mission presidents wife) was telling me how great Elder Winchester and I have down with him. She said that when he first got here that he wouldn't even say anything and now when she had her interview with him she said that he couldn't stop talking. So that was really good to hear.

          Well transfer calls are this Saturday and Elder Winchester is going home so I guess we will see what happens. I haven't heard anything on the visa so I don't think my time has come yet. An Elder that was waiting in Michigan who was in my district in the MTC just emailed me and told me that he was heading out today and how scared he was because he hasn't studied Portuguese in a long time. So they are definitely still working on them, just really slowly. But if I don't get my visa, I will probably stay here again to keep this area going. We are doing pretty well right now. The Mongolian lady just postponed her baptism which I thought was probably a good thing, because she was really struggling to get to church, but she did come yesterday so that was cool. I think that I maybe should've learned Mongolian in the MTC instead of Portuguese haha. Odmandakh ( our recent convert) was just sustained to get the Aaronic Priesthood. Ha The 1st councilor told him to stand up and he had no idea what was going on. Ha now that would take a lot of faith. I put myself in his shoes and thought about how it would be like to be a new member of a church that you had no idea what was being said throughout the whole meeting. He's a stud! We also had Pam and Shawn come to church yesterday!! Gosh that is just a hassle every week!! We had a lesson the night before about all the blessings and happiness that comes from keeping the commandments and told her to have faith that she would be happier if she really started to try. So they made it. I guess Pam is two months away from having a baby and she gets tired and stuff so I was proud:) We have found a few people out on the street and this one lady I guess is a religious writer for the newspaper up in Cedar Rapids so she is wanting to do a story on us. She thinks that it is so awesome how we serve like this. So we taught her the first lesson and it opened her eyes quite a bit. She was telling us how she thinks that all religions are good and it doesn't matter as long as you believe in God, but she was really interested in the Book of Mormon so we will see. We still are working with the Dillon Family and their neighbors. Ha I guess that their neighbors son was saying how he wanted to start coming to our church, really for no reason because we haven't taught him anything but that's great right?:) His mom is pretty carnally-minded that's for sure. She definitely needs some light in her life and she said that she would maybe come to church next week so we'll see with her. Man we have been teaching a lot of women lately!! It gets tough sometimes because we always have to find a member. But I guess its nice at the same time because it forces us to get some members to the lessons:) So do the Roberts wards each have a set of missionaries? That would be sweet!!

       We did go on exchanges this week out to this little town called Belle Plaine. It was pretty fun. There is a senior couple that serves out there too so they made us some breakfast:) Man you need to see their little branch church building, Ha their chapel is their gym. I thought it was pretty sweet. Well things are going great, starting to get cold that's for sure but i'm staying warm. I hope everything keeps going well with the family and I'll make sure to keep them in my prayers. Thanks for everything!!!! LOVE YOUUUUU!!

Con amor, Elder Polatis