Let it Burn!

Yeeeeeeehaaaawwwwww! The transfer call came last night and guess who´s getting more ´´Greenie Fire´´ coming his way. Seriously, it´s the best calling as a missionary to train someone fresh out of the MTC. I can´t wait! My legs are shaking as I write this email home. There´s a lot of reasons why I like the calling so much but I especially like the first couple of days. They always think I´m the greatest missionary ever, giving me compliment after compliment, and then apologizing when they think they don´t live up to my expectations. For example, an invitation to be baptized... Haha maybe this doesn't make much sense so I´ll stop the comments here.

The first two transfers with Elder Machado came to a close. I´m not going to lie, he and Elder Amâncio I think were my two favorite companions. He was fighting back the tears last night as he was transferred and I stayed in the area. The past two weeks have been pretty awesome. As I may have mentioned in the past, this area I think is the richest city in the mission - absolutely FULL of gated communities where the bosses of the bosses live (their companies being in São Paulo and Campinas). With a lot of prayer and tiny changes, we have finally entered some of these gated communities to teach some families. The end of February and March are looking pretty white! No joke, some of the houses are so large it´s hard to see the ceiling when you enter the house... Okay, that´s a little bit of an exaggeration but some of these houses are incredible. I feel so tiny and get so scared that I will break something as I enter sometimes. These men are rich out of their minds. But the challenge here is of marriage. If I could have one wish, it would be a marriage wand. Seriously, who doesn't want to get married? The majority of these men and women want to live together their whole lives without getting married. And let me tell ya, it´s difficult to convince rich couples to get married legally.

On to other news, Carnaval started on Saturday. Like I said last year, I was disappointed in my efforts because I felt like it wasn´t possible to baptize that week. Elder Machado and I fasted together on Saturday with faith that some of these investigators take that last step. I hope to send pictures home next week of a family being baptized.

On Tuesday until Thursday of last week, I spent the days on a division with the Elder in SOCORRO! I was needing to see how some things were going in the branch there so we can help them become a ward. While I was there, I asked the elder not to schedule any visits to members because we´re good friends, and I knew he knew how much I love the members there. I felt a little bad because the members thought I didn't want to see them. But being in the small city of Socorro, I was able to see a couple. One of them yelled my name - ´´Elder WIIICCHHHHH!!´´ Hahah I looked at my companion and said, ´´They still don´t know how to pronounce my name...´´ We talked with the Stake Presidentyesterday. We have a meeting on March 1st with all of the ward/branch mission leaders to train them on Chapter 13 of Preach My Gospel. There´s some pretty exciting days and weeks that lie ahead.

I read section 15 of Doctrine and Covenants last week and thought a lot about it. Its short, read it.

I love the mission. I love being a missionary. I love everything about this work. It´s the greatest, happiest, most exciting, hard, challenging, depressing, incredible, stressful, painful, time of my life! I´m livin´the dream with more greenie fire coming tomorrow!

Love,

Elder Welch