Elder Merrill's Mission: I punched an investigator....

So this week I totally socked an investigator in the face.... it's not even worth explaining the story, so I'll just leave it at that.

Praying in English is SO difficult. Last week, the Irmã that was feeding us lunch asked me to bless the food in English.... before this, I literally hadn't said a prayer in English since the 3rd day in the MTC... since then, I made it a personal goal to say EVERY prayer in Portuguese to help me learn faster, including my personal prayers in the morning and night. So, I tried my best to say comprehensive phrases, and boy did I struggle through it... so many words I had to correct from Portuguese to English, and sometimes I just forgot how to phrase a certain thing.... wow, it was REALLY hard. I'm scared for when I go back to the US and have to pray in English.....

It was a little harder to teach some lessons this week, since pretty much everyone went to other places for Christmas stuff, but it was a good week nonetheless. We started teaching the sister of Alecsander (our recent convert)! She is super interested, and I can just imagine how cool it will be to help them bring the Gospel into their home!

Our Christmas Eve found us walking around in the rain, trying to find people at home to teach.When night came, we went to a member family's house that we like a lot. President let us stay out until midnight! And also told us we didn't have to wake up at a specific time, it was awesome! We got up at 10:30, and calmly got ready to go to lunch. (which was some BOMB churrasco.... mmmmmmm......) So weird to have no rush in the world to do anything on that day.

Christmas in São Paulo is nothing like Christmas in the States. I was expecting it to be pretty calm since its a family holiday, right? Nope. Apparently, its a time for lots of fluxo (parties in the street with loud music, drinking, and drug use) and fireworks. It felt like a warzone, Elder Ambriz and I were like "this isn't what Christmas feels like"

Every missionary's favorite part of Christmas is the blessed Skype call. It was so nice to hear the wonderful voices of Mom and Dad and Nat and Brad, as well as the double-video-call (Nat held her phone to the computer) with my other siblings and their adorable children! I can't wait until Mother's Day, when I get to exchange even more experiences! Contrary to expectation, nobody cried.... does that mean we're heartless? It just felt like a regular conversation to me, almost like it hadn't been more than 5 months since we'd talked face to face. It was awesome.

I love you all, and have a splendid New Year!

Elder Merrill