Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Hello beloved family! 

Well, it's that time of the mission again! Transfer day! Can you believe that I've been in the office for 6 months now? Ever since the beginning of March... Seems like that was forever ago, but at the same time it doesn't seem like too long ago! Well, Elder Berg was finally transfered after training Elder Venâncio to be the new Executive Secretary, so now it's just Elder Venâncio and I as the Secretaries. I have a feeling that Venâncio is gonna be here for a long time....it's probable that he will take me to the airport! Weird. Well now that I've known him for 6 weeks, I love him! He is such a great guy. He speaks english pretty well. He is 26 years old (he'll turn 27 in November). And he is a lawyer! Cool huh? I'm learning so much with him and we are having a great time together. We had the baptism of Anelise saturday night and she got confirmed yesterday. She is amazing and what every missionary is looking for. She is from Rio Grande do Sul (the very south of Brasil) and her accent is waaayyy awesome. I've known quite a few people from the south and their accents are waayyy cooler than those of here in the North East. The roll their r's a ton and it's just cool. She is an English teacher here and I'm going to go to her class this Saturday and help out. It's fun going to english classes, but most of the time I just end up answering all the questions in portuguese. It's pretty much the same thing as the first couple weeks in the MTC. People are speaking a different language that you've never really heard before and you can pick out a word here and there, but you're too focused on the words to actually hear what the person is talking about. That is the experience that I usually have when I go to english classes here and speak english!  

Things are going well here. The audit is over and I am much more relaxed and happy :). I have a couple big projects that I made for myself if I ever get done with all the other things I have to do, so I am always super busy. It's crazy how fast the time goes by when you're way busy. Well one of my really best friends here (Sister Concha) is going home tomorrow! It's so sad when people go home. Also, when I started the mission in Barão de Nazaré, I lived with two other missionaries other than my comp.... well one of the other guys went home last october and the other is going home tomorow, too! My dad (Elder Pires) starts his last transfer today... Everyone I know is going home and it's so crazy! My buddy Neal will be home in October! I know a lot of people who will get home this year and at the beginning of next year. It's so crazy the snowball effect that time has during the mission. Starts off slow, but before you know it you can never get that time back.. 

Everything is good here. We are being blessed immensly in the work. We are having a TON of success and I love the ward to bits. I cut my own hair Saturday night! I tend to do that a lot now. It's kind of fun and I don't think it looks too terrible! I even blended the sides by myself and everything! I hope you're proud :)

I hope you all are seeing the blessings in your lives from being a part of Christ's church here on the earth. It's still amazing to me to think that He left this fragile thing in our hands. He started something 2000+ years ago when He was here. He started the most perfect organization to ever exist on the earth! Unfortunatley and fortunatly, He gave his life for our sins, and then mean people killed a lot of His followers. I'm so glad that I live in this time when we have the Church of Jesus Christ upon the earth again. I wonder sometimes about how hopeless some people must have felt during the Dark Ages searching and looking and waiting....but the truth wasn't here. It was inevitable that they wouldn't find a true church, a perfect church. But lucky for us, we are here in this day and age and have the blessing of knowing of the true Church!!!!! Now what do we have to do with this knowledge? SHARE IT!!!!! I've learned that if we will share it, we will know of it more fully and have a deeper love for it. We will understand it better, and through that, be more proficient teachers. I hope that you will all start (if you haven't aleady) taking EVERY single opportunity to talk to people about the church. You don't have to be pushy about it. I'm POSITIVE that others will volunteraly come up and ask you about this, sometimes, mysterious church that you belong to. I love opportunitys like this because most of the time when this happens, the person has already senced a difference in the church and in you. There is a cool thing about worthiness. There is no 100% for worthiness. You just keep getting worthier and worthier and worthier! The more worthy you are, the brigher you will shine, and the more light you have, the easier it will be for people to see the diference between you and their other co-workers or friends. So study, pray, follow the comandments, expulse those bad thoughts from your minds, and get some more light in your eyes! :) 

Love you all, 

Elder Moore