4-8-08

Subject: New Companion!

Hello Everybody!

We had transfers today. Sunday morning we found out that Elder Tavares would be trasfered, and that I would receive a new companion here in Mauá. I was pretty sad knowing that I would lose Elder Tavares as a companion. The saddest thing however is that Elder Tavares for some reason decided that it was a perfect opportunity to quit his mission.
Even though we´ve been having a lot of success lately, Elder Tavares had lost the excitement of missionary work. His bags were all packed ready to leave to his new area, when all of a sudden without any indication he snuck away with another missionary that is from the same city.
My District Leader and I were up all night in a frantic worry looking for him and talking by phone with President Teixeira and our Zone Leaders. I don´t remember sleeping last night. President Teixeira right now is still in the United States since General Conference. He was sustained as part of the first quorum of the seventy on Saturday. President called the home of Elder Tavares last night to see if he had gotten there (which by that time he hadn´t). Now knowing that their son was missing, his parents somehow got our number and wouldn´t stop calling us all night. We got word this morning that he arrived in his house, which is about 2 hours away.
It was a pretty sad surprise. Anyway, I´m still here in Mauá. I got my new companion today. His name is Elder Risenmay from Seatle, Washington. He arrived to the mission 3 months after I did, so now the people in this area have to deal with two green Americans with really heavy accents. Elder Risenmay is a lot like me. He brought a Rubik´s cube and is majoring in Electrical Engineering (which is really close to Computer Engineering). I´m 12 days older than he is. Maybe we´ll both be together during our birthdays.
I met some missionaries that arrived here today from the MTC. A couple of them were Elder Jason Aaron Allred´s roommates in the MTC.

Good news! William was finally baptized. His baptism occured between the two sessions of General Conference on Sunday. This Sunday, he´ll be confirmed.

Yesterday, Evelyn created another plan to stop smoking. I´m praying that she follows this plan. Her goal is to be prepared to be baptized on the 20th of April. We also have Lucas, Sandro, Jenaína, and Milaine preparing to be baptized on this day. Gilvano and family (wife and 4 kids) have accepted baptism. We marked the date 6 weeks from now, because we have to wait for them to get married.

Conference was amazing. I hope all the members here in Brazil and the rest of the world heard what Elder Bednar said about missionary work.

Have fun everybody and Choose the Right!
--
Elder Allred