Oi from Pouso Alegre!!

Oi Familia!
Tudo Bem?!

How´s the week been going for everybody! So I just want you all to
know that this week has been amazing. I love Pouso Alegre, I love the
branch, I love the area, I love the new companion (Elder González) and
I´m loving life. It´s honestly been a week filled with miracles.

I got to my area later tuesday night. Pouso Alegre is a 4 hour bus
ride from Campinas. Me and Elder González opened up a second area in
the city, so now the branch has 4 missionaries, which is kind of fun.
Once again, I´m the only American in house. My companion is from
Chili and has 5 months on the mission, and the other two Elder´s are
from Brazil. Elder González is great! He´s a hard worker, loves the
people, and works for the right reasons. He´s not driven by numbers,
and not trying to force people into baptism, but really feels a love
for the people and a desire to help them invite others unto Christ.
At first I was kind of nervous opening up an area with him. Both of
us are still learning Portuguese, both of us are relatively new to
Brazil, but so far it´s been great.

So like I said, a couple of miracles have already happened. We found
an awesome guy named Marcelo who has been looking to speak for
missionaries forever. This guy is brilliant, and I mean brilliant.
He studied at Cambridge in England, speaks English, Spanish, German
and Greek! Yeah, GREEK! Crazy. Anyways, he was born and raised 7th
day adventist, and even studied to be Padre (or priest) in the Church
for a while, but it just didn´t feel right. When he was studying in
Cambridge, someone referred him to mormon.org, and he studied about
the Church there, found a Book of Mormon in a library and started
reading it, and has been hunting down missionaries for a while.
Somehow he got a hold of the number of the other Elders in the city,
and gave them a call, who referred him to us. We taught him, he loved
it. We invited him to baptism, he accepted. He read and studied the
Book of Mormon we left him, and told us he really felt something
different while he was reading. He is all set and ready to be
baptized this Sunday. The only thing holding him back is talking to
his family. He´s in his late 20s, but living with his parents right
now, so isn´t sure what he´s going to tell them or his girlfriend, but
he knows it´s true, and has been waiting for this his whole life. I´m
so glad he has finally ended his search for truth.

So the other miracle is Heloisa. Saturday night we were looking for a
house, but weren´t sure where the street was. I saw this lady walking
down the street, and went to go ask her, but before I even said
anything, she yelled out in English, `Are you lost?` Turns out she
had also lived in England for 7 years, spoke nearly fluent English,
and had investigated the Church for four months while living there.
We talked for about 20 minutes, and she expressed to me that she felt
there was some divine intervention in our meeting. I invited her to
Church with us, and she came and really liked it. After sacrament
meeting I was talking to her and she told me `The people here are
really great, but they don´t know why I´m here` and then I asked her
`So why are you here?` and she said `I´m here to find answers.` I
promised her she would find all her answers here and told her to write
down all her questions and we have an appointment on tomorrow which
I´m really excited for.

And then I met one other guy in our area the other Elders had been
teaching who was works online programming with some members in
Gilbert, Arizona. They referred him to the Church and I´m excited to
start teaching him to. All in all a really good week!

Well I hope you all have a great week and I´ll let you all know how
things turn out!

Love,

Evan