25 Nov. 2013

Thanks for the email!  The best way for packages would just be to use the advice I had previously talked about with the picture of Christ and writing religious materials on the box. The address with Rua Loris Cordivill is the address it needs to be sent to.  Money, yeah I would just send it to you and put it to my account. The city/town/suburb where I am right now has actually quite a few places that accept credit cards b/c they all have this little handheld credit card machines so I can actually use it. I haven´t had to use my card too much, mostly just for food when our mission funds run low b/c we always have to pay for the bus and water and gas. The machine generally refunds it back to us but we don´t know when we get refunded so it makes the weeks a little interesting. Did you find the memory card in the box? Its has all the pictures from Boise and the MTC.  Your new job sounds so much better than the last. Hopefully it stays that way. Thanks for the pictures! Its always cool to see whats going on at home. I´ve been having a little bit of trouble with keeping track with whats been going on at home. I spent all this last week thinking that Thanksgiving was this last Thursday until Saturday when one of the Zone Leaders corrected me. Oh well, I´ll just have to find some way of celebrating it this Thursday. Pizza sounds good.  Interesting fact about Brazilian pizza, they don´t really use tomato sauce at all, and we tried a restaurant pizza this past week and I ordered the Italian pizza personal size. Cost 3.00 reals so about 1.50. When it came out it was about the size of a large cookie so maybe 4 inches in diameter and had a slice of tomato sitting in the middle with two olives sitting on either side.  Interesting to say the least. Would have taken a picture but I don´t carry my camera with me b/c its too dangerous to carry it at all times.

  This week has been a bit chaotic. Monday, p day. Tuesday we had district meeting which was great as usual.  Got completely soaked by the rain.  Rain here appears out of nowhere and is pretty sporadic at times. Wednesday, completely soaked by the rain.  Wednesday we were supposed to have a baptism for 2-3 people, but they all bailed at the last minute or weren´t home so a bit frustrating. Thursday we had exchanges so I spent the day with Elder Lessa, in our area working. Its always interesting to see how other missionaries operate.Friday we traded back and got completely soaked again (noticing a trend?). Saturday was especially frustrating. The ZLs came and did baptismal interviews for 6 people that were supposed to be baptized that night and every single one fell through either b/c they weren´t home or their parents changed their mind at the last moment and decided to not let them be baptized. Quite frustrating. We met one person though that wanted to be baptized so Sunday we planned on having them baptized after church.  Sunday came and we get to the chapel and check on the font and guess what the font is not working. Half of the chapel doesn´t have water, but the other half does.  The bishop recommends that we go to another chapel (which there are actually quite a few here) so after church, we get a ride with some members and ride over to another chapel and have a baptismal service.  That was pretty cool. But we are all exhausted so I´ve been looking forward to pday for a little while. This has been an interesting week to say the least. We have transfers coming up this next week so I have a possibility of leaving this area, which I don´t really want to. I also have my 4 month mark this Saturday! Exciting! Weird to think that I´ve been out for four months. Feels like forever ago that I left, but it also feels like yesterday. Time is weird on a mission. I do know Daniel Felipe D'Oliver, he is a member that lives near us. He is prepping for a mission as well and asked to see the video of when I got my call and I told him it was on your page. Did he send you a message as well? He mentioned sending you the request and perhaps a message as well. But yeah I know him. Hes pretty cool.

Thanks for writing. I miss all of you too! Its going to be a little weird not having Thanksgiving and watching the Macys Day parade. I´ll try to send you pictures as well. My companion has a bunch of pictures of our baptisms that I´ll try to steal from him. Thanks so much and I miss all of you!

Love Elder Battraw

P.S. Here are some pictures that I do have.  First a baptism . Daniel is acutally in this picture. The only other person as tall as me. The second, somebody we found in our bathroom. Picture doesn´t really convey how big it was!