Pioneer Handcart Experience: January 6, 2014

Dear Everyone,

1. Did you know Elder T.  when he served there in your mission? All of us back here at home were so sad to hear about his death in the car wreck. A number of returned missionaries, friends from Brazil, and missionary moms (myself included) fasted today for his family. I did not know Elder T. very well, I never served in the same zone as him but I did talk with him a few times, we were all sad here to get the news too.
2. What did Elder P. do before his mission? Was he in school, working, etc.? Elder P. just worked before the mission and went out tracting with the missionaries.
3. Have you conducted any zone meetings yet? How have you been helping your zone this week? We did a zone meeting my first week here and we have leaders’ conference tomorrow in Londrina and will have another zone meeting on Thursday!! But mostly we help out by keeping everyone animated and updated on information from the assistants and being a good example for them, and so far it is working, all of the zone numbers are going up, (we had 3 baptisms in the zone this week) but being zone leader is hard too because when you are just a normal missionary normal you get burned by the district leaders or the zone leaders, but as a zone leader you get burned by the assistants and by the mission president!! Ouch!! We got burned a little bit this week, but nothing out of the ordinary so it is all fine (we are not breaking any rules or anything like that)! 

This week, we had a move from our giant new house to a super tiny apartment which has had missionaries since at least 2002, so it is a little destroyed but still in good shape. On the other side of the street is the giant cathedral at the heart of the city, so we are right in the middle of downtown. We are no longer in the America Branch, we are now back in the Apucarana Branch, which is the same time and building as the Eldorado Branch so I got to see some old friends which was good!! We made the move on New Year’s Eve. The missionary couple who is serving here (to help Apucarana become a stake) helped us with the luggage, but the desk we had to walk down to the new apartment down town (we walked with the desk on our shoulders for about a mile and then we used a shopping kart for the other 2 miles (we returned it afterwards). It was our pioneer handcart experience!!! HAHA (see the attached photos). The other photos are views from various parts of the area.

New Year’s was super rainy here so there were hardly any fireworks, which helped us all get a good night’s sleep!!

That is about it for this week!! 

com amor,

Elder Cummings