Monday, January 31st 2011

Oí Família!

Well everyone, I have officially found the place here in Brazil where I will retire and live for the rest of my oldness. We received a reference from a member of our ward who lives in the farthest place of our area. The town is called Agua Azul (Blue Water). I had heard that this place was pretty and just jungle! We got on the bus that just kept going and going... and going... and going, and when we reached the end of one town, the sign "Agua Azul" finally appeared on the trail and we kept going some more. We passed GIANT mansions with huge yards and soccer fields, a beautiful lake that had so many people fishing! It reminded me of Grandpa Clark and Grandpa Stevens :) It is a quiet place with absoutely NO pollution and just tranquility. The reference was all right. Not the most receptive people, but it was still a good experience and really nice to see the beauty of this place.

Last week was quite a record breaker for me. I bought a set of hair clippers to try to teach myself to cut my own hair because I was wasting precious money on haircuts when I could be using it to eat! I tried it out last Monday and... turned out perfect! You can´t even tell that I was the one who cut it! I was really quite impressed with myself. I will be saving so much money now... or I will just be eating a lot more. The two are both great things.

I was also pretty nervous this week because the bishopric asked us to give talks yesterday. I am usually nervous when I have to give a talk in the first place, but up until yesterday all of my previous talks had been in ENGLISH! I didn´t know how well a Portuguese talk was going to go down. I really prayed for help to think of a good topic and for the members to understand what I would be trying to say. I felt the need to talk about Pride and how we need to avoid it in our lives if we want to live with Heavenly Father. Pride will keep us from progressing but there are certain times when we should be prideful... like saying that you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ! It went well and a member that was in a different room listening told me that I sounded like a Brazilian! It was great!

This week I have grown a lot! I am learning so much each day here, or probably every hour. Thank you so very much for all the advice and love I get from you all. I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Love Elder Clark

oh and dad, can you forward my emails to Seth? Thanks!