Hey Everyone,

We had to move this week so we took a lot of our time doing that. I will not have time to write a lot right now. I enjoyed all of your letters. Sorry to hear that Danny couldn’t wrestle.

This week, Aguinaldo got baptized. He drank and smoked for a good portion of his life. He dropped it all to be baptized. He actually was waiting an hour before his baptism, it was funny. And then at church the next day he showed up an hour early too. We had him sit in an lesson with us, and when we asked him a question he went off saying that "faith is keeping commandments" and then he named the 5 things of the word of wisdom "tea, coffee, smoking, alcohol and drugs", it was awesome.

One day this week we planned to go out to Ponta Verde and teach the family out there. Its about a 25 minute drive. We taught their whole family about the plan of salvation and how they could live together forever, it was cool! We will not be able to baptize them on the 12th of January like we planned because at this rate we will only be seeing them 2x times a week, once during the week and once before church. They are solid, and they will be baptized next transfer. Maiza's husband and her kids went out of town, so we will also be postponing their baptism because we want to teach them together and baptize them together.

Things are a little weird in Cabo Verde or Fogo around the holidays. A lot of people are simply not home or do not want to talk because they have parties. And there are a significant number of drunk people that roam the streets and yell. For some reason the drunk people loving talking to Elders, its not very fun, haha.

We have been moving houses all of today because our last house kept getting robbed. Our new house is actually clean and doesn’t have bugs everywhere; hopefully we can keep it that way. President Oliveira will be visiting the islands for interviews on the 8th right before transfers. I think i may be staying here in Sao Filipe to finish of my training, but you never know!

Anyway, the work is going great! I’m having a lot of fun. I have a firm testimony that the message i am sharing it 100 percent true. Any person that listens to this message, it will change their life. Only by the gospel of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us can we truly be happy. A lot of people mix up happiness and pleasure. Pleasure is temporary, happiness is forever. We can be happy with our families for ever, in this life and this next. I know this is true, because it has been personally made sure through prayer and an answer from God. I love you all and have an awesome week!

Elder Rice