April 10 | Blessings

Two new horse friends this week

This week was a great one! I think we walked more this week than any other week during my mission since all of our compromissos were super far away from everything. Wild. We got to know the area a little better though so that’s a plus. We were also able to help prepare N for his baptism this Sunday which is so awesome! Really happy for him.

On Tuesday we went to the chapel at night to welcome home Guilherme who just returned from the Fortaleza mission in the Northeast here. He is Irmã Marta´s son. We’d been hearing lots about him every week so it was cool to meet him! We ate salgados (which are like little stuffed dough balls with chicken and sausage and cheese and things) which are so good. They are quite tasty so I was happy haha. Elder Rodrigues got a little homesick though since he goes home on Thursday. His birthday is Wednesday so he´ll have it in the misson field still.

Yesterday we visited some families so Elder Rodrigues could say goodbye. We ate lunch with the Galherdi family, and the returned missionary from Buenos Aires that I had previously met was there. He was in the same zone as Elder Cook! Lucas Galhardi, who also returned from his misson recently was there; his birthday is also Wednesday, so we commemorated both birthdays, and then we went to visit André and Miriã and their two sons. They also made a cake, so we ate more! We had a family home evening there and talked together about 1 Nephi which was really great. Then we went to Marcia and Evandro´s and ate more salgados. Ha. We ate a lot yesterday, and tonight we have another family home evening! Woot! It’s all so good; so many good people and so many blessings.

This week I was thinking a lot about the purpose of our mortality and why we came to earth. We know that we chose to come to earth and that we have the opportunity to walk by faith to learn how to choose—to choose the right and serve and repent when we need to. I liked Elder Ballard’s remarks in conference that we are to return to God and receive eternal life—and that’s it exactly!—eternal life is our goal. It’s ok to have faith and trust that we will receive eternal life. Knowing our goal makes our vision clearer and our decisions along the way easier to make. Thank goodness for the gospel plan.

This week we will have Zone Conference on Friday, N’s baptismal interview, Elder Rodrigues will go home, and we will keep on working.  Keep praying for us and twill be swell! 

Have a great week!

Elder Hughes

Elders Clawson, Hughes, Rodrigues