Among the Gaúchos: Talking in Church and Singing at Funerals

THE ARMOR OF GOD (see Ephesians 6:11-18):
At the Sister's house where we ate lunch, she had this awesome sword- so of course we took pictures.
I thought the boys would like that!

9/15/14

I hope you all have had a good week back home! On Sunday I gave my first talk here in the ward. I spoke of the importance of faith, hope, and charity in missionary work. That if we exercise faith we will see miracles. I used the example of when Elder Gois and I went out in the rain and even though trying to proselytize in the rain has failed so many times before we showed our faith and were able to teach a great lesson. And in Preach My Gospel it says that hope is a certainty that the Lord will fulfill the promises that he has made to us and I spoke of the promises He has made us about missionary work in D&C 11:21 and 18:16. and I used Pres. Monson´s talk about love from General Conference to show how when we share the gospel we demonstrate our love for the Lord and for others. It went pretty well I thought.

Also, Elder Gois and I are the official unofficial pianist and conductor for our ward now. Elder Gois has been trained on how to find the hymns in the piano and press play while I conduct and so that's kind of fun. Also On Sunday our Bishop´s mother passed away so this morning (Monday) I and the other elders attended the funeral service. I sang "O Meu Pai" (Oh My Father) as a special musical number and conducted the music. And it was a bit torturous at the grave site because here in Brasil all of the tombs are above ground and the plot they had was surrounded by other tombs and so they had to take out a wall of their tomb and shimmy the coffin into place walking all over the other tombs and stuff, a bit difficult to keep the respect that way, haha.

This past Friday made 1 month that I've been here in Cruz Alta pretty crazy and this Friday now we will find out if anyone is getting transferred. I don't expect Elder Gois or I will be leaving here any time soon.

Have a great week! and a special 8th Birthday shout out to Calvin! Yea!! I love you so much! and have an awesome baptism on Saturday! Also hugs for all the family who will be visiting and who are back home.

And don't worry Cal, we ate cake for your birthday here too, haha!
(another sister in the ward made us cake, but we ate most of it before I took the pic)

Ate mais! (until more)

Elder Pierce