Feb. 6, 2012

Dear Mom,

Well, this week has been very weird, fun, and sad. First the lady we are teaching is going to be baptized on Saturday. She hasn’t smoked for one full week yesterday. So that’s good. I’m so happy for her. But other than that, it has been good. I’m feeling really more confident with the language. I just need a bigger vocab. Well I have officially lost 70 pounds on my mission. I weigh 240 now and I look like I brought my dad’s clothes on my mission. It is kind of funny and ridiculous at the same time haha. I have a firm testimony now that missionaries need money only for travel and bathroom stuff. Going without money for 2 weeks is showing me how much I don’t need to spend money.

Well we had a good meeting with our Branch mission leader last night we are going to get him to call some counselors and ward missionaries so we can really have a lot of missionary work going on inside the branch that isn’t just us. Its good we are having an integration night this week too. Which is really good because we are doing a new program. I don’t know if it’s just in Brazil or there too, or if it’s just our mission or maybe just this stake, I don’t know, but it’s called 5 5 5 where you receive 5 names from the elders quorum, 5 from the high priests, and 5 names from the relief society of inactive families. Not part active, but completely inactive, and we are going to work with these families and we are going to try to get them to come back to church. This is why integration night is important, it’s a place they can go where they’re surrounded by people from the church having fun in the church and it’s not church. And a thing called 1 minute missionary where we the missionaries prepare like a little package of stuff like a dvd of the church and a Book of Mormon or stuff like that and give it to a family to share with a family before the next Sunday. Then they get up and bear their testimony about the experience. I think it will be good. I think that it will get us a lot of more people to teach and to baptize.

Well so we go to the lady who is getting baptized this week to interview her. She is 69 years old. But she is just an elect person. The branch loves her, she loves church. So that’s good. We are loving it here right now. I’m loving my comp. We are working hard together. We are trying to make the branch a ward. Well that’s about it for this week. Love you guys. Till next week I will have pictures of our house and baptism for you.

Elder Pellegrini