12/24/12 Email from Vitória

Tomorrow we will be talking over Skype I will be using the computer in the church to Skype you guys.  I was thinking about calling tomorrow about 4:00 or 4:30 pm here which would be about 10:00 in the morning for you guys.

I am in a new area that I have not been before, I am now in the Capital of the State of Espirito Santo which is Vitória.  My area is huge and it is just me and my companion here in the ward.  Our new area is the center of the mission and the mission office is in my area which is pretty cool.   If I want to I can pass by there and pick up things or grab material for teaching. We hope to make a difference here, we both have a vision that this ward can grow. I have gotten to know a lot of the members from this Ward and a few from the neighboring Ward, Marauipe.

I am getting a long with my new companion pretty well, his name is Elder Stelzer, he is from São Paulo.  We are trying to think of ways that we can work more with the members, we are trying to find ways to the ward members excited about missionary work.  We have an idea that we are working on, we are going to do a missionary fireside this next Sunday and we will be having a competition with the ward members with prizes for helping with the missionary work.




View of Vitoria outside our window

So the first day in the area was an interesting one, people were coming up to us and just giving us their addresses and that was pretty cool.  We found a family of 11 people this week and we are working with them and, hopefully, will be baptized before the end of the transfer.  We also did a service project for one of the city representatives that we met where we helped her deliver presents to kids in the city who don't have much.  That ended up being more of being a security guard of the toys as the kids were really excited.  We also helped with a party for the Primary kids and my companion was Santa Claus, that was pretty funny.

All is going well here, me and my companion are really excited for the work. We are going to turn Vitoria into the area with most of the baptisims this year.  I have opened all of the Christmas presents, I reallly like the 2 shirts and the air guitar!  I have pretty much eaten all of the food already.  Oh, I also really liked the books.  See you tomorrow!  Miss you!

Elder McBarron