Hey family and friends,

Its been a crazy week! At the beginning of the week, I and Elder Christensen went to Praia on the boat. The boat takes about 4 hours to get to the island of Santiago. We arrived and hung out at the Assistant’s house. On Preparation day we got to play soccer with everyone, which was super fun, I love soccer now. On Tuesday, we had the Christmas party which was awesome. I got to see a lot of friends from zones in Praia and also from Assomada. it was nice to catch up and talk to everyone. There was SO much food. They had turkeys, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce (canned, not even close as good as mom’s) and other stuff. Not nearly as good as my mothers cooking, but it will do until next Christmas. We got into groups and we went and sang Christmas hymns to random people on the street and in their houses. It was super cool experience. Later that night we did some divisions with some Elders. I went into an area where the Elders there had been ''Cash or Bodied'' (robbed) twice. They refused to leave the area even when President Oliveira told them they could leave. It was sketchy walking around at night.

We woke up the next day at 3:00 am to get on the boat at 4:00 am. We have been teaching a lot of lessons. We have been averaging 35-37 lessons a week. We are finding a TON of new investigators, because a lot of the ones we have found and taught are not doing much. However, after a lesson had fell, we started knocking on some random doors. We contacted a teenager that did not want to talk to us at all, he said he had things to do, so we asked him, ''who do you know that we can share this gospel with?'' and he said my uncle, he has nothing to do. Just as he said that, his uncle showed up from somewhere, we told who we were and we sat down and taught him the Restoration.

This uncle that we had met is named Ider. He is 23 years old and he is a fisherman. He has a giant fro type thing on his head. However he is very interested to hear the word of God. We taught him super well and the Spirit testified to his heart. We invited him to church and he came. We taught him later and he said he loved church and that he learned a lot and that a lot applied to him. he accepted baptism easily and he is going to prepare for the 28th of December. Sweet.

Maruka is still doing incredible, his testimony is strengthened every time we see him. Fatinha still has some doubt about baptism. She loves the church, she believes it’s true, she comes every Sunday, but baptism just throws her off. Maruka is always testifying and teaching his wife about baptism with the priesthood authority, but something just hasn’t clicked yet. There is a bit of a complication with the marriage papers so it will have to wait for a few weeks, but they are still doing great in the preparation for marriage and baptism.

We met this man named Va outside of a bar. Va is a tall, strong man, with earrings, piercings and tatoos. Apparently he drinks, smokes and does cocaine a lot. We taught him a lesson at the church. He couldn’t stop saying, " I want to change" We talked of Christ and the ability for us to be born again and live a new life, being completly clean, and that by real repentence we can recieve this forgiveness. He started crying and in the last prayer he cried to God saying " I want to change, in the name of Jesus Christ amen''. It was a beautiful thing.

Many miracles. The Spirit is truly the best tool in missionary work, because even when hearts are hardened the Spirit can touch and change them so they no longer have a disposition to do bad, but to do good continually. I love my call.

Love,

Elder Rice