Elder Akina's Mission in Brazil: Week #52 Hump Day

Haaazit,

This week was super sweet! Yesterday was a holiday so we had to work, hope you weren't too worried! Thank you for all the pictures! I cracked up so hard when I saw Bishop with the Guarana bottle - - lol that is literally like water here! We drink that eeeeveryday, every lunch, Bishop can testify to that.

I got the letters from the youth in the youth conference packet, thank you for sending them!! I received Aunty Debby's package - - the Teddy Grahams were soooo good! I literally forgot how good those are - shout out to Johnny and Aunty Debby. I got the Hump Day box!! Ha ha I loved it! the ties are sweet! I have been using the Missionary post it notes you sent. This one family loved them - - I put it on their fridge, and they got it after we left - - they loved it. I got the card reader too and the flash drive with the Mormon Messages, which I will start to use. Thank you for all the mail!! I love getting mail from you guys.
We had our Multi-Zona this past week and the Assistants did a training on the Atonement and how it relates to missionary work. They were using the projector in the Sacrament meeting room. They got to this slide that talked about our families and how we were super blessed by the gospel in our families. Then this video started to play with like music in the background, it was pictures of all the baptisms of our missionaries! It had like the picture of the baptism with like the persons name underneath and they passed one by one. I had 3 pictures: 1 with Carlie and I in white - - Carlie had a lei on, I was smiling super big! The other one was me and dad in the font and one more, I think it was our family all together. It was super cool - - everyone was crying! Then they said, "Everyone in this room has been baptized, everyone has felt the blessing of the gospel in their family, now it's your turn to give this (and he like pointed to all the pictures) to other families who are waiting for this." Super spiritual. Elder Saunders found me after the meeting to tell me my mom was cool!

Oh - - we had a baptism this week - - super good experience! Her name is Adrielle, she's 21 and super funny - - she reminds me a lot of Carlie. It was amazing to see how much progress she made. We had a man in our ward baptize her that is close to her family. We taught her in his house too - - so we felt it best to have him baptize her. The baptism was Sunday morning, pretty early too, like 7:30 a.m., but way more people showed up then we were expecting so that was cool. We will baptize again this week, a 36 year old man named $#%@*&, who has come a looong way too. He has a smoking problem and has gotten down to 1 a day, this past week he went 4 days without smoking! His baptism will be on Saturday. We passed by his house last night, I gave him a blessing that he could stop, permanently. Super excited for him. Super good week.

Thank you for all the mail, I love you all, Tchau. Elder Akina