January 3, 2015

Happy New Year!  My New Year’s was definitely unique.  We went to the chapel in Aguanambi and met as a zone.  We had a training and then watched 17 Miracles.  I had never seen that movie before.  It is awesome!  It is about the Willie Handcart Company.  It is amazing to learn about everything that our early ancestors went through.  What a sacrifice.

New Year’s Eve here is insane.  There are so many fireworks.  I fell asleep at 10:50 and then right around 11:50 I was wide awake for many hours.  I felt like I was in a battlefield.  Our apartment is close to the beach and every year they have huge parties on the beach.  It was about 40 minutes of straight firworks.  Though our apartment doesn’t face the beach, the tall glass buildings in the distance reflected the firework show.  It was pretty neat.  Elder "T" and I had gone to the market in the day and it was as busy as I have ever seen it.  Every cart was filled with beer and wine.  The grocery store must have made a killing.  However, the funniest aspect of it all was the next morning.  The city was a ghost town.  There wasn’t a single car on the street.  We had to travel to an outlying area of the city, Jatobá.  The bus was practically empty.  The buses here are super different.  There is a person who takes your money and then you pass through a turnstile to get to the front part of the bus.  Well, the turnstile worker was completely hung over and passed out in her chair.  Elder "T" tapped her on the hand to try to wake her up and she wouldn’t wake up.  It took about 25 minutes until she woke up.  On the floor of the bus were many empty vodka bottles just rolling all around.  It appears that the bus driver didn’t have too much fun the night before with all the drunk people he had to drive.  Poor guy.

Yesterday, while at the office, I had to do repetitive work so I decided that I would put on a talk.  I listened to “Kings and Priests” by President Kimball.  Okay, hands down, best talk!  I love his message!  I need to read this talk a lot in my life.  As he talks about the funerals of the three different men, I thought back to all the funerals I have experienced in my life.  We truly are here to learn and grow, but life is a lot easier if we keep the commandments. 
I now have a testimony of that!

New Year's 2015