May 6, 2014

Hey Paps,

Well just to let you know, I am not sure what time I will be skyping. I will try to do it later on. What time is church for you guys? I am really excited to be able to talk to all of you and I just can’t wait. 

We will be getting our comps a week from today. We are both super excited for the work to go forward. We have witnessed the lord truly accelerating his work here in so many ways. We have eleven ward missionaries and we gave our first training meeting this last Sunday night. It was spectacular and I am so excited to see the results of this here. 

Kaique and Andreya live about thirty minutes away by car. Much closer than when I was out in the boonies. They were still going to go visit me if I was still out there though. It was so great to be able to see them all. It was a wonderful time. 

Well this last Sunday we confirmed Carol and Gabriel and it was great. However, their father went a little sour again and didn’t come to church this time. The mother and the rest of the family is strong though. It was a little disanimating to see that he didn’t show up but we will get him. 

It was also fast Sunday, and it was terrific. I usually don’t bear my testimony on fast Sunday because I feel like I have so many opportunities to bear it and to let it grow during the week. I like to leave the opportunities for the members to share because there is usually a big line of people waiting to bear their testimonies here. But I woke up that morning and I knew I had to bear my testimony. The spirit prepared me from the morning. It felt so good to stand and share my love for the Savior and to testify of his work. It was such a great meeting. The young men in the ward that are going on exchanges with us, surprised us and they went and shared their testimonies and it seemed like all of the RMs and everyone went up and shared their testimonies about missionary work. We are so blessed to live in such an exciting time to see the Hand of God pushing his work forward. I am so excited to get our comps and to see this place grow and divide this ward. Pretty soon this place will be just like the good ol' 3200 west with four chapels on the same little road. 

Dad, I just want to thank you and mom for the package. There is nothing that I cherish more than the letters that I got about grandpa. I don’t want to write too much because I will cry and everyone will look at me here at the internet cafe. But thank you so much. The best thing anyone has ever given me. I love you so much and I am praying so much for your health. I hope you have a nice week taking care of the house and playing with the crazy wire-eating dog. 

Elder Paynter 

Mumsy,

I got the package. Thank you so much for it! So wonderful and I am so excited to eat some Chinese foooooooood! I will be staying in the same place, so will Batista, they will just pack our tiny little house full of stuff for four missionaries and it will be really fun. They will get in the mission in a week. Batista is great. I love the kid and he is the only comp I have had for more than two transfers. 

The world cup will start in June, and goes for a month. And yeah basically Brasil will shut down. It’s been more than fifty years since the world cup has been here and it will be pretty nuts. President is waiting for authorization from the area presidency to let us watch the games but yeah, basically our work is going to be super tough during this time. It will be pretty cool though. 

Unfortunately we don’t have many limes here, mango season is done too and it was a super dry season too so lots of the fruit production wasn’t the greatest. We did play monkey a few p days back and climbed up an avocado tree to grab some. We had to go pretty high because all of the easy ones to grab are always gone. It was fun. The avocados here are massive and we make a shake out of them with milk and sugar. It’s delicious but avocado has a lot of fat so we go with calm. Ha-ha. 

I would love that whole beam some cookies to me thing! Ha-ha get on the invention ok? 

Well mumsy, I gave the weekly update to dad. We have been running around so much this past week. I don’t even feel like we stayed in our area, just doing a bunch of divisions and helping out some other missionaries. But that’s the fun of it all right? 

I love you mom. I hope you have a wonderful week! I can’t wait to see you next Sunday on Skype!

Sunsy