This Week

So,

This week.  Conference was awesome.  I watched like 2 sessions, and downloaded the rest to listen to in my house today and in the future.  We watched it in our new church building which is awesome.  I will try to send a picture.

Also, I attached a picture of me and Elder de Pina.

So this week we went to São vicente for two days which shafted them, we have tomorrow, then we are going back on wednesday andthursday, so that is two more days shafted.  Distance is a big problem here and it doesn´t help anything.  I had to do a baptisimal interview the other day too through skype, but the other end didn´t have a mic, so I just held the very very quiet phone to my ear for 35 mins through the interview which was painful.

We have zone conference this week and then transfers at the end of the week.  We´ll see what happens.

So when I can´t focus super hard on conference and they speak really fast I don´t understand everything, and there were lots of distractions because our branch is made up of a bunch of people that get distracted easily, so it´s good that we have conference magazines.  It was great to see some of my friends in the choir though.  Haha.  

I love the talk about how we can choose to be grateful.  The power to be grateful is in us.  Like faith and charity, gratitude requires action.  It is impossible to be grateful just inside ourselves.  (okay, maybe just really really hard)

So one thing I learned important this week is the power of our callings, and the power of service.  We did a training the other day on doing service to gain the confidence of the members.  Here, all the members are recent converts, so they all trust the missionaries on doctrinal issuses and everything even though they shouldn´t come to us, and when they do we redirect them to the branch president, but there is also another kind of trust that comes with giving the gospel to friends and stuff.  Sweet.

Also, so Elder Sanchez showed up here with 2 pairs of pants left, because all his others are broken, then one broke, and the other is really close, so we went and bought a new pair that I hemed for him (I hate sowing.  Patience...) and then sister oliveira sent hime 2 more, but those were accidently left in Sao Vicente, so we will pick those up soon.  haha.  Pants.

So, for this week, I would invite all of you to read Alma 34.  It is fantastic.  Repentance= Forsaking Sin.

Love,

Elder Sampson