Week 38 April 4, 2007

Mom,

That’s awesome that you guys went to St George. That’s so cool that Sabrina and Jim are moving closer to Bountiful. That will be great to be able to hang out with them a lot more. I remember helping them move to St. George. That was a lot of fun for me to be able to talk with Jim on the way there and Grandpa Shaw, Anne and her husband.

You’ll also have to tell Grandma McShinsky hi for me too when she comes. How long will she be staying?

Well this week was pretty crazy. I decided to send you all one big letter since so much stuff happened so here it goes.
Family,

On Friday we had Zone Conference. It usually is here but we had it in Rosario (an hour and a half’s bus ride away). It was different this time. President Mack and Sister Mack each gave a message and then we all divided. There were six rooms- one for each of the assistants, zone leaders and Sister and President Mack. They each gave a little training on something and then we would switch rooms after a while. It was a lot of fun and we didn’t have to sit on hard wooden benches for 5 hours. I didn’t get the package yet so I’ll probably get it on Tuesday during the transfer. I talked to Sister Mack and she said that the church won’t pay for any dental stuff which kind of sucks but she said just to call her and everything will be fine. I’ll let you know how that goes next week. To get to the Conference and back we rented a van that seats 15 people. It was a lot of fun and we got to watch Legacy. On the way back though we left the LZ´s in Rosario because they needed to do divisions there or something. When we arrived in Alegrete an hour and a half later I realized that I gave one of the LZ’s my keys to open one of his packages and I completely forgot about it. We ended up staying and Elder Branco and Elder Arave’s house for the night.

The next day was General Conference. We bought a whole bunch of food- stuff for sandwiches and cookies and Coke...lots of coke. We were told that the americans would have our own room to watch so we were pretty excited. We arrived at the Stake Center and the stake president started setting up our TV and realized that he didn’t have the right cable. We were all pretty upset especially since we had bought all that food. Conference was just about to start and we decided that we’d all go buy the cable. (We really wanted to hear the prophets voice not the translator). We went to some nearby stores and no one understood what type of cable we needed. Also, most of the stores here in Brazil close at 12:00 and don’t open again until 2:00- everyone just takes a big lunch break I guess. We finally found a store that was open and had the cable and we ran back to conference to plug it in and watch. We missed some of the talks but it was worth it to hear the voices of the apostles and prophet. During the intermission, however Elder Bahia (Companion of Elder Williams) just left. He went with one of the members and left. He is almost as dead as my companion and was daring enough to just leave even when the LZ’s were there and the Stake Presidency. When we found out we went and told the LZ’s and they talked to the Stake President and called President Mack. It was a really big mess. The LZ’s went out and looked for him and finally found him. He got in a lot of trouble and almost got sent home. Because of that we missed the first half of the second Sunday too. We did get to see the prophet rededicate the Tabernacle though. It was quite an experience to be here in Brazil and watch pictures of Temple Square and tell everyone that I live there. We went home and got ready for the next day’s conference.

Luckily the next day we didn’t have any problems. We were able to watch both conferences and enjoy a nice Sunday. Sandra wasn’t able to go to conference unfortunately. She’s been really hard to reach lately with her work. Hopefully this week will be better.

My companion this week was pretty hard to deal with. This is his last p-day today so next week I’ll have a new companion but most likely the same area. Monday was a hard day. I didn’t want to deal with my comp not wanting to work so I just basically dragged him everywhere for the day. We’d go from house to house trying to teach and didn’t have much luck. At the end of the day we went and talked to Irmã Rosa. I talked to her for a little bit and had a great discussion with her. She gave me a lot of advice about marriage and stuff. We sat outside and she put on some techno music as we drank chimarrão (I’ve never met anyone that likes techno more than she does). It felt really good to talk to her and relax).

Last night we had a Churrasco for Elder Martins at a member’s house. I’ll send you a picture. There was a lot of people and we had a lot of fun. Today all the missionaries here are going to have a party too. I don’t know if it will be a churrasco or not but its food so I’m sure I’ll like it.

This week was pretty busy but through it all I can’t tell you how happy I was to see conference. Just listening to the talks and feeling the spirit made everything good. I hope that you all have a great week and try to work on something that we learned at conference. Talk to you all later! Tchau!

I hope that you had a great trip in St. George. You’ll have to tell me how it went. Thanks for your love and support Mom. It really has been a huge help to me on my mission.

I love you infinity!!!
Elder Fowler