53 weeks short and sweet

Hello family, friends, and all you other people!

Just so nobody is offended, that is a movie reference that I just
remembered this very moment.

ONE YEAR DOWN!!! I made it past the year mark! What a roller coaster
of a time it was, but it feels good to oficially say that I have a
year in the mission. We didn't do very much to celebrate, but I took
some cool pics that I will try and send when we are at the church. I
know that the pictures have been slow in coming, I am searching for a
particular adaptor for my memory card that I think will work. The only
problem is that we haven't had very much time to look.

You guys are just traveling all over the country =p I have only ever
seen Mt. Vernon from the other side of the river. Glad to hear it was
cool! I definitely want to go by there when I get home! Philidelphia
too! And New York City, everybody asks me about New York, and I can
only reply that I have no idea. But I'm glad to know that they are all
cool places to be =)

And now for all of the adventures of my wonderful missionary life! We
honestly don't have very much from this week, so I'm sorry if the
email is short, but I will try my best to make it interesting.

First off, I'M STAYING IN CRUZEIRO DO SUL!!!! I was so happy about
that! My district of missionaries here is awesome! We are a Brazilian,
American, Argentinian, and Chilean. The four of us got along great
last transfer and we are all staying here for this transfer! The four
of us have decided that we are going to make a t-shirt for our
district haha. We also made zone t-shirts that are pretty sweet too! I
will send a pic with somebody's camera when I get the chance.

We finally have almost everything for our house too! We got our beds,
blender, forman grill (an essential in Brazil) and a pantry to hold
our food. The beds are the greatest thing ever, and are way better
than sleeping with just our materesses on the ground. The only problem
is that I'm on the top bunk and my fan doesn't really blow any air up
to me, but I'll do something to fix that problem.

The family that we are trying to baptize wasn't at church this week,
but we are going to try and baptize them this coming weekend. The mom
saw us passing by in front of her house the other day and said she was
sorry that they didn't go and that they would try and go this weekend!
Ususally, people don't say anything if they weren't at church. I think
this will be my last transfer in Cruzeiro do Sul, so I'm going to work
my butt off to do everything we can to help these people.

I really don't have anything else haha. Thank you for the sports info
again!!! Of course BYU won on the 11th, it was my year mark and 9/11.
I listened to a really good talk that I have downloaded about
patriotism. The Apostle who is speaking says, "I bear my sacred and
solemn wittness that the United States of America is the greatest
country on the earth." I told my companion that I would print it out
for him haha, but he didn't think that was funny.

Anyways, that's all for now!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Sanderson