Joy to the World, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king!

That is something I want to tell everyone, but then I’d be like Alma and he told us that is a sin, and we must give God the Glory and let Him use us and tell us what we need to do.

I wanted to say MERRY CHRISTMAS!! FELIZ NATAL!!!!!!!!!!!

AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY OBORN!!! (yesterday)

I hope you are well in your first weekend of Christmasy, snowy goodness that almost doesn’t exist here.... well the snow.... but people have fake snow and it’s kinda funny. Oh this last week we got a new WASHING MACHINE!!! It’s actually like a real one, or a super Tanquinho (the old one) but it works like the MAGIC CLEANING BOX! and my clothes are almost dry when I take them out! It is really cool, so now our lives are better!

This last week was hard but good, things are looking up. We taught a lady and she was really good, she accepted our help to be prepared to be baptized, but then we went back two days later and she tried to give us back the Book of Mormon. I’m not going to let that happen, so we told her to read it and pray about it. So we’ll go back this next week.

There are some Christmas decorations around the city here but I haven’t seen a lot of real Christmas stuff, but yet again I’m in a whole other place.

Oh man, yet again it rained like no other, and Elder Jeppson (another Elder in the city) and I saw lightning hit RIGHT ON FRONT OF US!!! It was really cool but kinda freaky. We got so wet... then on Sunday, we wanted to work but you can’t work right in the rain, it rained like 5 times on Sunday. We visited with a member and the rain stopped and then started every time we wanted to leave so finally we decided it wasn’t that bad and left. And we were going to leave our bags at home and go on the main street to go do some contacts and then the rain got even harder so we wouldn’t have been able to talk to anyone anyway.....

Other than that this week was good, but we had 3 days we couldn’t do anything. One was because the guys in Ribeirão Preto had an idea of getting all the missionaries in one area, in the same city, and having them work only in that area, but when the area is almost an hour away and you don’t know the area and your map isn’t right, how does it work? You end up spending most of your time trying not to get lost and sweating because the sun is so freakin’ powerful, because São João da Boa Vista is supposedly the second clearest city in the world, next to one in Indonesia or Japan I think. SO we get really sweaty here.... it’s so hot..... then the other 2 were because of an interview that was crazy long and rain.

Nothing dampens your spirits does it Sam? Those Rain clouds might.... For sure the rain dampens your spirit, it soaks it to the CORE! But hey what can you do? NOTHING! But this next week will be better, you’ll see, you’ll all see! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

So anyway I guess I’ll close. I hope I didn’t forget anything.....

I am Elder Richardson, one of 2 Americans in SJBV and I end mine epistle, amen.