Hello my dearest Family,

So Natal (Christmas) is coming. It's right around the corner. It's comin quick. 7 days.

I'm fine now. I don't really feel sick but I'm keeping the same weight. Not going up or going down.

I would love to skype and talk with you alls. In the last letter we got from president they changed it to 45 mins. I can skype totally tranquilo (peace). Wow, some sayings in portugues just don't work in English. But I honestly don't know what time it will be at... yet... It's not a good thing that I don't know. Maybe you might just need to be ready because I don't know when my companion will talk with his family and I don't know when the Brasilians will talk with their families. So it's all up in the air about the time. You just might get an email the day of telling you. I'm so sorry, mom. Just have the e-mail on your phone open and ready to roll. (Sorry, This year is not so organized)

So, we had practice today for the Christmas Conference and it was pretty good. The music is hard and for missionaries, they are doing fantastic. They are doing wonderful. They sound sooooo good.

I'll let you know what happens next week from the Christmas Party.

We had the branch Christmas party this last Saturday and it was pretty fun. We had 3 Investigators there and a whole bunch of people. A funny thing from the party is that it was supposed to start at 7 o clock. But it really didn't start until 8:30ish. It's called Mormon Standard Time mixed with Brasilian Standard Time. Things never start on time. It's guaranteed. (Sorry for the spelling)

But since it started at almost 9 o clock and we probably had to go before we could eat, our Branch President took one of our phones, called the President of the Mission and asked him if we could stay longer. The Mission President said we could stay out as long as we liked just as long as we were with the Branch President. Woah. We got risky and got home at 10:25 and I was sleeping at 10:30. Talk about risky buisness.

Just a side note. I never thought it would be easy to sleep on a bus. I slept on one for about an hour today. It was strange. That has never happened before in my life, especially on the mission.

So I'm working in a zone that is trying to make a stake. Does that make sense? We are trying to help the Stake split right now. But that isn't the main focus. The main focus is to invite others to come unto Christ through faith, repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost and Endure to the End. All the rest of the things we do are just bonuses.

It's amazing how God helps us and gives us revelation when we need it. I was studying the scriptures 3 weeks ago and ran into something interesting about murder and things like that and repentance and forgiveness. So I put a sticky note on it and continued studying. Yesterday, me and my companion were talking with the people we were living with and they telling us their difficulties and we were telling them ours. It is amazing that one of their difficulties was directly related to the scripture I marked 3 weeks ago. I got to share it with them. It's amazing how God guides and leads.

Love you

Endure to the End

Singing Out
Elder Barry