There is so much to tell you! First of all, the Spirit here is incredible. Before I got here I was worried about leaving and a little anxious and didn't know if I would be able to do it. Definitely Satan working hard on missionaries. But when I first walked in and put my missionary tag on, I immediately felt at peace. Since then everything has been great. It's still not easy to leave a family that I love so much, and friends that I definitely miss, but I know this is where I need to be, and so I'm not worried about it anymore.
So my companion's name is Elder Lowe, and I like him a lot. He is 21 years old, and we get along really well. He is doing really good with Portuguese because he said he used Rosetta Stone a little bit. He is funny and all is well in our companionship. I also have two other roommates, Elder Moffat and Elder Reynolds, and they are both super cool too.
So by now we have already taught 3 lessons in Portuguese. Yep, three of them. The first one went horribly because Elder Lowe and I tried to write down everything we wanted to say, and we weren't really open to our "investigators" concerns and questions and such. We could both understand most of what she said, or at least the main points, but had no idea how to respond to her, so we just went on with our planned lesson. And it stunk. We were pretty discouraged because we thought we were doing well. But we taught a lesson the very next day, and it was amazing! Definitely not perfect, but great. We basically told our investigator, Larissa, that our Portuguese was horrible, and we apologized. Then we asked what questions she had, and really tried to focus on her needs. We also didn't write out our whole lesson, we just wrote down key phrases to remember and tried to do our best with the words that we knew. We still probably sounded horrible, but the Spirit was there and we were able to get through it and feel great about it. Redemption for lesson number 1! We went from a 10-12 minute lesson 1 to about 40-45 minutes in lesson 2. Which was probably bad cause other people after us then had less time, but we needed that. Our third lesson was okay. We went last so we ran out of time, and I kinda froze up with my Portuguese a bit, so Elder Lowe carried the team. It's nice to have a really good companion! haha
So I have also been called as the District Leader! I remember how Tyler was one too. I will only be it for about three weeks, and then we switch. But it is super cool. I have an awesome district who are all excited to learn more everyday and learn to better serve the Lord. We get a little off track sometimes, but hey, everyone needs a break sometimes. Our district is 14 people, 8 Elders and 6 Sisters. However, 4 of them (2 Elders and 2 Sisters) just got their Visas and leave for the Sao Paulo MTC next Tuesday. We have become really close as a district, and it will definitely be sad to see them go. But I'm also excited for them, of course! So I also have to get the mail twice a day for our district, which at first I thought was an excessive amount, but there is so much mail! With Dear Elder, there is always more mail than I would expect.
Anyway, laundry is about done, so I am going to wrap this up. We have another half hour after we switch our laundry on the computer, so I will try to figure out how to send some pictures. But no promises with these computers. I miss all of you and love you all lots!
Love, Elder Baldridge
