July 7, 2012

Hey Family!
That´s funny that you´d ask about the food here Mother because today for lunch we´re going to eat at Subway! YES! Trunkeza até o pó! hahaha So yeah Santa Maria is big. Big enough to have a Subway and a McDonalds, but McD´s, I hear is super expensive and nothing like the McDonalds in the States. The Church is the strongest here in Santa Maria. Just one stake with I don´t know how many wards. So I have some news for all of you. The topic of Cafeine Drinks. So my mission president has cleared all these doubts that have existed in my mind. First, the church does not prohibit caffiene drinks. Until there are Area seventies that he´s eat with who down a whole liter, but here´s the thing back in the day the church wouldn´t allow the missionaries to drink it, but now it depends on the mission president. One other thing: the General Authorities don´t drink it, because it is bad for you. My president asked them and he said that their counsel is to not drink it. So in conclusion the church doesn´t prohibit caffeine drinks but the General authorities do counsel against it. So anyway we were right about following the counsel of the leaders of the church but we can´t say some one is not following the commandments when they drink caffeine drinks. So I´ve just come back from eating at subway. It was way exspencive but it was good. I´ll send some pics.

Yeah so I´m here in Santa Maria. Its interesting here. So I found out that I can drink Chimarrão. I know that you don´t know what that is but I´m excited to try it. Its like a green erva that the people here drink with hot water. Everyone and I mean everyone drinks it here, so i´m interested to know how it tastes. Right now we´re trying to find people to teach, because we´re both new in the area and the other missionaries didn´t give us much to work with. haha It´s pretty hard to find here, because of all the apartment buildings. We will try a new method though, that our president did when he was here back in the day that helped him baptize lots of people. He calls it the Law of Cornelius, with reference to the story in the new testament when Peter teachs that roman soldier who brings a ton of family and friends to hear peter preach. Basically it´s when we teach a lesson and stop in the middle or almost the end and say we´ll come back another day to finish but we would like for them to bring a friend, family member, or neighbor to the next visit. Then when they bring some one we teach and then we go to the house of that person and teach and do the same thing with them. Its seems like an awesome idea and the President was able to teach a lot of people this way, so we´ll try it. Anyway that´s about it for now. Enjoy the pictures! Love you guys
Elder Jolstead