Feliz Dia de Independência!

It has been quite a week here in Janaúba. On Saturday the two Daniels were baptized!!! It was really awesome. They are both such cool kids. One of them has a brother named Cosme who is a return missionary. He performed the baptisms. The other Daniel is the first Daniel's best friend. He is also related to them in some way and is part of a part-member family. We started teaching him on my very first day here. They both accepted the gospel really well and one of them even had a really miraculous answer from God in the form of a dream. After reading the Book of Mormon for the first time he drempt that someone called him on the phone and explained to him that the book was true!

The baptismal font is pretty cool here. I will send a picture. It's kind of like a small pool. We did the baptism meeting outside and we missionaries played a special musical number for them. My companion plays the guitar and he played as we sang "I am a Child of God."

We have been teaching this married couple ever since I got here. Their names are Farley and Eliane. They have been investigating the church for a few months now and this week we were able to commit them to baptism! They are a really special family and have two little boys. Farley has a lot of opposition from his family who doesn't want him to follow any church that isn't catholic. Farley is running for public office so it was complicated to find time to teach him this week, but it all worked out. It was really good to teach them this week and hopefully they will be able to take the next step towards baptism soon! We were also blessed with many other new investigators this week. It was a good week.

Elder Soares is a really good companion. He is obedient and a hard worker. He teaches really well too. I'm still getting used to being a District Leader, but so far I have noticed that it basically means I have less time in the morning and at night because I need to check in with my missionaries and the Zone Leaders all the time. But it has been good thus far. I will hopefully be doing my first baptismal interview this week for an investigator that the other Elders are teaching! It's also nice because the Elders in my house respect me and aren't disobedient. And they are really funny as well!

So a little more about the city. It is hot here. Not super hot right now, since July is the least hot month of the year, but I definitely won't be using long sleeve shirts here ever. The people here are great! Especially the members. They all really want a chapel so they are working to improve the attendance at sacrament meeting. Just in the first 6 months of the year the branch has gone from 50 to 90 people attending! Most of that has been from reactivating though because there were only 5 baptisms in the first half of the year. The Branch President is really good here and is making a big difference. Our Branch Mission Leader is great! He isn't afraid to ask a lot of the branch or to follow what our Mission President is telling us to do.

Tomorrow I will begin an English Class at the church. We made invites last week and have been giving them to everyone. I believe we will have a good turn out. To take an English Course here it costs a lot and a lot of people were interested in coming because it's free and I am a native English speaker. It will be fun to start teaching English again.

Have a great week everyone! Love you guys.

Elder Searle

​142242​

After the interviews

Before the Confirmations

The Baptismal Font

The District

The Group

The Two Daniels