Life of a District Leader: June 3, 2013

Dear Everyone,

1. Are any Londrina missionaries going to the new missions? No Londrina missionaries will go to other missions.
2. Will there be any sort of mission conference(s) when President T. leaves and the new mission president arrives? We should have a zone conference with President T. this coming week (week of June 10).

Nice shirt, little bro (it doesn't have a pocket…mind is blown…)!!! Congrats on the seminary pin and everything!!! Great job on the gym, Dad, keep it up!!

So on to the week’s news (I actually have a bunch to report today which is nice!!):  first off... happy 50th birthday old man!!! J (Speaking of birthdays, when is Elder S.´s birthday? He sent me a birthday card and I want to be sure not to miss sending him a birthday card!!)

I was called this week as district leader here in Cascavel!! Wow!! This means that I need to accompany(?) everyone on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and get their weekly numbers on Sunday by telephone. Also I do all the baptismal interviews for everyone in my district, so this past Saturday I traveled with my companion 2 1/2 hours to Palotina to do a baptismal interview. He passed and was baptized yesterday, so that was great. He was super ready and I had done a practice with the zone leaders earlier that day (talk about pressure doing a fake baptismal interview with your trainer and one of the old assistants to the president watching and critiquing every move!!) so the real interview was smooth as butter!!! And I will probably need to go out there again this Friday to interview one more and the zone leaders have already marked an interview for them this Saturday!! We are starting to catch fire here as a district, the only thing now is that we need to baptize, we almost had a baptism but he didn´t feel ready and we tried to help him out but he was firm that he will get baptized just not today, (hopefully this week will be better!!) This is the “Month of 200,” where our goal as a mission is to baptize 200 people. With the month having 5 Sundays it gives us a better chance to reach the goal. It is President T.’s last month, and all stops are out to try and finally reach 200 baptisms in a month in his honor. When President T. first started as mission president, the mission was baptizing 20 to 25 people per month. That is like a stateside mission!!! He is the best, and it will be so different without him here.

Me and my companion waiting for the 8:20 bus back to Cascavel.

When we were coming back from the interview on Saturday night, we had to get the 8:20 bus, which is the last bus of the day, and we got the last 2 seats!!! We got back home in bed around 11:15 but it is all good because we got permission from the APs to be out later in order to do the interview.

Can you scan and send me a photo of dad on his mission??!!!!

Some other fun facts from this week:

• Elder F. is from Rio and is super energetic... like a little ball of energy!! He is awesome.
• We tried ordering pizza from Foz do Iguaçu by accident. Didn’t get it.

One of Elder W.’s investigators who is friends with some of the YM in the ward was caught with a bunch of marijuana and went to jail this week. (I don´t think he will be baptized on his baptismal date...)

When we ate lunch with the Bishop this week, he invited us to eat in the house of another member with him, we thought it would be perfect “tranquilo,” but when we get there what was going on? It was a lunch activity for the YSA sisters from the ward...ha ha, we ate outside by ourselves!!! It was pretty funny, actually!

Pray that we can baptize someone this week and that we can bring lots of people to church this coming Sunday. I don´t know why, but Fast Sunday is the day when everything goes wrong, baptisms fall through, investigators don´t come to church, members bear their testimony about baptisms for the dead (which just confuses any investigators who do come to church), LUNCH FALLS THROUGH!!! I don't like Fast Sundays at all... I am trying my best to gain a testimony about fasting, I always pray so hard and fast with a purpose but nothing right ever happens, it kind of stinks!!

Love you guys!!

Vamos Para 200!!! (go to 200, or get 200)

com amor,

Elder Cummings

Fasting Can Truly Bless Every Aspect of Life: December 3, 2012

Dear everyone,

Sorry, but it is a no go on the photos again!!!!! I have some really cool pics on this memory card so I am really bummed that I can´t send them to you!!! L

1. What are Christmas decorations like there? Do people decorate their homes and businesses? Christmas is pretty low key here. No one decorates anything...
2. What is one of your favorite Brazilian foods? I sent a letter with some info on food this past week so you should get it soon. And I’ll send back some recipes some other time, I am collecting a few, slow and steady.
3.  Are there any members in the branch that you have gotten to know particularly well? Most of the members I know really well are the members in Vila Reis. (I have photos but.... yeah...)

I think I will try to Skype between 7 and 8 at night here!! 

I want to start writing a letter to the Governor of Washington a little here and a little there during p-day, so can I get his name and address, please!!?

I was hoping to be able to send lots of photos this week because it was relatively uneventful. Well it is always eventful but a lot of the events are things that I have already written home about and it is hard to find new stuff to write about! 

Luckily we are starting to teach a lot more complete families now, instead of only having part of the family like us and the other part fighting against us, which is good. The main problem still is getting people to actually come to church. But luckily next week is District Conference (Stake Conference) and it is an hour later than normal and we have a bus that will bring people for free, so hopefully we can get everyone to go with us!!! More updates on this next week of course!

Yesterday was Fast Sunday, of course, and fasting is the hardest and most rewarding (besides baptizing) thing a missionary can do. The no food is no problem: we do that all the time, but the no water part, that is rough!!! This past Saturday (we fast starting after lunch Saturday and end at lunch on Sunday) was blazing hot (of course) and now I know it would suck to die of dehydration. Having a dry, crusty mouth is not fun at all!!! (I felt like I was in the movie “Dune” where I had to try to not breathe out too much of my water…Dad will understand.) BUT... we had some fasting miracles this week that were pretty cool. Fasting can truly bless every aspect of life from the most seemingly insignificant parts to the most important.

• First off, we got a member to teach with us on Saturday, and we got invited to come over to an investigator’s house for a barbecue on Sunday (which we happily accepted!!!).
• Then, that night we were having a mini zone conference over the phone, and I knelt down and looked behind me for the prayer and saw a pair of black socks that I was missing and one of my white Nike socks that had disappeared, so now I have a full pair of those again!!!
• The next day (Sunday), we got a member to drive us to Vila Reis to pick up 6 investigators for church, and then he took them home after church, too, saving us about 14R each (which is a lot for us). We are going to baptize 4 of the investigators this next Sunday (hopefully), and the parents (these 4 are all sisters) just need to get married before they can be baptized so hopefully they can get married and baptized here in the next couple of months!!
• And, we had a GIANT lunch/feast provided to us by the same member that drove our investigators around, and we had that dinner with a different investigator!! Life was great yesterday!!

What else to write...Oh, we have our Christmas conference for my zone and 2 others this Thursday so I should get my package then. It should be a lot of fun! It will be mine and Elder W.’s first Christmas conference (he was in the CTM for Christmas last year).  So, I will have some news about that for next week’s letter!!

So, an update on my memory card:  when I put it into the computer it says that nothing is on it (oh, and one of my USB Drives is destroyed pretty much) but in the camera the photo card has all my photos still. I will try to go to a place to get the photos transferred to a different card this week! (I don’t need any more USBs or anything, I should be fine.)

That’s about it for this week! Hopefully photos will come next week! Sorry again.  L

Lots of Love,

Elder Eldon Ray Cummings