Elder Collin J. Andrus: Week 31

Olá! So on Tuesday, we headed to Santarém to have a weird emergency meeting with the zone, and guess who showed up out of nowhere. Haha Presidente Campos. No one knew, but he was planning a surprise conference with our zone. He was really straightforward and actually a little harsh, because he wasn’t impressed with the work of the mission in the last couple weeks, especially the last weeks before Elder Neil L. Anderson will be coming to Belém. But, he told us that we will be going to Belém for sure! We’re gonna head to Santarém this Thursday, and our flight to Belém is on Friday. The conference with Elder Anderson is Saturday morning. I’m pretty excited not gonna lie. I mean I haven’t gotten out of this town to the big city since I came here! Haha. It’s definitely gonna be a highlight of my mission to be able to see an Apostle of the Lord.

And while we were in Santarém for the conference with Presidente, I got those 3 packages you guys sent to me, and Elder Costa got his with his Ipod. So no worries, the MP3 player, camera, and everything else made it so me safely. I’m loving the new music too, especially the Lord of the Rings soundtrack :) and Elder Costa is loving the Ipod haha.

So this week, we had one baptism planned for the son of Aldenilsa, but it ended up falling through because another one of her kids was sick, and it just didn’t work out this week. But Rosalia’s daughter, Emily, was baptized on Sunday and counted as a ward baptism because she’s 8 years old. It went pretty well.

Oh, and one other thing, remember how I said that in this region of the Amazon there are a lot of Indians that speak different languages and stuff? Well, one member of the ward here has a neighbor that speaks one of these languages/dialects, and he was teaching us some stuff haha. It’s called wai wai. It’s not even close to sounding like Portuguese.
It really sounds like one of those crazy Indian languages haha. Maybe if I stick around Oriximiná a little longer, I’ll come home speaking Portuguese and wai wai fluently! Haha

So I’m sure we’re gonna find out about who’s gonna be transferred this week before we head off to Belém. It seems like there’s gonna be a lot of changes. I’m pretty excited to see where people will go because since I’ve been here I haven’t seen almost any changes haha.

Well, I love you guys, and thanks for the support in your letter and packages!

Até próximo!

Élder Andrus