Week 72

I decided to expand where I send out this family letter.  I was
thinking about all the comments about the reunion this year and I
thought that it is awesome how united our family is and I wanted to
start sending my letter to all of you from now on for the last year of
my mission. Thank you for all of the love and support that you have
shown me on my mission and throughout my entire life.

I am enjoying my time with Elder Nogueira. We are working really hard
and getting a ton of things done.  I expect that we will continue to
see a lot of success in our area.

This weekend we got to do a bunch of service.  We spent the morning
working on a house of a less active family that is moving and they are
needing help to get the last touches done so that they can get moved
in and get back onto a normal schedule. made me think of home a lot as
I was putting together light switches and plugs and stuff in there
house.  We went from there right on over to another service project
where we were ripping up all the overgrown parts of a less active
families yard.  It was a ton of really hard work but I really had fun
working with the young men that we have here in the ward, and it was
awesome because we had the entire family out to church the next day
which really shows the fruits of service.  I love doing service and I
know that it is really what we are out here doing every day. The
greatest service that we can possibly do for someone is to help them
to come closer to our loving Heavenly Father and help them have a
chance at having an eternal family.

This week it just happened to be that we taught a bunch of our
investigators the word of wisdom and we kept taking all of the coffee
out of their houses to help them get past the temptation.  It was
really interesting to see the different reactions that these people
gave us as they were accepting this commandment.  Alexandre and
Guilhermina accepted well without much of a challenge, and have been
going strong without coffee even after 70 years of drinking coffee
every morning for breakfast. It was really amazing to see them have
that miraculous success as they put their trust in the Lord to give
them the strength to get past their weaknesses.  Sonia and Sheila
eventually accepted the challenge, but they were super reluctant and
really went to show the lack of desire that they have to really do
what is necessary and make sacrifices to be able to follow the Lord,
and it showed the next day because they stayed out all night long
partying and did not make it to church because of that.  I really have
been studying about the commandments alot this week and I really liked
one story that was shared by one of the sisters that spoke this last
conference that spoke about her granddaughter that did not want to
wear her seat belt. I know that the commandments really are all there
for a purpose and that they are there to bless us and protect us given
by a loving heavenly father. Even if we may receive a commandment just
to give us a chance to show our love and obedience to Heavenly Father,
I know that He will greatly bless our lives and help our faith to grow
as we follow his commandments.

One of the highlights of this week was with the confirmations of
Nilson and Octávio.  They both chose me to confirm them so I did two
confirmations right in a row in sacrament meeting.  It was a cool
experience.  I was a little worried that I would basically give them
both the same blessing because they are both in really similar
situations in my mind and we had even done most of our teaching of
them both together, but when I gave the blessings they were actually
completely different.  It was a real testimony to me of the power and
actuality of the priesthood that it really is Heavenly Father acting
thought his children. I know that the blessings that I gave did not
come from me but were truly given from the Lord.  I am so grateful
that the Lord has made it possible for us to act in his name and bless
his children here on the earth.  I am so glad that I have always had
that opportunity in my house and in my life to be able to ask for a
blessing if I was needing one. I have really seen how valuable that
really is out here on the mission as I have had the opportunity to
give many blessings.

Com muito amor.
Elder Hobson