So it has been just over 2 years since I got back from my mission in Fortaleza, Brasil. I Didn't think about doing an anniversary post until this past Saturday. In the first session of General Conference, President Monson announced 5 new temples. One of them will be in Fortaleza. I am SUPER excited for this and immediately told Mar that we need to start saving so that we can go to the dedication.
From the start of my mission until the end, we were baptizing like crazy and trying to help the members understand that they were close to getting a temple, but a few more stakes needed to be created. My mission president worked with all the stake presidents in the city to have them re-align their boundaries to create new stakes, and also kept telling us that it will only work if we are baptizing. The goal for the mission was to have every companionship have at least one baptism a week.
Well, everything finally played out perfectly on Saturday when President Monson announced the temple there. In the two years that I served, there were 4 or 5 new stakes created (I would look it up, but a lot of my mission stuff is at my mom's) and many more wards and branches as well. It was so much fun to see the church grow so quickly and to see so many people decide to change their lives for the better. Now it is great to see that the same people will get to have the blessings of a temple instead of traveling 12 hours by bus and taking a week off work.
We decided to celebrate this announcement on Sunday. A few weeks ago Mar and I bought a rotisserie for a grill. We bought it thinking that we can grill up some pineapple (this was one of my favorites on my mission). Sunday seemed like the perfect day to celebrate so Les hooked it up to his grill and we all enjoyed delicious grilled pineapple.
Enjoy some random mission pics!!!
My first area had a replica of the statue in Rio
The first baptism I preformed
I never did learn how to climb a coconut tree
This burn was while I stood by a pay phone on mother's day and my companion was talking with his family (it took less than an hour to get this bad)
This area met in a house with a pool. They didn't clean the pool since there had not been a baptism in a few months. Needless to say, we found people that needed baptized and were the only ones willing to tackle the job
We climbed to the top of a mountain on p-day
It is tradition to burned a stuffed replica of Judas on Easter weekend
Fortaleza is right on the coast
I got transferred into an area that had 8 baptisms scheduled that first week (lucky me!!)
1 comments:
I think that Brody is planning on going with you...
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