We had two baptisms! I will explain. Wednesday we had divisions with our zone leaders. We split up so that we could cover more ground here in Jordão. We had 4 missionaries in one area, and we got so many new contacts.
Our first baptism was D----. He is 14, and his parents were baptized 4 months ago. He didn't want to be baptized when we first invited him to be. His older siblings were telling him that he couldn't have a girlfriend, drink coke, play video games, or eat cake if he was baptized. It took some work, but after we explained to him that we can do all these things and that we just don't want to do too much of one thing, he was happy.
Our second baptism was D------. She is 27 years old and has been an investigator for a while. We taught her all the lessons, and she felt ready, so she was baptized. Her family are not LDS, but her uncle is, so he baptized her. It was really cool, and she said that she felt "lighter" after her baptism.
It was really cool to see two people make the decision to be baptized and follow Christ this week. I know that their lives are going to be better because of it. Baptisms seem to come relatively easy here. But there is a really high rate of people that fall away soon after baptism. But I think these two will be great members. D------ has a lot of friends in the ward, and D---- has his parents to help him. Now we are going to start working on his other two siblings. Oh it's exciting!
There are a ton of random churches here. There is probably 200 or 300 (carrari) churches very near by. They range from big buildings, to someone putting plastic chairs out in front of their house. There are a lot that have rock music, so its always fun to walk past those. They are really just people that have a garage band who have words about God, and people come to listen to them on random days. Some churches launch fireworks. I thought they were for soccer games my first week, but no, its other churches lighting them off. But it really helps that everyone here is crazy religious. We can talk to anyone in the street about the Bible, and they believe and recite scriptures to us. It's a really good way to get in to teach these people.
We bought some food, Mom and Dad, so don't worry. They had Black Friday here, so we went and bought some things to eat for breakfast and dinner (bread, jelly, snacks, and more eggs). Black Friday for Food! Ha! It's weird that Christmas is in a month because it is so hot here. It's going to be weird not having any cold for Christmas. The little stores here have Santas and Olafs set up, so we got some pictures with them. Its pretty funny.
There are so many cats here, and my allergies have been so bad the past few days. Every house we have gone to has had cats. Last night was really bad. I had to take a pink pill right when we got home, and it just knocked me out.
Things are going great here, and I hope that everything is going well in the states. I love you guys so much!!!
Love,
Elder Nielson 
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