Carving Pumpkins

Hello Family and Friends,

All went well with the baptisms of Marcilene and Cleiciane. There were quite a few people in attendance, which was nice to see the support of the ward. Right now, we are focusing on 2 more people who have baptismal dates marked in the near future (within the next two weeks). Maria José will be baptized on the 8th and, if all goes well, Hamayana (the street contact) will be baptized on the 15th of November. As for those who have potential after I leave, there will be the wedding and baptism of Wellington and Erika in January as well as several other possibilities for December.

Halloween was pretty cool. For the first time in a while, we were able to carve pumpkins and attend a member's (Suzanna Leite) little Halloween party. It's still a far cry from a good, old Halloween party back home, but it was cool nonetheless considering Halloween generally doesn't get celebrated in Brazil.

The weather here is starting to change to what they call "winter." In other words, essentially it rains a little bit more than average, which may require the need to carry an umbrella or rain jacket.

Something that has made the whole Financial Secretary experience a bit more interesting lately is the fact that we have to switch over to a new payment system called iMOS. As a result, this past week we spent 4 hours watching training videos, which as you can imagine were extremely interesting. Despite the fact that Missão Brasil Manaus gained more territory and missionaries not long ago, making it one of the largest missions in the world, the mission is shrinking in numbers. Every transfer, approximately 16 people go home and we only receive about 8 to replace them. Unfortunately, that means areas are being shut down and that's generally not a good thing for the new members in the area.

I still don't have the slightest clue where I'm going to be headed after the office, but my work here in Flores is nearly done. The area has grown tremendously and is now one of the highest baptizing areas in the West Zone!!!!

That's all I have for this week. Everyone else has been kind of sick so they're dragging and nothing too terribly exciting has happened. The training continues to go well.

Abraço,
Elder Taylor Mackay