Nov 5

Report for this week:
So things are going better. My companion and I are having a lot of fun! Thank you for all your advice. I really do need to tough up and be submissive. God is giving me this time to use to learn patience and humility. What a blessing! I really do have so much to improve. I never knew how severely lacking I was in relation to Christ-like attributes til I came on a mission! What a blessing!
We are being blessed greatly. We had a miracle baptism this week. We visited a recent convert and ended up teaching the first lesson to her sister too. We never even knew about this sister til we went there. She was baptized this Sunday! It was so amazing to see how the Lord had been preparing her way before we got there. She stopped drinking 4 months ago and so was perfectly ready to accept everything! It was awesome! Now we are teaching her friend who came to her baptism. She lives ridiculously far away in the wilderness, but it´s worth it! We are going to set her baptism tomorrow and hopefully baptize her this Sunday! This truly is the Lord´s work. I´m so grateful to be a part of it! I love working with families and helping them find eternal happiness through the gospel. There are a lot of members in our ward that are the only ones in their family. So, we have the great privilege to start working with them and try to baptize them! This is what the Lord wants---eternal families!
I got my haircut today. It´s so nice to not have hair on my neck! My hair had grown out a lot in 2 months! I totally thought of Nat—once you go short, you´ll never go back! Haha! I´m still planning on growing it out once I get home to have long hair for my wedding though.
So…Mom and Dad and Em are going to pick me up, right? And can Dad me-desobrigar? Because, I´m planning on staying with yáll in Sao Paulo before going back to the States so it´ll be a while before I would see the stake pres. Is that allowed, Dad?
When I get home, I´m going to need some tooth work again. It is so frustrating to always have graying, uneven teeth. Oh well, at least I don´t have to look at myself during the day, right? Just pray for the poor people of Brazil—they´re the ones that have to see my nasty gray teeth! One of the elders at the CTM asked if my front teeth were fake because they were gray! Aww.
So, that´s pretty cool Spencer gets to have devotionals with apostles. Apparently Elder Scott did a devotional at the CTM too, but I was already in the field.
Another thing that´s kinda sad here is that the ward is not very united. Most of the members don´t like the bishop and harbor bad feelings against him. It´s so sad! It breaks my heart to see these things happening in the church! We´re doing our best to fortify the members and unify them. We got the list from the secretary—there are 600+ members with 450 less active! Wooeee! We have our work cut out for us! We are going to put together a noite familiar calendar today for each neighborhood. That way the members aren´t traveling long distances to be together during the week.
For Mick—I´m going to vote BRAZIL!!!!
Thank you so much for all your emails etc. I love you all very much! I was cracking up laughing reading some of yall[s advice!! Thanks
Love, Rae
Sister Ellis III
P.S. What does CM stand for in Spencer´s emails?