15 December, 2014

Thanks for the pictures.  I have gotten the Christmas package that you sent to me and the one that Grandma sent to me as well! Thanks for the socks! I´ll try to see if I can skype at about 6:00pm, we still have to find a computer to be able to use to be able to skype, but I´m sure that we´ll find one. What is your skype name again just to make sure that I call right person.  Sounds like a cool christmas party.  Brother Mcdonald is married again, thats awesome!  Thats cool the Zach wants to do marching band! Got for it Zach! The Band is going to Philly? since when!  Sounds like there is going to be a lot of new people for me to meet when I get back from the mission!  That will be cool to do.

  So, the week.The area/city where I´m at is called Manacapuru( Ma-na-kaw-per-u)  where it just me and my companion and the zone leaders who are here in the city.  Its a smaller city but its super cool here.  The ward here is awesome and I am loving serving here.  All of the members have references for the missionaries, talk about a ward who is on fire for missionary work.  Everybody is always saying, elders, I have a reference for you guys, its pretty awesome. My new companion is Elder Sanderson, who is also American who is from DC.  Hes got a little bit less time than I do on the mission and is super cool.  He is also going to do ROTC at BYU, but he will be Air Force.  Its been an awesome week with him so far.  I guess the only down side would be the house.   It has some problems leaking (a lot)  when it rains and the showers don´t work so we use buckets, and the power likes to go out at times.  It makes life interesting to say the least.  But is super cool here.  We got here last Sunday at night and Monday we got to move into our new house.  Spent a good 3 hours getting it up to code  and then relaxed and did the normal p day things.  Spent an hour and a half that night trying to find the house of the bishop and managed to find it on the way back.  But it all wored out!  The rest of the week was pretty busy.  Tuesday until Thursday was working in our area and trying to find all the old investigators, get to know the members and everything.  It went really well, we are finding people to teach and it was awesome.  Friday we got to travel to Manaus by bus, which only takes 2 hours for the annual Mission christmas conference.  It was a lot of fun to be able to see all the other missionaries and celebrate Christmas with them.  We had a talent show as well when we there and our district did an arrangement of Angels we Have Heard on High.  It went really well.  The rest of the show was really good as well, lots of theatre and skits which were really funny.  Pretty cool.  Fun experience trying to catch the bus to get back home.  We got to Bus Station at 10:55 for the bus that was scheduled to leave at 11pm and tried to see if the bus we still there.  The ticket salesmen said that it wasn´t, but we managed to go back and found out the bus we in fact still there so we caught the bus and managed to get home. Saturday night was the baptism of Milena.  She is the daughter of a recent convert who still hadn´t been baptised.  We helped get the baptism organized and it was super cool!  Pretty awsome night.  Sunday was meeting with the Ward Mission Leader and the Ward Council.  This next week will be pretty fun!

  Hope that everything is going great at home.  I wish I could have some of the chocolates!  Merry Christmas for everybody and I miss you all!

Love

Elder Battraw