Elder Joseph Sant: Week 53

Hey everyone! Tudo bem!?

This week I passed my one year mark on the mission! 🥳 I can't believe how fast the time has flown! I have learned so much and I am so grateful for the many experiences I have had! I am looking forward to my next year in Brasil!

To celebrate my year mark one of the members made me an awesome cake! Also there was a sister who was finishing her mission, so it was really for both of us, and it was sooo good! And then there was a kid getting baptized that night so we got to go witness a baptism and afterwards the father picked me to assist in the confirmation blessing afterwards! I was pretty touched by that. And afterwards we left and it was late and we had to walk an elder home who was doing online MTC and is leaving to Curitiba next week. But one of us elders (may or may not have been me) forget the keys to the church in their pocket and so we had to rush back to the church and then back to drop off the other elder and then back to our apartment. And miraculously we were only 5 minutes late to our apartment.

Also, this week we found a whole vunch of children to teach! They started going to church with their friend who is a member, and then the mom was like "wait, if they are consistently going to church they should get baptized" and she gave us a call and now we are teaching all 10 kids. Not all are old enough to be baptized and we still need permission from a few parents but this weekend 3 of them will get baptized along with their friend who is the child of a member! 🥳 and I just have to say it is a blast teaching 10 super hyper kids all at once! I had them and the family convinced I was Brasilian until about 20 minutes in, then they all were like "nahhh, for sure he is not Brasilian."

This upcoming week is transfers and Friday we got a call from president. He was checking up on us and then he said we will stay todether this next transfer because we are working well together. And then Saturday we stopped by a birthday party to say hi and eat some cake. And president sent out the transfer pic. And my companion noticed that his companion was another american. And we looked to find where I was, and found out I will be going to Santarém! It is a city in the middle of the amazon rain forest! (Remember the conference talk by elder Soares where he talked about the two rivers that combine but their waters remain different colors? I think that is near Santarém.) And I will be training a new Elder there, whooo. But luckily he has already been there for a few weeks, so were chillin. Wednesday morning I will catch a plane to fly out there(because to take a boat there is like 3 days and president is impatient haha)! Also President usually keeps people out there for 6+ months so I probably won't be going back to Belém or another city until December or maybe later. This also means I will miss the baptism of the children which I am pretty sad about! Also, my current companion, Elder Sant'Anna, bless his heart, will be getting another american who has never been here.

That is about all for this week, and now pictures!