Dear Family and friends,

I made it to Divinópolis! This city is very different from Montes Claros in a lot of ways. We live downtown in a fourth floor apartment which is cool! It's a lot cooler here which is super nice. It rains a lot. We don't use umbrellas, we just get wet. The people here are a lot more diverse. The members have cars. Our ward is huge (we had 148 people in sacrament meeting yesterday!). The members help out a lot. We walk less, cause we are always in cars. We have some good investigators (a teaching pool of around 7 people right now). The only thing that's really the same is the church and the teaching haha! It will be good for me to be here for sure and I'm excited to learn a lot here!

Elder Otávio is my companion! He is from São Paulo, São Paulo. This mission means a lot to him and he always tries to do what is right! The more time we spend together the more I am understanding him and getting to like him!

I got here on Terça and that same night I was surprised to find out that I am now an English teacher haha! Every week I will be giving a basic english class at our chapel. That day had 15 people in the class, and half of them were non-members! It was kind of overwhelming because I was just handed a manual and told to teach for an hour and a half, but I think I managed it alright. The people in the class were pretty excited and it was fun to interact with them!

Speaking of which, Portuguese finally feels normal. Okay so I'm going to brag a little now. I got a lot of compliments this week on my portuguese! Apparently some americans came through this area before me that couldn't speak very well so the members were really surprised when I was talking to them haha! It made me feel good to know the work and prayers are paying off.

We are teaching a guy named Anderson who owns a snack shop right by where we live! He is good friends with a member and hasa desire to be baptized. He has had problems with the word of wisdom in the past, but he is doing really well now! We are also teaching a guy named cleber who wants to be baptized. He plays piano and has 8 dogs. We taught them both a few times this week and will be meeting with them a lot this week so I'll be sure to let you know more about them next week!

Well that's about it. I'm excited to serve the Lord here! It's definitely not easy, but it's more than worth it to be here doing what I'm doing. I love you guys!!

Elder Searle

73696

Divinopolis

Elder Searle and Elder Otavio

Elder Otavio and Elder Searle

On the way to transfers

An awesome owl