Week Four in Manaus!!!

We didn't receive any photos this week.  We are hoping for more next week.  Below is Elder Olivier's email that we received October 19th.  He is still working hard!  Elder Olivier's birthday is on December 4th and it can take a couple of months for him to receive things, so if you would like to send a birthday card, please do so!  His letter address is on the right side of the blog....package address is there too.  He also loves to receive emails!  Thanks everyone!





Hi everyone! 

This week has been awesome as usual! And really hot as usual! There wasn´t too much exciting that happened this week. We worked a ton, and walked up and down tons of hills. It´s just starting to hit me how hilly it is here. 

This week was a little disappointing, in that we had a ton of lessons fall through and it´s been hard lately to get investigators to progress. This week we tried to bring 8 people to church, so we walked all over creation before church to find all of them. We ended up only bringing one person to church, which is still awesome, but for some reason lately the work has been a little slow.

This week we ate a lot of chicken, as usual. And beans and rice. Oh, and we ate a lot of fish. With spoons. For some reason, most of the people here don´t like eating with forks and knives. Everyone has them in their house but no one uses them. This week I learned how to eat fish with a spoon.

So the past few weeks have pretty much been the hardest few weeks of my life. The transition to a new language/culture has been super hard. The language gets better every single day. Every day I can understand more of what people say. But this week I have realized that as the language gets easier, all of the other aspects of missionary work get harder. Missionary work is probably one of the hardest things ever. But it is so awesome. The church is true. 100%. I have never ever felt that so strongly. I´ve only been in the field for a short time so far, but there have already been a lot of good times and a lot of hard times. But it is through trials and challenges that we become better people. And that is why we are here on earth, to keep on becoming better and better people, to keep on becoming more and more Christlike every single day.

I love you all! Abraço!

Elder Olivier

(written 10/19/2015)