Cool Water

I'm really tired. It's been a pretty busy, hectic week. I've had a lot of new assignments and adjustments to make.

First, I got my trainee on Wednesday! His name is Elder Neves. He's from Sao Paulo, Brazil, but he's lived for the past 4 years or so in the US. He went to Utah State and BYU before the mission and he's studying mechanical engineering. He already speaks pretty good Spanish with a bit of a Portuguese accent. Every once in a while he'll try to say something in Spanish that exists in Portuguese but is different in Spanish, which is interesting to my linguistics-oriented mind. I've already learned quite a bit about Portuguese grammar and how it differs from Spanish.

The mission also underwent some changes in transfers. There were several new zones created. Our zone was split in half, which means we're the only stake with two zones in it. My old companion, Elder Cheadle, just moved across the apartment to be Zone Leader with Elder Chipman, which is nice because we're still together. There were also a lot of new districts created. One of the bigger changes was that the assistants to the president were merged to create just two assistants: one English, one Spanish. I'll miss having our own pair of assistants.

I'm still adjusting to my new responsibilities. That's one of the tough things about training, now I'm the one who kind of controls everything. It used to be about a 50/50 split of responsibility but now I have a lot more of the responsibility and work. I'm still getting used to that. Let's just say that I've been sleeping really well the past couple of nights.

Yesterday I felt inspired to read a talk that Grandma Keeley had sent me at the beginning of my mission. It's about missionary work and the Atonement and it's by Elder Holland. I was really touched by it. Everything we do as members of the Church and as missionaries should be focused on helping us draw closer to Jesus Christ and His infinite sacrifice. I'm working on focusing more on the atonement as I teach. Elder Holland also talks about how the Book of Mormon is so essential to our testimony of the Savior's Atonement and how it's the single greatest missionary tract ever. It's true. The investigators that progress read in the Book of Mormon and it seems like when people stop reading in the Book of Mormon they fall off the path.

Well, I love you all. I've heard we only have about a month or so of real heat left and then after that it'll cool off into the low hundreds/high nineties. I'm looking forward to that. We've been in monsoon season here so it's been really hot and kinda sticky humid too. Last night we had a huge downpour with thunder and lightning and all the water dried up off the sidewalks in about an hour.

Love,

Elder Grasley