Time to get Louco

Me and Elder Porfírio and a member family in Maricá.

Hey guys!

I hear that Melanie is roommates with Katie at BYU? Like, Melanie my cousin and Katie my best friend? Is that true? If so, DANG that´s cool. How´s it going for everybody at home? What does this new company do that Dad will be working for? At times people here in Brasil like to ask what my parents do for a living, and it would be nice to have some sort of idea what Esterline specializes in. Way to go Dad!

Like I said last week, I´m training now and my new son´s name is Elder Porfírio! He´s from a city called Sobral in Brazil, it´s close to Fortaleza, and I like to call him my little fireball. He arrived here in Rio super animated to work, he has a great knowledge of the scriptures and the missionary lessons, and we´ve been working hard since day 1. And some miracles have definitely resulted! He´s a convert, was baptized when he was 16, served in the army in Brazil, and is 22 years old. Weird, huh? Training a guy who´s more than 2 years older than me? But he´s seriously great. He was super scared when I told he we were serving in a branch, but he´s already been a great help. 

We had a guy get reactivated this Sunday! His name is Adalberto and when I was still with Elder Evans, he stopped us one day on the street and said ´´I´, mormon!  The church is here in Maricá?´´ He´s from Recife, but moved to Rio because he had cancer and had to have serious treatment, but he´s starting to recover. I gave him one of my white shirts and ties, and he was super grateful to have found us so that he could return to church and continue being nurtured by the good word of God! He was an awesome miracle for us, and it makes me wonder how many there must be in this giant area that are members who never were able to find the branch here in Maricá

After the wonderful feedback from our activity last week, we´ve decided to have activities on a more regular basis in Maricá so that members can invite their friends, the Missionaries can receive more references, and more people can receive knowledge of the Restoration of the Gospel. Our next activity will be on the 24th of May, and we´re gonna have a dinner at the church house with a great message planned. The members are all really excited and we´re happy about that.

A man named Paulo that has been investigating the church for about 20 YEARS accepted baptism! His wife is a member (who has already received her endowment), as well as their daughter. He never was willing to give up drinking, but with the help of his doctor who told him he needs to stop because of his growing problem with diabetes, he has finally stopped. He has been calling himself a member of the church for years, has even taught the Gospel Principles class a few times. We have his baptism marked for this Saturday, the 10th of May.

I love you all very much and am SOOOOO excited to talk to you on Sunday. You guys in Washington get out of church at 2, right? I´ll try and call around 2:15ish or 2:20 (6:15ish) Here in brasil. I´ll be able to use Google+ to talk to the siblings who are interested to talk to me too! If Google+ doesn´t work, I´ll use Skype as my backup plan, so have that up and ready just in case. If Skype doesn´t work, I´ll just scream, maybe it´ll be loud enough for you to hear. Can´t wait for the 11th!

Love,

Elder Braun