Hola Bom Dia!!!!

     How is everyone doing?? Well this letter might be a little short because I have some more things I have to do to get ready to leave and I will be able to talk to you tomorrow so it's all good right?:) So tonight I am driving to Des Moines to stay the night with the AP's. Then in the morning at 11 a.m our plane leaves and then we land in Atlanta at like 2. I think we have like a 5 hour lay-over there so that will be when I call. So.... I think your time it will be like 1 by the time I call... I'm not sure but make sure that you answer!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes and I went to see the results of my biopsy and I do actually have eosiniphilic esphaugitis. !  I had to go and get an inhaler and I just puff 4 puffs into my mouth and then I actually swallow that stuff instead of breathing it in. I do that morning and night. And they are keeping me on the acid reducer stuff for Idk how long but she says that I am supposed to use the inhaler for 8 weeks and then all of the white bumps down my throat should be taken care of:) I will have to make sure and get another inhaler down in Brazil because they only gave me a four week supply so hopefully that isn't too hard. Sheesh my throat does feel a whole lot better though. Eating is great now:) Ha maybe I won't be able to stay slim now since eating is so much better than what it used to be!

       The Departing Temple Trip on Tuesday was really fun though. There was Elder Nichols and one other visa waiter there that are leaving with me tomorrow. It was so good to see Nauvoo one last time before I leave. I really do treasure that place and the Spirit there is so great! We just went out to eat after that and all that fun stuff so it was great. We got back to Knoxville the next day and got back to work! We have taught Mandy like 4 times this week. She is SET!! Ha she has a better testimony and understanding than some of the members here so it's fantastic. She gave me this card to read on the plane ride to Brazil with all of her information and stuff so she can email me and tell me how great her baptism was. I'm really excited for her. The Lord had worked with her long before we ever met her so I'm glad that she was so prepared. Now on the other hand, we went and saw an older couple that we knocked into at the beginning of the transfer and they set a return appointment like a month later. So we went back for dinner and they were so loving and invited us right in and even fed us some big old steaks. So I thought that during this month of waiting to go and see them again that they had read the Book of Mormon and had received a witness from the Spirit and all that good stuff.. boy was I wrong haha. Right after dinner we went into the living room and the guy had a whole stack of paper and gave us each a copy of this Anti stuff that he had found through his "research" Man that was very disappointing!! I asked him if he had read the Book of Mormon like he said he would and he said that he had read 1/3 of it, but once I started talking about some of the stories in 1st Nephi and how it testifies of Christ so much he had no idea what I was talking about so he came out and said that he "skimmed" through it. So yea he didn't read it. But he said that he prayed about it and the spirit told him that this was a bad thing. All we could really do was tell him to read the Book of Mormon from that point. People are pretty hard hearted some times and really need to look into things and not get blinded by looking beyond the mark. Ha I actually read that scripture to him when Jacob was talking to the people about how the Jews were blinded by looking beyond the mark. I don't think that he understood that very well. Ha but yea that was a bummer, because they are really nice people and last time they said that it wasn't a coincidence that we knocked on their door. Anyway, this week was pretty good and it was weird that it was my last week working in Iowa! I really will miss this mission and am excited to visit it in the future. Ha the MTC will be pretty sweet though. Basically I'm starting my mission again:) I wonder what it's going to be like. Probably just a huge language course thing.

        Well can't wait to talk to you!!!:) Miss you all!! Love you!!

Love Elder Polatis