eMail of July 30, 2012

Hello Family,

My companions name is Elder Impa. I forgot to tell you his name last time. It's been going great. We have some possibilities for baptism next week as well. The weather is hot during the day and a little cool at night. Our zone leader (Elder Balieiro) is in our same ward. He started a program called the heaven chain that integrates members with investigators and recent converts using family home evenings with a different member every night. I think it will be great. Elder Balieiro really knows a lot about missionary work.

This week we got to go to Primavera do Leste. They are going to open a branch there and we went to visit the families and knock doors to see how receptive they are. Just knocking a couple streets we found lots of non-members who had already been to church in other places, but were never baptized because they move to the city which doesn't have a branch yet. One went to church near New York City. Another old lady we found went to church a lot in Portugal. She wants to become a member of the church. Already read most of the Book of Mormon. It was a great experience.

I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Elder Skiles

eMail of July 23, 2012

Hello Everyone! I´m staying in Rondonópolis 1st, and my companion is Argentine, not chilean. Hes really cool. When I can, I´ll send a picture of us to you all. Everyone laughs at his name because in português it means even, like even and odd. Also, people give him a hard time because the Corinthians (a brizillian team), beat Bocajunior (an Argentine team), in soccer. Its funny. Hes really great. I´m liking working with him a lot. He´s really shy with people he doesn´t know. Reminds me a lot of me at the beginning of the mission. He speaks great portugues already which is good. He can already do contacts and teach the lessons well. This week was rough because none of our investigators came to church, but we will have a lot of success this transfer for sure. We are switching houses today, because the other one doesn´t fit four missionaries. Anyway. Glad to hear everythings going well. I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Elder Marc Skiles

eMail of July 16, 2012

Hey everyone, Elder Underwood was talking about bugs huh... The bugs aren´t too bad. Really all you have to do is keep the house clean and they leave. Here in Brazil, its really unmanly to clean the house and do laundry or dishes. Thats girls work. I´m just thankful Ive had practice already at home. This week was great! My last week with Elder Lira. This is sad because we got along super well. This transfer went by really fast. So I´ve been transfered to the Second Branch of Rondonópolis. Same city... different branch. Rondonópolis was a district, but it became a Zone this transfer. I´ll be "opening" the area because my companion is a new greeny coming in. Elder Impa. I´m sure it will be difficult, but Heavenly Father knows what He's doing I guess. Aparently my companion is Chilean. I wonder how good his portuguese is. It should be alright since he speaks spanish. I´m really excited. I´ll go up to Cuiabá tomorrow for a training meeting and I´ll meet him there. The Mission President told me in the interview that I´m heading into the best part of my mission. I´m loving serving a mission. It has its difficult parts for sure, but its really a blast. This was one of the best transfer´s I´ve had yet. I will send a picture of my last District. We were all really great friends. All but one of them will stay here in Rondonópolis for this next transfer. I´m glad to hear things are busy. I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Elder Marc Skiles

eMail of July 9, 2012

Hey Family, This week was great. We had another baptism. The brother of a recent convert. This week the member with the pick up couldn´t make it so we had 3 members with small cars go to pick up the recent converts and investigators. One of the cars (a normal 5 seater) came back with 12 people in it! My companion rode in the trunk of the car. I wasn´t there though. I only saw them arrive at the church. I think the District President wants to buy the bus again. There were 24 total people this time from the neiborhood we are working in. 7 investigators. The rest are recent converts and such. We are going to Cuiabá today to be interviewed by the new president and have Zone Conference. Thats why i´m sending my email so early today. I´m pretty excited for it. We should get back late at night on teusday. I´ll get the mail as well. Anyway. We have to get ready to go though so... I love you all. See yah in a couple years! Elder Marc Skiles

eMail of July 2, 2012

Hello Everyone! Happy 4th of july! Hope you all are having a great summer so far. Things are going fantastically here. We had 2 more baptisms this week. One was a friend of the family we baptised a few weeks ago. The other was a cousin of the other family we baptised a couple weeks ago. The first family we baptised recived home teachers this sunday. That was great to see. I really hope that they get visits from them. We switched mission presidents. Now its President Reber. President Oliveira went back to Recife. The new Mission President is American. Everyone is afraid he will ban Coca-Cola. hahaha. For me I don´t mind either way. I only drink it when the members give it for lunch anyway. The picture I´m sending to you all is us bringing everyone to church in the back of a pickup. Most of them live a long way from the church and don´t have money to take the bus so we have to organize a ride. It was a lot of fun. The others were lucky and got a ride in a Carola from another member. haha. Anyway. I love you all. Glad summer break started for you all. See yah in a couple years. Elder Marc Skiles