Matt: Jan 5th, 2011

Dearest marvelous family of mine,
What is up? So this week was new years eve and it was crazy! We had permission to stay out til 11 (with a ride home) but our ride wouldn´t take us home til after the fireworks at midnight. So we stayed new years at Irmã Rosalia´s house (aunt kathy lady/ relief society pres) and after a great grand new years eve feast her son in law got out this rack of fireworks that had what looked like 40 paper towel rolls (the cardboard part) all linked together. So I was like "minha nossa, não acredito" And then he brought out a second rack of fireworks that had 30 more of these fireworks. Fam- Brazilians LOVE their fireworks and from like 6 oclock at night til 11:45 there was a steady stream of "big" fireworks going off here and there, but at like 11 50 to 12 10, it was like somebody turned on the light switch to the sky. BANG!!! POW!!! ZOOM!!! ZAP!!! (no we weren´t watching 1960s Batman, those are firework sounds) It was like Samuel the lamanite said "the night will be as day". ha ha so NYE in Brasil was awesome.
Ok so another story. Remember that electric fly swatter/tennis racket that I bought but was broken? So this kid in the ward, who´s kinda annoying and not very smart, came over to our house and was like "Elder can I have this tennis racket fly swatter?" and seeing a window of opportunity I said, "No you can´t have it, but I´ll trade it to you for a ping pong ball" We have a ping pong table in the church and we go play sometimes. And this kid came back with not one, but 4 ping pong balls. So I was like "Sweet! got rid of that daggum broken tennis racket and got a ping pong ball so now we don´t have to invite half the bairro to get someone who has a ball" The next day we were walking by that same kid´s house and he was like "Elder thank you so much for that tennis racket. I´ve already killed 4 flys with it!" I couldn´t believe it. My companion believed it even less than I did, and told him to bring the racket outside to show us. So he want and got it, and there weren´t any flies around so he hit a piece of grass and zapped it into kingdom come! Then he saw a mosquito and swatted it and this HUGE spark came out and he sent that menace´s spirite down to hell... It turns out I wasn't pressing the red button hard enough and I traded my $15 electric fly destroyer for like $1.50 in ping pong balls :(
Today I actually went to the temple and did a sesh. It was great. I am super duper lucky to have a temple in my mish and a wonderful marvelous awesome mission president that encourages us to go.
Other than that not a ton happened this week. We taught a few lessons, but mostly people were on vacation or drunk or hungover and didn´t want to see us.

Jor- I GOT YOUR PACKAGE! Que benção! It was so great! A million thank yous. You rock.
Rhett/Erika/Michael- I was in an investigators house and High School Musical 1 was on, and it just so happened to be on the part where they are playing basketball/dancing and I couldn´t control myself cuz I was laughing so hard from that SNL where they said, "Well at least you have basketball to fall back on, HuhrrRIGHT TROY!?!?!" kkkkkkkkk
Dad- If you could send me my priesthood line of authority, that would rock.

I love you all so much. I know this is God´s work and that he loves us even more than we can understand.

TCHAU -Elder Matt