Merry Christmas from Brazil!

Hello everyone! I added some more people who I thought my like to hear from me to my weekly emails, so if any of you get sick of these showing up in your inbox each week, just let me know.

First of all, Merry Christmas! Second of all, I just want to say it is seriously a miracle that I'm even able to email right now. The Brazil library's computers are terrible and we were worried we'd have to take an hour out of our day to drive to the Haute and back (because of Christmas, our P-day is only 3 hours, so that would've cut into proselyting time.) I know that Heavenly Father really does answer prayers of faith, not only in things spiritual, but temporal as well.

Just in case the computers act up, I need to get the most important thing squared away. This is to my parents: I will be able to skype on Wednesday, so let's plan on about 10 am your time? Let me know if that doesn't work. What I'll probably end up doing is give you a call really fast right before I skype so you know when it will happen. Just try to keep your morning open. It might be earlier or later than that a little, but we'll plan on that. If anyone's on right now, let me know really fast if another time works better.

Well now I guess I'll talk about this week. It's been a great week! The time flew by, it's crazy how fast the days go by now. I don't like it. We had some good lessons with Brenda, Barbara and Ashley. They want us to come every day! Every time we go there, Brenda ends up giving us something because she's so nice and trying to clean out her trailer. Here's what she's given us while we've been here: 5 bibles, 4 pictures, 7 pounds of Jolly Ranchers, two candles, 6 books, 2 dinners that were packed with food, and I'm probably missing some things. Haha it's almost a joke how much she gives us. Elder Wallace and Elder Smith, our zone leader (they were on exchanges) reviewed the baptismal interview questions with her, and she knew just about anything. They got a pretty enthusiastic no to question number 5, for anyone who knows what the 5th question is. It fact, she said HECK NO! Actually she didn't even say that.... haha she's a character. We also had a lesson with Barbara where she told us that we have helped her change a ton. We didn't even realize how much she has changed. She used to party a bunch and even do some drugs. She said right before she met us she had thought about going back into doing those things, but she had been praying that God would help her not go back into her old ways, and then she met us through her mom. She kept telling us how grateful she was for us, and that she decided to listen to us. She said she's talked to missionaries before and slammed the door in their faces before. But now she's finally opened up. It just shows you that you have to never give up on people, you never know when their hearts will be softened. Barbara and Brenda came to church yesterday and had a good experience. We had a good Christmas program that we sang in (our ward choir is the funnest to sing in. We have Brother Garber as our choir director, and that always makes it entertaining.) And then Elder Wallace and I taught a Christmas lesson in Gospel Principles that turned out pretty spiritual.

We had another investigator come to church yesterday, named Michael. I'm not sure if I've talked about him before. We met him while walking a few weeks ago. He was in prison about a year ago, but he's working at piecing his life back together. He has a really good heart. He doesn't have hardly anything. He lives in a tiny house without any furniture. He doesn't have very much clothing either. Luckily some of our members were getting rid of some old clothes and we could give those two him. But he's working REALLY hard to get his life pieced back together. He had a great time yesterday as well and the members were really good to him. He gave some great insights in Gospel Principles which is what made the lesson so spiritual. He said when he first met us on the street he was startled when we asked if he had a minute to talk, but when we started to talking about the gospel it was like a "breath of fresh air". He loved church and we're meeting with him again today.

Well, there's so much more I wanted to talk about, but these computers are from the stone age.... Luckily I won't be skyping on them, we'll do that at the Paullus' home. Just so I can get at least a little bit sent off, I'll send this one and maybe try to send a little more afterwards. But if I don't, I'll probably tell you more when I skype you. This has been a great week. I hope I can send more in another email.

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas and I love all of you!!!!!

-Elder Hill

PART II

Hello again everyone! I have a few more minutes, and the computers are doing a little bit better. Here's a forwarded picture from Colton Twitchell, AKA Elder Twitchell who I saw at a mission conference on Thursday. Haha I look goofy in it. But anyway, it was a good conference with the whole mission, it was just super long.

Two more things I wanted to talk about in my email. On Saturday, we helped one of our recent converts with a project he's working on. He's trying to fix an old house that should've been torn down. It's a nightmare..... It goes against everything Rob taught me last year. But I'm glad I could use some of the things I learned last year to help someone out. The moral of the story: Don't buy a condemned house, especially without going to look at it.

Sunday night was a huge night in the mission, specifically in Terre Haute. Bishop Newton's mom got baptized! Missionaries have been teaching her for 37 years and she finally decided to make the jump! I guess she needed sister missionaries in Terre Haute to teach her, because that's what made the change! It was huge, there were hundreds of people at the baptism. President Cleveland even came. Anyway, it was quite the experience.

Talk to you later, and I love you all tons!!!!

-Elder Hill