Pérola 25

Hello!!!!!!!
This week was interesting.  Not too much happened, but me and my companion will both be leaving the area so we spent Sunday trying to fix everything up for the new Elders- getting and writing information and people's numbers down while trying to visit people and take pictures.  However I am super excited for my next area which is Salinas.  Everyone says that it is a super cool area full of people to teach and it's next to the beach so that should be super fun.  Sorry this week's email is probably super short, but I will try to have a big one for next week in the new area!
Love,
Elder Holcomb

Here's a few pictures from Mara, who also sent some very nice texts:
 "Your son was one of the best people I've met recently. Although very young yet has many qualities, which makes him a good and admirable human being. I will miss him learning will be a better memory. Your son is a wonderful boy, in every visit he always smiles, a lot of fun, a good teacher. ...I confess that I cried, because he is a mature young man, determined and now needs to go, I probably will not see him anymore. He is a good friend, always did the best i could to be present bringing joy, played, shared a little of his life before the mission, always remembered the family. probably send messages every Monday to him, no matter where he is yet I will send.  I am sure that God will lead you in good ways, today you will really miss me.  Thank you also for having allowed him to come here for a mission here in Brazil, it was a way for me to know the truth, covenants with the Heavenly Father.  Your son was a great teacher. :-) <3":

Pérola 24

This week was super fun.  It was a bit difficult to work because of Easter, but it was still lots of fun!  We got to baptize Rony which was super fun.  He is super happy and really excited to be a member of the church.  There isn't really too much more that happened except one day when we were knocking on doors we found a family that is less active in the church, but got super excited to see us, so we sang hymns together with the hymnbook they had.  They are going to start coming back to church and have two kids that want to get baptized super bad because they remember the church from when they were kids.  This week we had zone conference that was super good.  Sister Nouguira (the Mission President's wife) gave a talk about the atonement and it went super in depth and was super good and of course like always everyone was super excited to work hard after it.  I will try to send pictures of the baptism!
Love,
Elder Holcomb

Pérola 23

Hello,
This week was fun.  Not much happened, we just worked and talked to people.  This week we had stake conference; that was pretty fun.  The Temple President of Manaus came to talk, and gave a good talk about the plan of salvation and the importance of temple work.  This week we will have the baptism of Rony, a cool guy we have been helping for awhile now.  He progressed super fast and it's cool because we literally just told him about the Restoration and how there is a prophet that lives today and the next time we visited him he was just like, "yeah, I decided to throw out all of my beer and quit going to the bar because it seemed like something I should stop doing if there is a prophet." Just like in the book, "Our Search for Happiness" so that was pretty cool and he is super excited to be baptized this week.  We also will probably baptize the sister of Mara who was baptized three weeks ago and maybe this girl who is a friend of a member and lives with her.  This week we also have zone conference with the mission president so that should be fun too.  I am excited to see what he says and see if I got a package or if someone I'm living with gets a package with snacks so we can eat them.
Love,
Elder Holcomb

Pérola 22

Hello,
This week was pretty uneventful.  We worked a lot with the people we are teaching and it's getting a bit more difficult to put time to finding new people to teach. However we are happy that we have so much people progressing.  One man we are helping to quit smoking and he in general smokes 2 packs a day, but we got him down to smoking 4 cigarettes a day!  That's exciting! We also are teaching this 40 year old guy that lives with his brothers and sisters that all don't like that he goes to church because they think the church is from the devil, but he goes every week, and tells them he got his response from God and that he is more scared of God than them.  I told him I looked up to him a lot for that and he shared a scripture in Matthew 10:35-38* with me and said our families aren't always right.  I was like dang that was savage, especially because in general conference they talked so much about focusing on your family.  However it got me remembering that if we all are following the commandments and studying the scriptures our family grows closer by a consequence, but if someone uses their agency to not follow it they will end up getting separated in the end.  However I liked general conference and my favorite quote was from David A Bednar that was, "Don't get home after church on Sunday and ask each other what you learned at church about Christ. Go to church and ask each other what you learned about Christ at home during the week."  Love you guys.
Love,
Elder Holcomb 

*35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.  36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.  37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.            

Pérola 21

Hello people!
This week was fun.  We continued to try to work really hard and we are really seeing the blessings.  We have been able to  teach lots of people and bring lots of people to church with us.  Besides the fact we worked, not much happened.  We left a message with the members during the second hour of church on how they could help us as the missionaries and gave some cool ideas to help with missionary work and share the gospel with friends.  We won't be able to baptize people this Saturday because it's going to be general conference (which will be exciting) and then after it's stake conference so the only time we  can baptize again will be the 20th.  We ended up realizing we have a lot of people that are being prepared to be baptized that Saturday and decided to let the rest of the missionaries in the city know and we are planning on having a giant baptism with all of the wards together as a stake and we are calling it the day of Pentecost.*  Everyone is getting pretty hyped up about it and inviting lots of friends to be taught by us.  It should be super fun and I am glad the members are excited about it and wanting to go out with us on visits.  This week we really saw how you are blessed and receive miracles by your diligence and obedience!
Love,
Elder Holcomb

*Isaac says they are calling it Pentecost because so many people were baptized on Pentecost. Here is a link for more about Pentecost.

Also, a few pictures from this morning:

Pérola 20

This week was pretty awesome. We ended up working super super hard and were blessed and saw lots of miracles and we were able to bring lots of people to sacrament meeting!  It was cool because they were able to see Mara, the girl we baptized, be confirmed and that was super awesome for them.  One of the things we were blessed with was that we found three families that are already married legally, because that's like impossible here, and we found three in the same week that are cool to teach.  One of them has a daughter that went to church last week and then she didn't remember her address so we didn't know how we were going to be able to teach her; but then one day in the rain we felt like we should knock on a door so we did and it was her family and they are super cool and they thought we were cool.  Also we had a service project with the ward at a school for autistic children that was super fun, but I didn't get any photos there sadly.  However I do have photos of the baptism!

Pérola 19

Hello,
This week was pretty awesome.  At the beginning of the week two of the missionaries from far away had to come into the city to do some stuff at the police station with their passports and they stayed at our house so it was pretty fun.  We went to a nice restaurant with all you can eat meat and joked around a lot. 
Another highlight was that we had a service project on Saturday to help construct our Bishop's new house.  It was super fun.  We got to climb up to build the roof and pour cement on the roof, but had to make an assembly line of buckets to bring the cement from the ground up the ladders and to the roof to pour the cement, and we both got extremely sore.  The top was just a few parts that were actually stable, and wooden boards to walk on, and then Styrofoam that we poured the cement on top of.  So we had to be careful to not step on the Styrofoam or we would fall through and it was a bit sketchy, but super fun, and only one guy fell, but just his leg went through the ceiling.  Then when we got back I was sun burnt super bad because all of my skin has accustomized, but I forgot that's when I am wearing church clothes, so when I was there in shorts and t-shirt my neck and legs got super red.  It was pretty fun to feel like I had spent a long time at the beach again. 
Then when we were teaching this random guy he gave us these frog necklaces that he tried to give some guys from another church, but they wouldn't accept them because they are from the devil because it's like an old Indian luck charm.  So now we both have matching demon frogs.  So this week was eventful. 
We are planning on having Mara's baptism this week and then baptize her sister Marta next week.  It should be super fun!
Love,
Elder Holcomb