1/3!!

Well Everyone, today is the 11th of April. Which means I have been exactly 8 months on the mission. Can you believe that I'm already 1/3 of the way done? I can't believe how much time has already passed. Elder Hepworth hit his one year mark last week. Today we are gonna party it up. Not really, we're just gonna browse around the street vendors in the Centro of the city. But it's amazing how fast the time goes. I wish I could start my two years over again right now with the experience I have now. I wish I could get the time not understanding Portuguese back. I also wish I could get back the wasted time that unfortunately happened in past transfers. But oh well, I just need to work as hard as I can for the time I have left.

Last week the President of the mission made some changes in the way we work. He always set weekly goals for us to work toward as companionships. He has changed it now to a daily standard. It's to fix the unfortunate trend of working hard one day, or for one week and using the next day or week as a rest week. Now that we have to report on our work everyday we are working a lot more efficiently. It's amazing to see how just the President making us this promise has increased our oppurtunities to teach. We are in a really tough area right now and it's been waring down on us. But this last week was a lot better. We taught a lot more people, even though we still didn't get any investigators to church. We haven't been able to get anyone to Church yet this transfer. It's a very difficult area. Everyone promises to go but Sunday morning ``something创 happens and they don't go. But it's improving, every week we are getting a little closer.

Yesterday we went out to make a couple of visits and got caught in the middle of a gnarly hail(hale?) storm. The hail was about the size of a nickel. The storm came out of no where and only lasted about 5 minutes. But it took down some trees and powerlines. And all the Brazilians were out playing in the hail afterwards like it was snow. It was kind of funny. I took a video of the storm so soon you will all be able to see it.

Not much else is new. just plugging along like usual. I'm still super excited for this transfer with Hepworth. We are working together really well. But I have a feeling we won't stay together becasue next transfer we will be getting 18 new missionaries! We finaly are getting more than are leaving. So I have a feeling we will be split up to accomodate. Probably one of us will train (I hope it's Hepworth....I'm not ready for that yet). I guess that's about it. Until next week folks!

Elder McLelland