9 February 2015

Thats cool that Stake conference was this week!  Here Stake Conference was just a broadcast from Salt Lake, it had Elder Cook talk in it!  Speaking of the temple, when is it scheduled to be comleted? Have there been any releases about the temple or anything yet? Hopefully I´ll be able to be home in time for the open house and dedication! Never say where you don´t want to go!   I remember before my mission saying that I didn´t want to go to Provo Boise or South America and here we are.  But I love my mission!  Its awesome here!  Thanks for the blog, its quite true for missionaries! I liked it! Everybody here tells us of how cold it is there back in the states.  They mainly talk about New York and how its covered in snow, but we have heard how cold its back there.  Here its just about the opposite.  Super hot and raining!

  This week was fun! Monday we traveled to Manaus after lunch and got there about 2:00pm!  Got to spend the rest of pday there in Manaus!  We mostly just walked the streets and used the lanhouse there.  For dinner it got interesting.  We were all hungry so we walked into a pizza parlor and there they told us that a pizza gigante (giant pizza) was only 15 reais.   We all looked at each other and said, I think that I could eat that.  So us 4 we all ordered our own gigantic pizza and that was dinner.  It was funny because the waiter came up and asked yes what we wanted and one of the ZLs said he wanted a gigantic and the waiter started to leave but he called him back and said, Wait, they´re going to want some too!  it was super good and all 4 of us managed to finish it!  That night we slept in the coldest a/c that I´ve been in the mission.  Elder Sanderson and I were in hammocks b/c they didn´t have enough mattress so we froze to death that night!  The next day was the zone training! It talked a lot about the importance of marking baptismal dates with your investigators to help them progress and other missionaries techniques! It was super good!  Got back here later that day super tired, but we managed to teach a little bit.  We´ve been teaching a 19 year old whose name is Genelson and he is super cool.  We´ve been teach him a lot this past week and he is progressing a lot! He has a desire to serve a mission as well.  We  found out this week that his cousin is a member of the church and that she left for a mission as well this week! Super cool discovery. He is always offering to help us out with dinner or anything like that. Just cool.  This week was just packed with appointments so we spent a lot of time running from place to place trying to teach everybody.  Its going great!  Saturday was Elder Sandersons 21st birthday so some of the members made him lasagna and cake.  It would have been even better if they had told us about it!  They had mentioned it last Sunday but hadn´t said anything to us about it so we didn´t know if it was going to happen!  Well, 8:00pm they called us and asked us Elders Where are you!  We went over there and had made lasagna and cake for Elder Sanderson! It was all super good! Sunday was the baptism of Lucas!  His Uncle from another ward was the person who baptized him! It was super spiritual! Really cool! Its been a pretty good week! Elder Cook from the Quorum of the 12 Apostles will be out here in Manaus to give a training for the mission on the 24th. Everyone is super excited for it!

  Thanks for the letters! Have a great week! I miss you all!

Elder Battraw