Olá!

Hello beloved família!

Ah, Darrell, thank you for that fun question! Personally I think all versions are correct. I choose Book of Mormons because that is the title or appelation of this book of scripture. If we pluralize the Bible, we´d say we handed out BibleS. Book of MormonS. Anyways, that´s just my take on it, and it is certainly fun to discuss. But I will follow Dad´s take and follow the examples of the leaders of the Church - copies of the Book of Mormon!

That´s cool Rachel that you know both of those Elders. I pass along yet another message from my trainer, that hopefully you may pass on to his friends, that Elder Prince requests that they write him back asap, and Elder Winegar should not get trunky.

I was shocked to hear the news about Nolan, but I am glad he is on the right track with the antibiotics. I will pray for him!

Well the work is going great in Seixal. Since last Wednesday I´ve had two days when I could definitely see the hand of God in His work. President Terry has given us a kind of goal/outline to have 20/20 vision - meaning talk to 20 people a day and teach 20 lessons a week, so roughly 3 lessons a day. Last Friday we had a 17 year old member from Brasil (Minas Gerais) go with us for a scheduled lesson and to contact and knock. Our investigator wasn´t at home at the time, so we went to the park and ended up helping a Ukrainian lady carry her groceries home. Then we came back to the apartment of the investigator and he still wasn´t home, so we decided to knock in his apartment building. Then right before we were going to leave, our investigator walked in! So we were able to give him the lesson we had prepared on the importance of the Book of Mormon. Also what was really good about that was that the Brasilian kid wasn´t sure he wanted to go on a mission, so hopefully that was a good experience enough to help persuade him to go in two years. Then our second scheduled appointment fell through, so I thought we might not be able to get our goal of 3 lessons in that day. But while we were knocking we ran into a man who we had met the previous day but had forgot to mark his address - so we were able to write down his correct address AND get all three lessons in!

Yesterday was even a greater testimony of the Lord watching over His work. A lot of our investigators have said they were busy, so we only had two scheduled lessons, and both of them fell through. But we needed to talk to a member about helping us out with our play for the ward Christmas Party this Saturday, so we ended up going to his house to explain the gist of the play and ended up giving him a lesson. Then after that we went to this one spot to knock and within one hour we were let in to two homes, taught two lessons, and found 6 new investigators! God is great, and he has blessed us with much success, and He has helped us in doing His work! I love being a missionary!!

So yeah, those were the highlights of the week. Saturday was my first zone conference, and Elder Causé of the First Quorum of the Seventy did some workshops with us on planning and finding with the Spirit. Monday was my first zone meeting, where the zone leaders reemphasized a lot of that. Great stuff!

Well I love all of you! Thanks so much for your news and support. Again, my prayers are really with Nolan. Best of luck to all of you!

--Elder Ellis V~
CM&SBF

ps - I didn´t have time last week to explain why Elder Shenefelt wasn´t supposed to be my companion at the MTC in the first place. My originally assigned companion was Elder Reque, who didn´t come until after the first week was already done, and he left for Cabo Verde two weeks after he arrived because he already spoke Portuguese (his parents are both Brasilian). So I formed a triple with Elder Shenefelt and Elder Johnson for less than two days, because Elder Johnson had to leave the MTC because of family problems, unfortunately. So that´s why it was just me and Elder Shenefelt for most of our MTC stay. tchau!