Letter #25

Dear Family!

In a moment of grammatical exuberance my comma is now an exclamation point. I hope you approve. But in the spirit of providing a less helter or skelter version of my week , my feelings, the sometimes glubboorous things on my lunch plate, I am pre-drafting this letter. As my beta test volunteers, I hope the difference is both appreciated and unnoticed. But what am I talking about!? Lets talk about baptism, shall we? The word of the day is mulhado, meaning wet, very wet, soaking wet, and its still raining!

Each of you now has one or more or many roles that you are fulfilling (and I´m sure magnifying): Mom, Dad, Stake President, basketball player, referee, return missionary, patriarch, cook etc. Well my role is to baptize, as it has been made plentifully clear by my beloved president, and so while you fill your letters with the things above, I´ll fill mine with water. Just like my shoes, which were full of plenty of water this week, which is very ironic because we´re in a drought here in Tupã, of baptisms, even though its raining every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, and I don´t remember what dry feels like. Someone pulled the plug on the pia (baptismal font).

As you may know or you may not, Brasil baptizes a lot of people, because the society is generally very humble and open to hearing the message of the gospel, which, naturally, leads to baptism. In fact it is a goal and standard of excellence that you baptize weekly. Oh yeah. Unlike my good friend in Ukraine whose mission´s goal for baptisms for the year is 65, we baptize this in 3 weeks or less. More less than not. Oh yeah. But Tupã´s not raining baptisms right now so, let me tell you some of the rain dances this Shamaan named Schenewark´s been doing to bring the waters of Baptism to Tupã. (We don´t need anymore water from the sky.)

1. We´re teaching with, challenging and serving the members everyday. We were challenged to challenge the members and that when they didn't respond to challenge them again, until they did their part and caught the spirit of the whole work. We marked everyday for this last week and this week to come, with a member who could teach with us for 1 or 2 hours, Or more. This week we managed to teach involve the branch much more in our work and hope to continue this effort. As a result we now have 4 people to teach that are member references and we have more references to contact this week. The members I trust are those that make sacrifices to help another into this wonderful gospel.

2. We´re getting brain rest. Let me explain: Missionaries run on batteries, rechargeable only by certain things--things need to maintain the laser focus and energy so vital. So this week we stockpiled fuel in the form of letters (12, oh so magical, thank you to all who also spoke of baptism in their letter), dark chocolate (nuff said), granola bars, divisions with the district leaders, and a renewed store of restoration pamphlets. Yup. And the Book of Mormon. For all these reasons and more I just feel marvelous right now. Ahh, but time has sped. I´ll have to describe our Minute to Win It Activity in a handwritten letter. Love, and love and to any needing water lots of that too, cause I don´t need it anymore, Good week to come. . .

Love,

Tanner