Christmas Conference: December 23, 2013

Dear Everyone,

1. Tell us about your new companion! Is he American or Brazilian? Is he also a zone leader? My companion is Elder P. from São Paulo. He is the other zone leader (the zone leaders are always companions. I am the only American in the entire zone! (Elder S. [CTM companion], if you haven’t already heard, is the new Assistant to the President!!!!!)
2. How many companionships are in your zone? There are 7 companionships in the zone 6 sets of elders and 1 set of sisters. We have a lot of work to do with the zone, we baptized 0 people this week in the entire zone!!! But, we have lots of possibilidades (possibilities) for this week, so pray for everyone and that we can light a fire in some of these missionaries!!

I’m going to be at the members’ house to Skype 4 o clock my time. I hope that works for you guys!

Here are the photos of me and my new comp, me and my “son,” (Elder Iglesias, who he trained in Cascavel), me and President and Sister Genaro and me and the new AP big man boss sauce himself!!

Yeah, way to go little bro on the lunch date!!! ;-)

We walked a ton this week trying to find a new area to work. We have to start over from zero because they don’t have any investigators, so that was a little frustrating but we had a family at church on Sunday so this week we should have at least 4 baptisms, so pray a lot for us here!!! Also, the area of the zone leaders moved, it used to be the Apucarana branch which meets in the center with the Eldorado branch (my old branch when I was in Apucarana before) but now we are in the America branch which is a different building, but I will go to Eldorado on Tuesday to do a division so that will be neat to be back in my old area again!! 

It is super hot here but it doesn’t even feel as hot because of all the wind. I’m not even sweating at all even though it is like 95 to 100 every day. But there are no trees, and even though it doesn’t feel hot and I am using sunscreen twice a day, still my nose is super burnt!! HAHA but it is good to be back in Apucarana o rei do batismo (King of Baptisms)!!

Our house is huge and new and clean and awesome!!! It is super chique!!! (fancy!!!)

love you guys!!

Elder Cummings

P.S. Here’s a picture of my zone in Maringá with Elder Costa!

A Pretty Normal Week: November 25, 2013

25 November 2013

Dear Everyone:

1. Why is the ward moving into the warehouse while a new chapel is being built? Are they unable to stay in the current building? Currently we don’t have our own chapel we have to take a 30 minute bus ride to get to church so they are renting this warehouse while they are looking for and building a nice new chapel here in our area.
2. Did you find a new place to live? No, we didn’t get a new house yet (I’ll explain later) but it is all good. The house is a lot cleaner now. The only problem is that the abandoned house out back got new renters who smoke a lot so our study room has a smoky smell every now and then

I didn’t know what photos to send home so I sent practically all of them from this week.

We helped a member with a small move, hence the couch in the middle of the street!

We made these really sweet tacos one day for lunch!!

Waiting for lunch to finish cooking on Sunday we got to play with their little kid for 5 minutes and I got to refresh my Lego and modeling skills.

Me and Elder D.

Quick question: can you send me the family Christmas cookie recipe??!! Thank you!!

This week was a pretty normal week. We didn’t have a baptism but we did have 2 confirmations and we found a lot of great people!! I did a baptismal interview for one of the sisters in my district and it went good, it was a really spiritual interview I was crying at the end, and when I came out the sister said that I was literally glowing!! So, that was cool!!

This week we have a very special event (oh, I did not make it to the giant cathedral but I will before the end of the transfer). This special event is why the secretaries didn’t have time to put offers on houses for us. On Wednesday night there will be the Cascavel and Londrina zones sleeping here in Maringá because Thursday morning we leave at 0 dark 30 to go to Londrina, we are going to have a special mission tour. The whole mission will be gathered in Londrina and we will get to hear from Elder Costa of the First Quorum of the 70 and the current Area President of Brasil!!!! That will be AWESOME!!!

I think that is about it!!

lots of love!!

Elder Cummings