Hump day!

Well I made a year on the 11th. Sooo wierd. It´s really strange to think that I am over half way done all ready. But I´m more excited than ever to be here on the mission. Things are going great.

We ere walking on Saturday down a street that I always walk on. And then I saw this big beautfiul bird trying to bite my face (the bird in the picture attached). It´s a pretty big bird if you didn´t notice. Good thing it barely missed getting me. But we took advantage of the moment and asked the owner if we could take some pictures. I thought it was pretty cool. This kind of bird is called an Arara. It´s really pretty.

Happy Father´s Day!!! Yesterday was father´s day here in Brazil. It was like any other Brazilian holiday, BBQs and everyone drunk without any desire to hear a message about the gospel. What a great way to selebrate being a dad, huh? Leave your family to get drunk at a bar with your buds, wonderful!

We are helping a less active lady get back to activity in the Church. She became very heavily involved with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. She was very addicted to Crack. When Elder Chaves was still with me, we took her to Church and helped her make some important decisions. But when França got here we had a hard time getting a hold of her again. Last week we finally found her at home again> I expected to have little hope of her overcoming her addictions. But to our surpise she has completely stopped using crack for two weeks and has reduced the amount of alcohol and cigarettes too. She told us her biggest source of help is the Book of Mormon. That sure made me feel good. Then she went to Church by herself yesterday. I was really happy about that. We are having a realy tough time getting our investigators to progress and go to Church but we are having some good success with less actives.

I´m really kind of TO´d right now (said like Kip from Napolean Dinamite). We are having a lot of difficulty witht he area here. The members are a little discouraged and it sure makes the work harder. But I´m not blaming the difficulties on the members. We also as a companioship have things to work on as well. Missionary work is exactly that, WORK. It´s tough, but I love it. I hope I can make the best of my second year here on the mission. I sure hope it goes better than the first.

I love you all and you have a great week.

Elder McLelland