Que uma benção!!! What a blessing!!! December 10, 2012

Dear Everyone,

1. What model is your camera? I will look up the manual online and send you a little cheat sheet on how to transfer the photos directly from the camera.  My camera is a Canon PowerShot A3400 IS HD. I took my camera to this really sweet photo place and everything worked there so no viruses (they checked for me) and so I transferred all my photos from this past week onto a USB. But my card is not working again only my USB, so I can’t send the photos from this week but I will transfer them over again today and start using another memory card for my camera starting today!! J  
2. On transfer week (next week), will you still have a regular P-day on Monday? I will still have regular p-day on Monday; transfers happen on Tuesday/Wednesday.
3. What was your Christmas zone conference like? What did you do/eat, etc.?  Zone Conference was great! we went to Maringá (according to Wikipedia: a city and municipality in southern Brazil founded on 10 May, 1947 as a planned urban area. It is the third largest city in the state of Paraná with 357,117 inhabitants, and 612,617 in its metropolitan area. Located in the northwest of Paraná and crossed by the Tropic of Capricorn it is a regional centre for commerce, services, agro-industries, and universities, including the State University of Maringá). It is the city with the tallest cathedral. (I have a photo that I will send next week!!) But it was good , we did a Secret Santa with 5R ($2) presents, which was really fun, ate some cake, and got a lot of training and listened to some great talks from Pres. and Sister T., so it was really fun.

One of our shortcuts in Vila Reis.

This week was a pretty normal week up until Saturday night. We had 3 FIRM FIRM baptisms lined up. Three sisters, and we are helping the parents to get married here in a little bit, so they will be a good strong family and they are awesome. The mom, D., is really a wonderful driving force for everyone in the family!! They are almost golden (only have the marriage problem...) But, Saturday night when we were on the bus home—this is after spending an extra 18R on the bus to get them to be interviewed and everything—we got a text saying that they had to go to Arapongas to look after the grandma... NOOOOOOOOO!!  In truth, only the parents left for Arapongas, but they took all the keys and left the kids locked in the house.  You can only unlock doors here with the key from both sides, so they were trapped in the house and physically couldn’t go and be baptized.

Our one-year anniversary party for Elder W. (holding pizza)

We were already down on the ground from that and then we got another little kick in the gut from President Tavares. I found out a couple weeks ago that technically our area isn’t Vila Reis.  We share a much larger area with the other dupla (companionship) in our house, but the old zone leader, Elder V., worked in Vila Reis and he baptized a whole lot there (he dragged little kids out of bed in the morning and baptized them, literally went in the house and dragged them out) and he wanted us to look after them, so he assigned us to that area and we made it into an area of force with lots of families. So, Saturday night we got a call from Pres. T. telling us that we can only work in Vila Reis a maximum of 3 days each week and that we need to work in other parts of the area as well.  Wowza...Elder W. was particularly devastated!! But after about 10 minutes or so I received a really big sense of calm, saying that everything will work out and that this is the right thing to do at this time. But, Elder W. was still really sad about it.

Me and a member family that lives in Vila Reis that feeds us dinner
almost every night and saves our lives cause we have no money

We showed up at Vila Reis on Sunday with a bus that would take people to church for free and had 30 names of people that had promised the day before that they would go to church with us. We knocked on every door, and we got 0 people to come to church with us.  This, for me, was another sign that we should not be working there very much, but Elder W. was still really upset by this, he still is clinging on to Vila Reis with all his might, and is not excited to work here in the city. I am so pumped to work here in the city; I know that this is the right thing to do at this time. I asked Elder S. to give us the worst areas of the city where the people are the worst and don’t want to listen to our messages, and chose to work there for the days we will not work in Vila Reis. (I want to diminish our trips to Vila Reis eventually down to once every week), and in 2 hours of knocking doors in the worst part of this new area we found two families to teach, got one baptism date, and found a young man that maybe we can baptize this week (that is, if we can find him at home, he will be out of the house almost every day this week, but he already went to church and is guarding all the commandments). Que uma benção!!! What a blessing!!! So we pretty much had a transfer a week early and are pretty much opening an area because the other missionaries have zero investigators there and zero references. It is going to be so much fun!!! Hopefully Elder W. can catch the fever, and if not he will most likely leave this next week, so it will be all fine anyway. But, I hope that he gets the same confirmation that I did, and can let Vila Reis go a little bit (it’s hard because he spent 6 months building up the Vila).

finally got a photo next to the sign for APUCARANA

And now on a totally, different subject:  Brazilians have a ton of superstitions and/or urban legends that don’t make sense to us Americans. Such as:

• You can’t drink hot liquids when it is raining outside
• You can’t iron your shirt and then immediately afterwards take a shower
• You can’t put the toilet paper in the toilet, you have to put it in the trash (that’s what it is designed for—I talked with a maintenance guy about it).

 Just silly stuff like that, I bet Brazilians would think some of the things we do/don’t do are just as silly!

will you be baptized by someone who holds the priesthood authority of God???
(this was in the car of a member so don´t worry)

I think that’s about it for our adventures this week.

Lots of love!!!

Elder Eldon Ray Cummings

just some cows...

P.S. Got info about Christmas Skype today, I'll read it this week and let you guys know about more details this next p-day!!

P.P.S.  The Church is so True!!