September 23, 2009

Como estão?! Things are going good here as usual. The language is really coming along. I think I spoke the best this week than ever. It is still way hard to understand. Its crazy. I am thinking it's because there are so many different accents here. We have the Portuguese accent, the Brazilian accent, and all the different African accents as well. And every country from Africa has a different accent. There are a bunch. I am getting used to some of the accents. The Cape Verde one is the easiest for me to understand, probably because I have been around it the most. The rest are pretty hard. But it is coming. We had dinner last night with Maria, she is from Angola, but I understood a lot. I think by the end of next transfer I will be able to understand almost everything. We had a couple sort of drag days this week. All of our marked investigators have already been baptized so most of our time is spent trying to find people to teach. We have been teaching Morteza and his family (the Iranian family) English, and some short gospel lessons. Also, Steven, the guy who introduced us to them has been coming (he is from Nigeria.) But President Torgan just barely banned English class basically. The rules now are that we have to have at least 10 investigators there, or we have to go on divisions with members, meaning one of us would stay and teach with a member present, and the other would have to go out and proselyte with the other member.

Yesterday was a good finding day. We got a few numbers, and actually contacted a reference that we recieved from Church HQ. Her name is Nilza, she is probably in her mid 20s. She is from São Tomé. She has one 8-year-old kid, and no husband. We dont know much about that. She also has a lot of health problems, as well as her kid. But she was one of the nicest, coolest people I have ever met out here and we are sure she is elect. We taught her the first lesson and she liked it, and even said the prayer at the end of the lesson and it was really good. She is way awesome. We set up another appointment with her for tomorrow. Way cool.

Not much else new is going on. Elder Markarian, my last companion got transferred back to our zone to be Zone Leader. We are actually going to go hang out with them today. Way cool. Oh, by the way. P-days are on Monday now, another rule changed by President Torgan. So starting Monday the 28th we will be having P-days on Mondays. Sounds like everything is going good there. The weather here cooled down here a bit too, and is also back up again. It was way hot a couple days ago. Its crazy the rainbow shag is finally gone! I cant believe there is going to be tile in the kitchen! Its too bad mom cant get the short sleeves. I really hate the other shirts I have. Maybe I can just find some good ones out here. I definitely dont want the long sleeve. Way too hot. Dont worry about it then. I can live with the shirts ive got. Thats going to be so awesome if Leanna makes it into the motab. I really hope she does. I cant wait to watch General Conference in 2 weeks and see mom. Hopefully they show her. I think I get to watch it in English which will be really nice. Im really glad to hear that Brennan is doing well. He is not going to school this semester, right?

Yeah, everything is going awesome here. I am getting more confident in my language skills, and my teaching skills. I have been really blessed with the gift of tongues, however much I forget it sometimes. There are some missionaries that really struggle with the language, even worse than me. I just need to be blessed with the gift of the interpretation of tongues now. Gaahhh!!! Anyways, I love you all. Thanks for the great influence you have all had on my life. God bless you all! Deus Vos Guarde! Fiquem bem!
Elder Walker