Hello Fam, How are you doing today. I'm doing pretty fine myself. Thanks for asking.

This week has been pretty good. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mom. I think I just answered all your questions in the first paragraph. I am pretty sure I have calculated that right... gained 20 pounds.


So I have noticed that my sentence structure has changed a little. Sometimes when I speak in English or write in English I move some words around in a weird way. Like I was writing 'service project' but in Português you'd say project of service (projeto de serviço). So every once in a while... it's crazy.

Another thing I've noticed is I love English. Sometimes when talking to a Brasilian I might slip into English without noticing. I don't know how to split the two languages right now. That is something I'm working on. It's pretty hard tough. Sometime the words come easier in Português and other times in English.

(These are questions that I asked Matt to answer. I've noticed he tells more in his letters if I ask questions. These are questions that we ask the missionaries and we ask them to ask themselves after each teaching visit.)

1. Tell me what evidence you have that your faith is increasing

I feel more inclined to work right now. I'm pretty sure that when your faith increases you want to do missionary work more. We strive to work hard, fast, pray and sacrifice our time for this work.
In Brasil there was a giant natural disaster in (man I can't remember the name right now, but it's pretty big.) Many are dead, they are looking for the missing and there are many who have lost everything. So... today we have a service project. Today was P-Day. We sacrificed our P-Day to serve. Basically all the "P-Day" I'm getting right now is writting e-mails to the president and home. But it definately feels so good. We are all so tired but honestly... I don't feel tired. I'm just ready to go work today. We put together kits and things to send and it was a giant effort. We had 2 zones of missionaires there, about 40 missionaries helping in this service project. It was really amazing. Service is really a good way to feel closer to the spirit.

2. Tell me what evidence you have that the faith of your investigators is increasing.

We had an investigator that was just golden from the start. She has two neices who are members. So we started teaching her and she just asked questions and accepted baptism right in the first lesson. We invite to baptism in the first visit and mark a date in the second. But usually we strive to do both in the first. I really can tell that a mission here is really different than the states because we go through investigators really fast. If they don't accept baptism on the first visit right now, we don't go back. If we do go back it's because we have a really good reason to do so. Like they will go to church or a really good person who is just golden and just needs another lesson to feel the spirit.


3. Tell me what evidence is there that your investigators are keep commitments and repenting.

We see that investigators are keeping commitments and repenting when they come to church and when they say we can come back and teach them. We strive to always help someone even if they don't want anything to do with the church. For example we had an investigator who was just golden. Well he didn't come to church in three weeks so we cut him. But we strived to help him stop drinking and he thanked us for being there and helping him.

4. Tell me what evidence is there that you felt the Holy Ghost this week.

I'd have to say read # 1 again. That was amazing.

5. Tell me the evidence of God’s love for you.

God loves me because I am here. I feel the evidence in how I learn and the things that I do and the miracles that happen here.


I love you all.

Serve

Endure to the End

Signing Out
Elder Barry

P.S. This is Mom Barry. I just went online and found out about the disaster in Brazil. It was a terrible mudslide. Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2011/01/110124_outlook_brazil_mudslide.shtml

It has pictures and a story. It's pretty major. Mom Barry


This is my companion today. We were writing emails and he fell asleep. So I just had to snag a picture.



I drew this picture. It says "Bem-Vindo" Which means Welcome. But literally translated it means Well-Coming. And if you shorten Well-Coming by taking off one 'l' and replacing 'ing' with an 'e'. You have Welcome. So that's kinda cool

I thought this looked beautiful. This is outside of a member's house. This place is so beautiful. I love my first área.

This was a P-day we had this transfer. I thought it was funny how they all were sleeping. I can't sleep on P-Days. I don't like to sleep in P-Day. My bed is the empty one. My companion is on the blue bed sheets and the other two are the Zone Leaders.