It is so Awesome out Here! I can't even Describe it.

How was your week?

Super good.

Will your companion play any sports with you?

Yeah he is actually the one who makes me get up to go play sometimes - early mornings. 

Have you been playing any basketball or other sports?

we´re going to start playing again tomorrow every morning. 

Are you getting transferred?

Nope. So I´ll be doing 3 transfers with Gula. We work really well together.

Did you hear that 54 new missions were formed (7 in Brazil)?

I just read that when i got on here today. but that is so awesome!

Are you still teaching anyone tracked during the fire?

Not really. Most of the references were outside of my area. We re-activated a giant family because of it though.

Is it hard to find families to teach, Dad, Mom and children?

This is the HARDEST part of the work.There are a lot of single mom´s with their children here, and when they are married the father of the family usually works until night time. And we have to be inside by 9:30PM at the absolute latest. So yes, it´s difficult. 

Do you eat "vitamina's"? The original smoothie!  

Sometimes; I just get so lazy that I hate to make food. If it´s not able to be made quickly, then I just have to pray that my companion wants to cook and then I just pay him for the materials and he cooks for me haha. 

Hello Family!

So we had a pretty good week. It was back to the basics of finding new people to teach because the majority of our teaching group wasn´t progressing. Those lessons make me super sad when we have to stop[teaching] people. We usually just leave our number and a challenge to come to church and read the Book of Mormon. We had 3 12-year old soccer young men come to church with us yesterday.   We taught one of their families, but they didn´t want anything to do with us. Then we have yet to contact the other two families of the other two boys. We get on an old, rickety onibus to go pick people up for church. Maybe a lot of them don´t want to come because of the bus! Haha.

 We also finally had a baptism on Saturday! We re-activated the mom, and baptized her daughter, Juana. Elder Gula baptized her. We combined with a family in the ward that was going to be baptizing their daughter.  It was a good day. It was the longest I´ve been without a baptism in my whole mission. so it was definitely a trial of faith and patience. It was a lesson well learned though. 

Baptism in Santa Maria

Awesome day with Baptisms in Santa Maria

It is so awesome out here. I can´t even describe it. Sorry today´s going to be short because not a lot is going on. Transfers were today. I´m going to be here again, so not a lot of changes. There will be a new assistant. Elder Morrison is going to a different area to train for his last two transfers, so we got Elder Nelson today. He´s from Washington state. right on the other side of the river from Portland, Oregon. He played college football at Snow College, and will go to play at BYU after. He´s a line backer, so he´s just a massive guy. So elder Gula was all happy because he gets to live with 3 Americans again. He said he likes it because it´s helping him a lot with his English.

President didn´t make a lot of changes, so the mission stayed at where it´s at. We had 95 baptisms this month, so I think he likes where things are and doesn´t want to make any sudden changes. The next group going home is HUGE, so there will be a lot of changes here in 6 weeks. The ward I´m in is so big that they have a caravan for the Temple once a month. They all went there on Saturday. 

I´ll be hitting my one-year mark this transfer! that is so crazy to me. It´s been flying by. I honestly feel so much closer to the Savior than I have ever felt, and I truly have a testimony of the Gospel now. It´s one thing to believe and it´s another thing to know. We believe in many things, but knowledge only develops as we study, ponder and pray about things. God doesn´t ask a lot of us. Just those three simple steps have given me all the testimony that I have gained. The Church is true, and I am a TRUE convert now. We all need to hit that mark. 

Tay that is so cool you´ll be captain on the swim team next year! You will just tear it up! The banquet sounds like it went really well. I am happy you´re all doing well! I´m also super jealous of all of the snow. Have a great week!

Love

Elder Shepherd