Perspective

Me and a monkey.

Hey! How's it going!?

Things down here are going pretty well, we had a pretty good week.  We started off the week doing an activity in the church, we gave a spiritual lesson on the atonement and our ward mission leader had some games for everyone to play, which got pretty heated.  People can get pretty competitive over musical chairs and Pictionary.  The activity went over well and everyone had a good time.  We in turn, were able to bring some non members to the church in a not so frightening unchurchy way, which they seemed to like quite a bit.

We had a leadership meeting this week with everyone in Alagoas and I got to see a lot of people, including Elder Rutledge!!!  This meeting was pretty awesome!  We talked a lot about how we can help our districts and zones become better and how to add inspiration into our leadership.  President spoke a lot about perspective and how our perspective matters which got me thinking about how much of a positive perspective Mormon doctrine really is.  Some people think Adam and Eve kind of condemned us all by eating the fruit of the tree, when we have the perspective that they did so that we could be here and have joy.  Some people don't know why they have trials or are quick to curse/forget God, when we have the perspective that our trials are for our benefit and that we can overcome them through the love of Christ and that we can learn in grown by way of them.  I just thought about how optimistic the gospel is and how much our Father wants us to be happy in this life.  Just an interesting thought I had.  President then talked about the growth of the church here and a bunch of new areas that are going to open up for missionary work soon.  He talked about some wards dividing and branches becoming wards, which got me really excited for the work.

We also had a baptism this week, we had it for the cousin of a member and it was awesome.  The spirit was so strong there and everyone was really excited.  We even had his cousin baptize him, which was really special.

Getting ready for the baptism.

Anyways this week was pretty good and nothing too crazy has happened.  Thanks for everything and I know you guys will be gone, but I hope I receive an email from you guys this upcoming week, if not I will probably cry a lot and just be a mess walking down the streets for the next week. You’ve been warned.

-Élder Johnson

Pizza makes me happy.