Matt: March 5, 2012

Dear Family,


This week was a good one. Luana the one week eleita was confirmed and that was great. The excitement of the week was elder Joás and I went to Curitiba for a meeting. It was super spiritual and just awesome to participate there. However it´s a 4 1/2 hour bus trip each way, meaning participating in this grand conselho cuts out two days of work for us. However we came back with our hair on fire (not literally mom, cool your jets) and were able to meet a lot of the mission standards and personal goals. Also as we were burning the midnight oil sunday night trying to find new investigators, we visited a contact that my companion made and turns out they are super elects, and want to get to know the church before they get baptized on the 18th of March. So that was a huge blessing. I think the most gratifying thing that happened this week for me was Saturday for lunch we ate at an inactive member´s house with his non-member wife and kids. It was a pretty nice meal, and as the missionary custom goes we left a message to thank them. I read a little bit about the tree of life, and how the fruit of that tree is the most desirable thing ever, but even after eating the fruit some people were embarassed and even though they knew of the goodness they abandoned the tree and the iron rod because of jeering taunts and b/c it wasn´t the popular thing to do. I explained how that fruit is the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it is the only thing that´ll bring true happiness. Anyway good lesson, good lunch, tchau. However Sunday morning as I made my way into the sacrament hall (that´s a thing right?) the whole fam-damily from the prior day´s lunch was their all sitting in their sunday best. It was super special for me, because in roughly two years of teaching less active members, only a handful had ever gone to church.

Other than that things are just rolling along. Preparing a few people to be baptized, incluing an old lady called Edite who is one of those believers who likes to pray outLOUD even when it´s not her turn to pray... Like you´ll be starting to pray and she´ll just chime in yelling "OH LORD GOD ALMIGHTY AND POWERFUL! BLESS MY GRANDSON "WHITEY" THAT HE CAN GET A NEW JOB HHHHHHAAAAAAAA GOD IN HEAVEN PLEASE BLESS....." and it makes things especially difficult to pray. We´re working on it though, along with her coffee. But other than that it´s just hot as an oven in Hell and today for Pday/ my companions birthday we played soccer and ate at subway. Good stuff.

Jor- Getting your emails sim. I think it´s been a little while since you wrote, but when you do I get them. That´s good to hear 30 Rock is going strong and that Liz Lemon is still funny. ai ai trunkeza do mal! kkkk

Dad- I agree siblings are the best.

Muchas gracias,

Elder Gagon

PS- I just found out that my mission has a blog!!! It´s curitibamission.blogspot. I´m going there right now to check it out, and you should too!