Transferred from Brazil!

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, I know I sure did! The members here were too kind to us! And talking with the family was great. It sure made my Christmas great! An hour seemed to fly by, and I feel like there was so much more I wanted to talk about with you all and ask you, but I was glad for the time we had.

Well I'll start with the biggest news. The dreaded transfer call came last night, and I am officially leaving Brazil. :'( It's crazy how fast time flies. It feels like just yesterday Elder Easter and I were driving into town saying, "Where in the world are we???" and then 4 1/2 months later after lots of adventures with Elder Easter and Elder Wallace, I'm leaving. The hardest thing to leave is all of the people I've grown to love. I will miss the members so much, but I hope I can always stay in touch with them. With so few active members in our area, it made us grow really close to them. I'll also miss a lot of the people we've been teaching. I'm leaving at such a huge time in the area. Brenda is getting married on Saturday, and we'll have at least 2 baptisms this month here hopefully. I just hope I don't get transferred up to Michigan or something so I can still come back for the baptisms. I'll also miss Elder Wallace. The last 3 months flew, but we have become really good friends.

In my next area, President has called me to be a District Leader, so just a little bit more responsibility. I feel like every transfer gets a little more challenging, but I'm okay with it. It kind of weirds me out how much I've grown and changed even in the last 6 months. I'm sure in my next area there will be many more adventures though, and I look forward to it.

This week was an exciting one. Obviously Christmas was this week, and that was a blast like I said. Thanks so much to everyone for the packages and cards. They meant a lot. Sorry I couldn't send anything back, I wish I could have! But Christmas crept up on me fast, and I don't have a lot of time..........or money. Anyway, thanks again. I am very grateful for all of the support I receive.

Yesterday, was a good Sunday to go out on. We had 5 investigators at church! Woooooohoooo! My whole first transfer with Elder Easter, we were always struggling just to get one. It's been really fun to watch the area grow and progress. Yesterday, Brenda came with her fiance, Gary. Brenda's daughter came and two grandchildren; Lizzie who's 16 and Frank Jr. who's 7. On top of that, Dave Aukerman was at church. He's the husband of one of the members in the ward, and two of his step-sons are on missions. One of his step-sons was skyping him lessons, but his step-son now handed him off to us. All of our investigators had a good experience at church; it was a pretty spiritual church meeting. Last night, we went to the Aukermans' for dinner. Afterwards we watched Finding Faith in Christ with them and had a pretty good lesson. We were a little bold with Dave, especially because it was very possibly one of my last lessons with him. We asked him about baptism and he said that he's praying about a date. He's a really religious guy, he just has a concern with why he needs to be baptized again with the proper authority. I've really come to love that family as well, they are so good to us! He said he'd get in touch with me somehow when he finally makes the decision to be baptized. That made me excited.

Well, it's been a good run here in Brazil, Indiana. I hope I don't lose touch with a lot of these people. I hope to visit here again someday. But, I also look forward to the things to come. I'll let you know next where I get transferred and my address.

Thanks for everything, and I love all of you! Happy New Year!!!!!

-Elder Tom Hill