7/8/2009 Hello

Hello Family and Friends,
How are things going in your neck of the woods? I hope everything is going as well as it is here with all the wonderful things that are always going on around here in Alvorada and all the miracles in the work of the Lord.
Today was the first day of transfers but nothing really moved except for all the things on the mission that has been going on, because me and my comp stayed together. That’s right I stayed with Elder Forsythe and it's going to be as awesome as the last transfer that just ended. My new district is now as follows Sister De Sousa stayed and Sister Stephens was transferred and in came Sister Paulino who is from São Paulo, Elder Ariente stayed and his comp Elder Ferrão went and Elder Bernardo came.
Like I said there are a lot of things that have changed on the mission and that will shortly be changing. The new President is feeling right at home, he has now been here for one week and he has already won the love of all. The greatest thing that I think I will learn from the new president is learning to listen to the spirit and then following it. It seems that every president has a special theme that they like to focus on. The theme of President Frei was to be 100% obedient, the theme of the new President Parrella is like I said heeding the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
We have been working really hard this past week and we met some pretty sweet people that we started to teach the last couple of days. We have continued to teach some really special people that are progressing towards baptism very nicely, we are teaching a family of nine people that are really special. They are always wanting to learn. We actually found them a little bit ago and we have been teaching them for awhile, but they have been progressing really well and not this Sunday, but the next one, all of them that are older than eight will be baptized, that is all of them but two.
Fourth of July is not celebrated here and so it was just a normal work day for us, but the fact that I am with an American meant that we partied it up a little bit, unfortunately no fireworks are allowed and so we couldn’t celebrate it in that way.
That’s about it and I have to go get my hair cut so until next time.
Love,
Elder O’Brien