Elder Alexander Baker

Hellooo:

Soo I am in the office today and have the president and all the staff breathing down my neck, so its pretty fun. They are actually all really cool guys. Soo I have two things to ask rght off. Is Lowell Hicks still alive? I want to hear him play again. Second, well , its more of a request. If Dad is ever at an estate sale and there is a junker to buy, buy it! I promise you that you want a junker 4x4 for emily. I promise. After watching 16-19 year old girls drive for 6 years I have come to the conclusion that a small 4x4 SUV is the best for girls. Maybe like a suzuki sidekick or samarai. (they are good cars and cheap too)

But anyways, everything is good. I am getting better, the fatal illness is fading. I was pretty sick though, it was my freakin sinuses. It is so incredibly humid they filled up to the brim. I hate the humidity, is is only fun to be in for one week at the max. But I am getting better now.

I usually write things that I want to email to you in my planner, but this week was so exhausting that I didn´t even have time to write in my journal. So I´ll try my best to remember what was cool during the week. Well, basically, nothing fun or cool or exciting happened. The area is really difficult. But, last tuesday, we got a call from the president saying that a member of the 70 was going to come to visit and we needed to go to floripa to plan EVERY SINGLE missionaries travel route to get here. Athayde needed to do something else, so it was me that planned all their travel routes via bus. It was tough! Some of them had the worst schedules ever, like get a bus to a city at midnight and arrive at another city at 4, and then get another bus to floripa at 6 and arrive at 10. But it was the only way for some of them.

The 70 that came was Elder Mazzagardi. He was a HUGE guy with monstrous hands. He had a funny spanish-like accent. His talk was really cool. Its kinda fun to get so much attention from all the leaders of the church while you are on a mission. Thats just one more thing that missionaries lose when they go home. He spoke about some pretty profound doctrine, and I had to study my notes for a lil to understand fully!! It was neat though.

Hmm lets see, all we basically do in Serraria is contacts. We have to because there is no one to teach. It is really a terrible area full of drugs and gangs. But, we managed to find a couples familes, although not married and smoking, to teach. One family came to church and it was like the members had never seen an investigator at church.

On the plus side, I like my comp a lot! He is really funny and is almost fluent in english. I am still teaching him a little, and he makes funny mistakes, so it is fun. Haha, I´ll tell you one. It has a kinda bad word though. The word in portuguese for ``nigger`` is ``preito.`` But, preito also means ``black`` and ``dark.`` My comp was trying to say, ``do you have a dark past?`` but, he didn´t know there was a difference between the words ``dark`` and ``nigger`` in english. soo, he said, ``do you have a nigger past?`` hahhahaha all the americans laughed so hard. It was funny hah.

Well, as I said, I am in Floripa right now. We will work in Rio Tavares for this week, which supposedly is the prettiest area on the island. I don´t know where I´ll go next. Maybe back to Serraria, if the prez wants us to.

I got the package, thanks for the peanut butter.

Gotta run, love you all!!

love Elder Baker