Well, to explain the title, we have had yet another temporary campanin with us for the last couple of days. Elder Montero from Bolivia. He just got here on the mission last Friday and he stayed with us for a few days until his official companion and area are decided. I was the senior companion of three missionaries with less than a month´s time! But it´s been super fun. he leaves us tomorrow. And it looks as if Elder Anderson will also leave us tomorrow. I´m bummed to be losing them. It´s been so much fun with all of us together. Elder Montero is absolutely hilarious. It´s funny to listen to his ``Portunhol´´, a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. He has helped me remember a lot of the Spanish I had learned. He also gave me a Book of Mormon in Spanish and it´s amazing that I can understand almost everything because of Portuguese and the little bit of Spanish I learned in high school. He also taught me all the words to ``La Cucaracha´´. I´m really sad that he´s leaving tomorrow. It´s constant laughs with him around.
This weekend was fantastic. I got to shake the hands of Elder Ballard and Elder Andersen, and several Seventies: Elder Jay E. Jensen, Elder Claudio R. M. Costa and Elder Jairo Mazzagardi. We had a special training with all five of them on Saturday morning and it was marvelous. The part I liked most was Elder Andersen talking about the difference between testimony and conversion. He told us about how easy is it for Brazilians to gain a testimony of the gospel and decide to be baptized, but the biggest challenge of Brazil is helping them have a true conversion. A conversion goes beyond just believing it to be true but truly changing your heart and dedicating yourself to the Lord. And Ballard´s theme was ``you have to be really good´´. He told us that we are going to be convincing catholics that were born catholics and are catholics but don´t even know why they are catholics but plan on dying catholics that they need the restored gospel. It´s a big challenge so we ``have to be really good´´, right from the very first moment with the person. As soon as they open the door they need to feel a difference. I really enjoyed the training. Sunday was also amazing because Elder Ballard and Elder Costa did a special stake conference in the stake I am in. It was such a marvelous spiritual experience. It almost didn´t feel real that I was in the same sacrament room as Elder Ballard.
The week has been great. Our work was rather stressful. Our investigators don´t want to progress much so we need to clean up the teaching pool and start over with new investigators. But there are still several that are progressing. I love this area. I´m really going to miss Elder Anderson and Elder Montero. I hope you all have a great week!
Elder McLelland
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