The Little Umbrella that Could!

Hello again!!

This week has been kind of a crazy one! Sorry to not have written on Monday- everything has been closed due to Carnaval. But luckily, I'm in interior, and the only difference with this week being Carnaval, is that everything is closed. Literally everyone left the city to go to Olinda and/or Recife. The missionaries there weren't even allowed to leave their apartment for a whole week, but here in my area, we worked like normal. :) There were just a few more drunks on the street yesterday.

Other than Carnaval, we had a few more exciting things happen. Like I mentioned last week, we had transfers this week! My new companion is Sister Diaz from Argentina, and she's on her last transfer of the mission! She's wonderful, and I'm really learning tons from her!

The other exciting thing this week was the baptism of Erisvaldo! I don't think I really talked a whole lot about him in earlier emails, because to be honest, we didn't have a whole lot of faith in him. But, after a little bit of time, he really started to change, and to demonstrate a desire to be baptized. He stopped drinking coffee after having drunk coffee his entire life, he started praying, and he even walked super long to church all by himself. His baptism was Saturday, and it was really great! I'm just really grateful for the gospel, and to see how it can change someone's life. :)

And finally, the other crazy thing from this week was all the rain! Man did it rain this week. Friday we were sitting in the house of our recent convert, Vitoria, and it started to slowly rain. By the time we left it was a downpour. Because we weren't too terribly far from our apartment we decided to run back and grab umbrellas, and to move our shoes out of the rain on the balcony. It was quite the sight- two girls in skirts running in the rain, getting soaking wet, and laughing super hard. Haha! It was actually pretty fun. The rest of the day it continued the same. Downpour. We had to take cover at the house of some members for a little bit to wait for the worst of the rain to pass. But, the miracle of the whole thing, is that my little 5 dollar umbrella I bought at Walmart before the mission, and have used ever since the beginning of my mission, is still going strong! Man, I love that little umbrella. :)

Overall, it's been a super good week, and I'm just really grateful to be a missionary! I love you all, and I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Sister Shelton

Alma 15 6-8 "And it came to pass that Alma said unto him, taking him by the hand:Believest thou in the power of Christ unto Salvation? And he answered and said: yea, I believe all the words that thou has taught. And Alma said: If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed."