Hello Beloved Family!!

Once again, another week has come and gone! Thanks to everyone for your emails, pictures, love, prayers, and support! Uncle Kelly - I'll be using this email address until late September or October of 2010.

Sorry about last week's email having that random insertion of Mother's Day call. That was meant to be a little memo to self but I forgot to erase it before sending out the letter. Anyways, life is great here in Caldas! Some very cool things that have happened since last week's newsletter! Last Wednesday night we visited the Nunes family, they've been inactive since Joao (the husband) was released from being branch president. But we've been able to have nice visits with them, and before sharing whatever lesson or thought we have, we've helped Elizabete (the wife) with getting more acquainted with her new Windows Vista laptop. She really wants to know how to use it well so she can use the marvelous tool of email to communicate quickly and cheaply with her children who are all out of the house and around the world! Everyone knows I'm not the best when it comes to computer stuff, but I am glad I can at least help her out a bit. After the visit with them we went with the Parkers to an ex-investigator who lives a little bit out of town, and we had a great visit with him too! Thursday we had interviews with President Terry, which went well. After interviews Elder Flint and I took a bus to a spot in Rio Maior, and tried to pass by someone we ran into the week before who used to be taught by the Elders before Rio Maior was closed down and made part of Santarem's area. We walked a LOT (free exercise!) and finally found his house, but he unfortunately wasn't home. Then we had another long, long walk to the next bus station and made our way back to Caldas. Friday we helped out at Joaquim's soup kitchen, like we do every week, but afterwards we also helped our branch president move, which was fun in itself! He and his wife are now living much closer to the chapel and also in the same building as our investigators Fabio and Andreia! Fun stuff! Sunday was really cool - on our way to another lesson with the Nunes family a young man whistled at us to get out attention. He said he had two friends who live in Peniche (another town in our area) who wanted to come to church; one is a member from Germany and another is her Brazilian friend who is interested and wants to come also. I love being a missionary!! Monday and Tuesday we worked on burning the Book of Mormon (in Portuguese) onto some CDs for two of our investigators who can't read. One of them, Celio, just moved back to Brazil (Minas Gerais) with his brother and sister in law. The other, Clemente, is marked to be baptized on June 6th!

Well that's all the news from Portugal, for now. I love ya'll and am praying for you! Tchau!
-- Elder Ellis V
CM SBF FDP S&H