Elder Joshua Rebollo in Mozambique

Week 29--12/02/13 From T3

Obrigado, Familia!

Eu sempre fico feliz quando recebo suas mensagens. I'm glad you guys had a good Thanksgiving! I can't believe that it is December already! November went by super-fast! This transfer is also flying by. There is only 2 weeks until the next transfer! And later this month, we'll get to talk over Skype. I don't know if it will be on Christmas day or Christmas Eve, or what time it would be. I don't know any of the details yet, but I will tell you as soon as I know. Jacob, I'm glad that you are doing well at piano and you are practicing. I know I have told you this before, but I'll say it again: Please keep up with playing piano! You will not regret it, especially if you go on your mission to a place like Mozambique, where very few people know music. I'm learning piano here on the mission, but I wish I could have started before. But it's been nice to use my musical ability on the mission, so I don't forget stuff.

There will be a Christmas program later this month where all the missionaries will sing and President and Sister Kretly will be narrating a story. It will be presented for all the members and the public that may want to attend. We will all get together next week to practice the program. I heard from the Hobsons that they are trying to find a cello so that I could play in the program too, but so far they have not found one. We'll see what happens with that.

This week was pretty good and went by incredibly fast. Monday was a good p-day. We went shopping after internet then went home and cleaned up a little. Then we just relaxed at home until we started working again (on p-days we go out proselyting at 1800h). Tuesday had divisions. So I walked with Elder Herd, one of the new missionaries. He is from Wyoming. It was nice to walk in a different area that day. He still doesn't speak Portuguese very well, so I was doing most of the talking, but it was cool. I feel like I'm continuing to improve with the language every week. Maybe when we talk over Skype, I will talk a little in Portuguese, and you can talk a little in Spanish. ha-ha, I bet we would both understand each other. Wednesday and Thursday were 'normal' days of contacting and teaching. We have an investigator couple, Alfredo and Laura, who are progressing really nicely. We taught them about the law of chastity this week and how they have to get married in order to be baptized, and they accepted. They also have been coming to church for 2 weeks in a row now. They really have the desire to be baptized. Hopefully as we start working on their documents for marriage, we won't run into too many complications. We are still working hard to find other families that have potential. Thursday passed by like a normal day, even though back home it was Thanksgiving. It rained a lot that day. It rained like nonstop all day. And it was cold too, at one point; I actually saw my breath, which was super weird! It made contacting almost impossible. But it was still a good day. As we were walking, we saw a couple guys pushing their car that had run out of gas. We stopped and helped them push the car back to their house. It was a nice workout, but it was even nicer to be able to do the service. Others were inside, hiding from the rain, we were like the only people walking around, so we stopped to help. After, as we were walking back, a lady stopped us and asked us what church we were from. We told her and invited her to church. It was a lesson to me that a huge part of missionary work is the things that you do, not what you teach. Each member can preach the gospel without even having to talk about the church. Just taking the time out to help someone, even if it's inconvenient, goes a long way. People are watching us and know that we represent our church. The rest of the week was rainy. On Saturday,
we were in a lesson and an amazing! Lightning storm started. There was soooo much lightning and thunder! The lightning was so bright that it was almost like daytime for a split second; It was pretty close to where we were. As we were walking back, it started to rain. And we were about a 30 minute walk away from home. We got back completely soaked haha. But we were thankful that we got back safely. Church yesterday was good too. Me and Elder Bender helped out in the primary since the women called to work in the primary weren't there. So we helped sister Hobson with the children. It was kind of fun, but also a little bit of a hassle.

Anyway, I think that's about it for this week. I'm glad you guys are doing well! I hope you guys have a nice week.

Love you!!

Elder Rebollo