Hey, how's it going?

I got my camera back this last week just in time to take this picture!  Baptisms. The little one on the left is Endleson and the other shorter one next to me is Joemerson. The other kid in the picture is their uncle.  We baptized Joemerson and Endleson on Saturday.  It was a good baptism I worked really hard to set everything up, organize everything but no one ended up showing up.  Well, there were a few people but that ended up being unimportant.  We started anyway and people ended up trickling in.  I gave a talk after the baptisms.  I had an object lesson inspired by you, Mom, remember the one about the Holy Ghost where you have a mouse trap and a candy bar one at each end of the table and then have someone whispering promptings to the person blindfolded while everyone else is making noise or trying to misslead the blindfolded person.  Yeah, that turned out really well.  I could only find rat traps or rat poison so I decided to make do with two different candybars one of significantly greater value.  It was pretty fun and I'm pretty sure they will remember the lesson.  

This week was really weak in all other respects.  We had training an hour bus ride away Tuesday through Friday so we had to get up at 5:30 each morning to catch the 6:30 bus to Vila dos Cabanos (about one our away by bus).  I think that the training was good, but a lot.  We had to drop a lot of our appointments because we didn't get back to Abaetetuba until 2 most days.  I got pretty upset with this.  I think some of our investigators suffered because we didn't follow through.  It makes me angry when our leaders don't tell us in advance that we have these sorts of things.  We lose a lot of confidence with our investigators.  They told us about the meetings a day before and we had already made plans.

I also have a story.  So first off we walk a street frequently and about a week ago I saw a man with a baby sitting in front of his house, smiled and greeted him in passing and I felt like I should contact him and make a visit later but I didn´t because we were pressed for time. This happened again and after that I resolved to talk to him the next time I saw him.  This past week I made the contact and set up an appointment.  We arrived to teach the next day.  We gave the first lesson and I taught the restoration and about how Joseph Smith had the first vision and all that went great and I invited them to be baptized.  They didn't accept baptism but said that they would pray about it, OK.  Then I looked over to my comp to switch off, to talk about the preparation.  I guess he was sleeping and he ended up inviting them to be baptized again.  It destroyed the lesson and I don't know if we have a chance with them again. 

So, that's my story.  Sorry I am out of time.

Love you all, and remember to stay awake during lessons.

Love,
Ben