Looks like you all had a great Easter! I loved seeing all your smiling faces!
 |
| Some cactus, huh? |
Brazilians call Easter Pascoa. It´s pretty much the
same as in the states; lots of candy marketing. I like ``Candy
Holidays.´´ 
I
had a pretty good Easter too. Everyone had family get-togethers. Though, during
these get-togethers many of those families blared loud polka music into their
neighborhoods.
Conference didn´t start till 1:00pm
here, so we ate lunch beforehand. I felt the
spirit more during this Conference than any other. Elder Anderson gave a great talk on
recognizing God´s hand in our lives yesterday. I really enjoyed
Holland´s talk, and Uchtdorf´s talk on grace. I love General Conference. This
last one was the best one I´ve heard yet.
The
weather was nice and chilly; it felt like springtime back home, actually! Ha ha! I ate a lot of the snacks you sent in the packages. I got the
packages this last week. Thanks so much!!! :D I´m enjoying opening a
letter a day and seeing you. The quotes are very good, too. I appreciate
it.
We had a baptismal service for our investigator, Arno, on Saturday,
right after the first session of conference. That morning, before
conference, we cleaned out the baptismal font and began to fill it up with water.
The font fills very slowly, so I did not think to check it again before
we locked up the church and walked to our lunch appointment--20
minutes away from the chapel. We were at lunch for a
little under an hour and on the walk back to the chapel, I
realized that the font must still be running! 
So
we walked faster, hoping it hadn´t overflowed. When we got to
the chapel, there was no water on the ground, but when I opened the doors
to the font, I found it literally filled to the brim. Only
about two centimeters remained unfilled. Had we arrived even two
minutes later than we had, it would have overflowed and that would have
been a big problem!
I quickly turned the water off, turned on
the drain, then locked the font doors. Just in time too, because as I
was closing the doors people started to show up for conference. It was
quite a miracle of timing!
The baptism went great! Arno's family did not attend the service,
though. I was disappointed in them. I´m really grateful to have a family
who is supportive of me.
Wish I could´ve been with you all for Easter! That looked fun. Glad you all had a great time.
Love you, Catriel! I´m very proud of you and happy for your decision to go to BYU-Idaho!
Love you Dad! Thanks for your prayers and support; it´s helping a lot. Thanks for sending me pictures each week. And tell Grandma and Grandpa that I got their letter and will respond to them soon.
Love you Mom! Thanks for all you do; looking forward to talking to you next month on Mother's Day.
Have a great week!
Elder Duffin
