Air Conditioning!

Letter received from Elder Olivier on April 11, 2016...

Hey everybody! Great news! We got air conditioning in one of the rooms in our apartment! Heck yeah! It is pretty much the best news ever! haha.

This week was super sweet. We worked a ton. Last week we received the depressing news that there is no longer enough money in the branch budget to pay for a truck to bring people to church on sunday who live far from the "chapel" (the house). Every week we had the luxury of promising everyone that a car would pick them up to bring them to church. But we no longer have that luxury. Que droga. But, this week we worked a ton (and got super stressed out) and we managed to have an OK attendance in church! 31 people came to our branch, which was better than we thought it would be.  We also had two baptisms! It was awesome. We baptized the younger sister of the girl that we baptized last week, because they have been coming to church for a while now and she turned 8 this week. We also baptized a woman named Vania, who we met by talking to her on the street. She was super ready to receive the gospel. It was such a cool experience helping her to be baptized.

Elder Castelli and I have been working super hard recently, and it has really been paying off. The standard of excellence here in the Brazil Manaus Mission is 2 baptisms per week, and our mission president says that if we don´t have at least one baptism per week, we are not working as well as week should be. That´s a lot of pressure. But working with Elder Castelli the past two transfers has been the most rewarding part of my mission so far. When I went on exchanges with one of the zone leaders a few weeks ago, I learned a ton. One of the things he always said was that if we don´t baptize every week, we aren´t doing what the mission president asks of us, and thus, we are not doing what Jesus Christ asks of us, and thus, we are in transgression. That was super humbling for me, because it really made me think how much better I can be as a missionary. It made me think of how all of us need repentance, and that through real repentance we can become better people every single day. Every day we have the opportunity to become more like Jesus Christ, but it is up to us to change. And change is always hard. But looking back on the past few weeks, I can tell how rewarding change can be. If you can, read 3 Nephi 12:48.  I know that Jesus Christ lives. And that through him, we can be more perfect every day.

I love all of you guys and hope you have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Olivier!