April 6th

Hey Everyone! 

So it´s been a while since I´ve sent an email to you all. The mission has been going good! We got really close to baptizing a woman but in the end she wasn´t able to keep a few commandments. We got hope that she´ll be able to change her life. We´re working with another family that is part member and they are really cool. I really like my area but sometimes i miss being in rio grande da serra because it´s so much more peacefull there. I´m in the city and there´s just so many people and traffic and music. But it´s cool.

So General conference was pretty darn cool! The saturday sessions were spent a lot on families and marriage. The sunday sessions more on principles of the gospel. I really liked the talk by Wilford W. Andersen about the music of the gospel. These men and women really are inspired. Dallin H oaks burned about half the church when he talked about having cellphones out during the sacrement and how many members don´t give lots of attention to things of the gospel. There´s some great lessons to be learned.

      So we had a cool experience the other day. We passed by the house of a recent convert who´s about 60 years old. Everyone calls her bela (this means ´´beautiful´´ in english) She had been sick for the past few days and this day she was really really bad. Massice headache, high fever, vomiting, lots of body pain and a very dry mouth. We talked with her for a bit and then we gave her a blessing. I annoited her and did the first part of the blessing. But right before I did, I told her to think about the most beautiful place that she´d seen. My comp put his hands on her head and then I (becuase of there wasn´t a lot of space on the bed) put one hand on her head and one on my comps shoulder. And for a few min the noise of the world faded out. As my comp was talking (and I confirmed that he felt it too) we began to get really hot. We had sweat going down our cheaks. We finished the blessing and Bela sat their for a second. She opened her eyes and began to cry out in joy. She said that she no longer felt pain in her stomach, the moisture was coming back to her mouth, her fever was going down and she was able to sit up. She then said ´´you know what place I was thinking about in my head?´´ ´´what place´´ I asked. ´´The temple.´´ 

It´s amazing what happens when we put the power of God together with the strong faith of one of his children. Always remember that this is the True Church Of God. And even when we feel helpless and lost or sad or confused, there is comfort to be found in our Savior. I love you all and hope the best of everything for you guys.

Love 

Elder Shannon