New Picture, Chess and God's power

Here's the update for this week!  I like that he'll send a couple of pictures.  That way I can do a visual inspection like I'm sure all mother's do!  You know, is he eating? did he iron his shirt? is he happy? are his teeth falling out? Proof of the gifts/letter we've sent on good faith that they'd reach him!

From Elder Darke:  

So this last week was really interesting.

  My zone is trying to learn the brazilian national anthem, and it is totally different then the american nation anthem.  However it is fun :D.

  My zone leaders are brazillian and they are super cool.  Here is a picture of them, my companion, and me :D.

  So they are super awesome!  (and we are in our church building.  All the floors are tile here :D.)  

  So my portugese is progressing super slowly, however I know that the lord will help me and strengthen me in areas that i of myself am weak :D.  (like learning languages).  

  I am having a great time here though :D.  For P-Day I made a chess board :D.  (its actually just a peice of paper with a grid on it, however it is a chess board :D).  We dont have any chess peices so we just use coin money that we have left over :D.  It is super fun :D.

  Something that i should tell you though is what happened the other day.  So we had to give someone a blessing.  (i didnt do it).  However my companion told me before that i was probably going to.  So as i thought about it, i was actually less nervous then the times i did it in english.  Simply for the reason that I knew that heavenly father would help me as much as i needed.  So i wasnt worried.  I didnt end up giving the blessing, but the peace and comfort that i felt as it approached is just more proof to me of the overwelming love and power of god :D.

  So the last thing today is the simple act of trusting in our lord.  Learning portugese has been interesting becuse it was different then i thought it would be.  but that is were trusting in our lord come in.  Becuase he knows exactally what he is doing.  He has a plan that can help us better then we could think possible.  This plan is usually different from what we think is going to happen.  As we put our trust in the lord, both in that his power can do anything, and in his timing is ultimatly perfect we will be able to have patience to wait out the storms of life, while looking for the rainbows in the clouds.  Life wont be easy, it never was ment to be.  However there can be joy found, and miracles seen as we trust in our Savior, Lord, and God.

:D

-Elder Darke

P.s. Missions are so amazing!

P.s.s. Thank you for all the letters that i received!  I loved them all :D.

P.s.s.s. and (i dont know if you can see this well, but i really like this)

Thanks to all!

Love, 

Melanie (Mom)