Letter 2/27/12

Well I know I kind of left of off with few details last week....I really didn't know very much at the time. My new area here is Abreu e Lima....I think I'm to the north of Recife a little bit, about 30 minutes. My new companion is Elder Bochio. Boy have we been getting along good. He served in Caruauru, where I just came from, as his first area. I had heard a lot about him from the members there....they all loved him....they talked about him all the time and what a fantastic missionary he was. When I found out I would be Zone Leader with him, I was plenty excited. He is 25....a bit older (actually more like a grandpa in the missionary world), and has been on his mission for about a year and 7 months. I assume that I am being trained to take over this zone one day, but he goes home in July. Like I said last week, Paulista is the biggest zone on the mission. We have 18 missionaries in our zone. It was fun getting to call all of them and get to know everyone...there's a lot of personality here in our zone....We have Elder Markham (who was with me in the MTC as my district leader), who is currently training Elder Baloni, Elder Mussoi and Elder Norberto, Elder Pentico (from Huracan, Utah) and Elder Xavier, Elder L. Ribeiro and Elder Sciles, Elder Larsen (from Utah as well) and Elder Lemos, Elder Souza who is training Elder Moat (hey one more from Utah!), Elder Celestino and Elder Bowden (Washington)......I think I might be missing a couple.....like I said, 18 missionaries is quite a bit....

Well as a Zone Leader our responsibilities are rather interesting. We are more or less the "authorities" within our zone....if someone in our zone has a question or wants permission to do something, they call to us, and we have the final say. My comp was telling me of a few times when missionaries called Pres Lanius with a question or asking permission to do something, and he told them to call to their zone leaders...kinda cool huh? We go once a month to the mission headquarters to have a Zone Leader Council.....we do companionship exchanges once a week with the District Leaders here (there's 4 districts in our zone). We prepare materials and trainings for zone meetings (different than a zone conference, Pres Lanius does all the zone conferences). There's tons of other stuff that we do too....it's kind of hit me all at once....I do feel a bit overwhelmed by everything.....I feel that I've been very blessed with getting a grip on the language (truthfully, I'm having difficulties speaking english now....I tried welcoming that new American Elder.....I think he would have understood better in Portuguese), but I still feel that I can't always get my point across as eloquently or as tactfully as I would like to at times. All part of the struggles I guess huh?

Well more about the work here....Like I said, Elder Bochio (like Bokyo) is a stud....he is the best missionary I have seen or heard of on my mission....I told him that too. He gets real with people when he's teaching....he's seriously a baptist....He loves people in the baptismal font. I've learned a ton from him in just a week. It's interesting....all my other companions were more or less inexperienced and didn't know a ton of people within the mission....Bochio knows EVERYONE. He knows everything about them too....good things and bad things....He's pretty quick to tell me about some of the negative sides of his previous companions (one of which is the Assistant to the president).....it's interesting to know, because you would never suspect some of those things without actually knowing the person, but at the same time, it makes me wonder what he is going to say about me with other missionaries. He did tell me that he was planning on asking Pres Lanius for a transfer after this transfer, but that after spending a little bit of time together, he said he now wants to stay one more transfer with me. That was kind of cool for me. He told me that some of the missionaries here have "fear" of being my companion, because they know I will put them to work....darn right! We are getting along super well like I said....he's teaching me to cook too! Added bonus for sure. I think we are going to do some amazing things here together...I've never been so excited about a companionship like this!

I told you how we have been cooking!

We spent almost all day Friday preparing for an activity for the ward.....we did human chess, similar like in Harry Potter. All the pieces were people who were dressed up. It was a lot of work, and Elder Bochio was a bit stressed out at the end of the day, but we had a great time. My word was it fun. I'll try and attach some pictures. It was Elder Bochio and I that were directing the pieces.....my chess lessons way back in 4th grade payed off (thanks Mr. Black!, for any of you who went to Mohr, you will most definitely remember him and the chess club).

After I won our giant chess game! 

How we take showers when the water in the pipes goes out

Well I do have (as usual) a ton to talk about....I am having trouble sifting through my daily events, to just put into my journal....it's a lot harder condensing a weeks worth of happenings in a single email.....Life is good as a missionary....whether I'm being trained as a junior companion in a difficult area or a leader in a great area (I'm in the latter right now!), I am learning every day how I can put a little bit more trust in the Lord. I heard a quote this week, that I liked a lot....

"Pray as if everything depends on the Lord. Work as if everything depends on you."

A mission is a unlike any other thing in the world! It is so good. I am having such a positive impact here, both on my own life and the lives of others, that I literally go to bed every night smiling....it is a wonderful thing being a tool in the hands of the master.

Until next time,

Elder McKinley