Hi family,

Oh don´t worry about letting me know about whats going on.  I´d rather know than find out when I get home.  Oh I finally got the birthday package!  Thanks so much.  It really made my day.  I´d take a present like that anyday over something else.   Oh that is good that there is a lot of good fruit coming on.  I miss American fruit.  They have some good fruit here but not really that great.  Our land has better.
I loved seeing the picture of Koda in the Present.  I miss that dog.  He was cool.  I´d love to go run with him.
Yeah when members get involved in the missionary work it helps so much.  It really does make the investigators want to go to church and be active.  Its hard to do something when you don´t have any outside support.  But it still can be done. 
This week was hard.  I was showing Elder Almeida around the area for the week and we had a hard time communicating at times.  It was very frustrating!  I was suppose to be in Amaralina my new area on Saturday but i didn´t get here until about 2 hours ago.  Its been frustrating!  But I did have some very special experiences this past week.  We had a baptism. That was awesome to see another person get baptised.  After the baptism we went to lunch at a members house.  Lunch was good.  After the lunch they asked me to give the message.  So i did. I read in Alma 38:5 when Alma is talking to his son about staying strong in the church.  I started reading it and i barely made it through the verse.  When i started to explain it and bare my testimony about it I lost it.  I was talking about the dificulties of the language but I knew that the lord would help me and that the gospel was true.  I just started to cry because i felt a overwhelming feeling of love and peace.  I don´t cry but I couldn´t help it.  It was a very memorable experience.  Then at church Eliana asked me to confirm her a member of the church.  It was a little stressful because i didn´t know the words.  Elder Almeida wrote them out and I tried to memorize them really fast.  I don´t remember what I said or if I even said the right words, but after church the Bishop came up to me and was like you did really well and said a lot.  You´ve learned the language well and have the gift of tongues.  It was a special experience.  I wish I was fluent and could have that gift all the time.  It feels like I only get bits and pieces of the conversations.  I never am able to understand completely.  It is frustrating.  And then when I don´t understand they try to talk in English.  I´m just like talk Portugues just slower.  I´m in a frustrating phase right now and its overwhelming/stressful.  Oh well...thats a mission.
Another experience I had was we went to a members house for FHE with a investigator.  It was a really good experience.  They member gave an amazing lesson and helped the investigator out a lot.  At the end they made me give a solo hymn because it was my last day.  It was actually a good experience.  It was hard but turned out well.
It was a hard week but I learned so i guess that means it was good.  We had a baptism so it was good.
I love and miss you all,
Garrett