Missionary e-mail on revelation 7-25-08

Hey everyone!

It was great to hear from you all this week. Things have been pretty calm around here. I managed to get everything done in the office and all caught up in my work. I got a new computer with 2 gigs of ram with makes things a lot easier and faster.

Ulisses is doing great! We told him last Saturday that if he drank coffee again he wouldn't be able to be baptized this week. He didn't know that and told us right away he would stop. And he did. It was really rough the first few days with headaches and fever and stuff but once it all passed, he felt great and hasn't had any coffee since! He is super excited for his baptism tomorrow and so are we.

There's another man that has been going to church a lot but isn't married with his wife. She has been travelling and they haven't had the chance to talk about marriage yet. She got back this week and we got to teach her. She sounds interested in the gospel too and wants to go to church this week. They talked about marriage and are planning it already. Hopefully I will get to see them married and baptized before I go!

I had an interesting story this week on revelation. Like I said last week, President Hoggan told me to pray about someone that could take my place here in the staff. I went into his office this week while he was travelling with a list of names I had thought of. After looking at his board with the pictures of all the missionaries and praying about it, I came out with a totally different person in mind that I had been thinking of. I knew without a doubt who it should be. It wasn't who I WANTED it to be but it was the answer I got. On Monday, I was telling the assistents about my answer. Right then, President Hoggan came in and without me even telling him about who I had thought of, he came up to me and said that he wanted me to stay another 6 weeks here in the staff. The elder that would take my place (the same elder I had thought of) wasn't ready yet and would be ready to come in after another transfer. I thought it was amazing that of over 100 elders who could take my place, me and President Hoggan came up with the same name without consulting with each other. It just goes to show that the Lord really is leading this work and he does answer prayers. That means that I already know who will take my place here but he wont be coming in for another 2 months. I'll spend about a month out in the field (probably close by to not waste a lot of money traveling) before going home. It doesn't seem like much time but I hope it is enough to get a lot of work done.

Well, I went to that place last week, Mangal das Garcas. It was awesome! I got to hold some butterflies, pet a flamingo, take some pictures from the top of Belem's only lighthouse, and a bunch of other cool stuff. If you want to see what it's like, go on google earth and fly over to Belem then type in something like "mangal" or "mangal das garcas" and it should bring you to a place with a ton of pictures. It's a big tourist place so there's a lot of great pics.

Love you all tons. Have a fantastic week!!

Love,
Elder Childs