"Seu Novo Companheiro é... Élder Novinho"

Mornin' all,

How are you doing!?!

Just wanted to send you all a quick update to let you all know that I'm still alive and made it here in Itapecuru-Mirim do Maranhão!

It was kind of a crazy week getting here, so I'll give yall a brief summary of how we managed to get down here.

On Monday, I went from my area in Teresina to the mission office bright and early with all of my bags, said goodbye to Élder Hurst and Élder Oliveira, and participated in the leadership council meeting for the Zone Leaders. There I discovered that I would be coming here to Itapecuru and would be both trained by Élder Cesar (he was companions with my old comp Élder de Souza when they worked in the office) and we would both be training a new missionary. 

On Tuesday, we picked up the first of these missionaries. His name is Élder Martinez and he is from Veracruz, Mexico. He had been serving in Mexico on a reassignment and had just gotten his visa to be able to come here to Teresina. He is now the only Mexican in the entire mission and I am now helping him learn Portuguese (yep, you read that right). Thank you Mr. Weber for the high school Spanish classes in high school, because I'm really now using everything I had learned in them. I might be leaving this transfer speaking 3 languages! 

On Wednesday, due to ridiculous flight delays in New York City that ended up making his travel time 3 days, Elder Cesar's companion - Élder Packer - arrived. He is a SoCal native that had to do MTC on the computer because of visa complications and is now giving me deja vu from when I had just arrived here in Brazil. Those are some tough few weeks, but the guy's taking it like a champ. Oh yeah, one more thing; I told Élder, 

"He's probably going to turn out to be Boyd K. Packer's [a past apostle in the Church] great-grandson."

He got here and while we were chatting he said his dad's side of the family was all members of the church. I asked if he had any relation to Boyd K. to which he said, 

"Yeah, he's my great grandpa."

He said he spent a lot of time with his great grandparents and that there house literally looks and feels like the temple. 

So I guess that basically means I'm a prophet now, predicting the future, haha. 

Here the work is just getting started. This area opened a couple of months before the pandemic but took a huge hit due to it. Our new responsibility is to get the Church of Christ back on its feet and re-established here in the city. Not at all a small task, but with faith, prayer, fasting, and hard hard work we'll get there. 

Oh yeah, and here's a picture of the group over in Tutóia. My recent converts Raimundo Nonato and Daniel are firme in the church, were interviewed by President Lindsey when he visited there, and were both found worthy to receive the Melquisedeque Priesthood!!! They are literally going to be some of the first leaders of the church in that city!