Meeting President and Sister Pavan

So we took off and left the CTM and headed to Porto Alegre where i am now. Crazy! I was assigned to Venâncio Aires. Really cool place. My companion was waiting for me here, Elder Cavalcante, such a great missionary! He's native from Brasilia and speaks English, too!!! Crazy huh? We live by ourselves in our small apartment but it has everything we need. Its great. So our first week was awesome i kinda am just trying to grasp onto how everything works here and just following in the footsteps of Elder Cavalcante. He's a great teacher and great worker. Hes been out 1 year now. The members here are very nice and were trying to work with them and things are kind of hard with them and showing them the big picture of missionary work and we are trying to resolve the problem so just pray for us and the members. We are the only two elders in this area so it makes it quite hard to get to everyone cause its a huge area and all we can do is walk. I love the work. I just am trying to do better at talking to people cause im really shy - not shy to share our message, but shy to talk because I might sound really dumb in Portuguese saying the right thing or not. haha We have found alot of new people to teach this week and 4 of our investigators are really progressing. We have a baptism this week! First one! Bruno who's a 10 year old kid who is going to be baptized Saturday. I'm very excited! We had a very cool spiritual experience the other day; it was awesome. Our investigator Adroaldo is doing well and he needs to gain a testimony so we went over to teach about Joseph Smith again and he has already had all the lessons already but hasn't come to church. Anyways, we were there and we noticed he had a Liahona (Ensign) that a member had given him the day before and so we were inspired to change our lesson and go over one of the talks in there about baptism and missionary work. It was a great lesson and at the end we challenged him to kneel down with us along with his wife. We knelt down and had him say a prayer asking God if the church was true, if Joseph Smith was a prophet, and if the Book of Mormon was true, so he said the prayer and then at the end just stayed kneeling down in silence. There was such a peaceful feeling there. We didn't say anything but kept sitting there forever! We were on our knees for 20 minutes before he said anything. It was crazy but i felt sooo good after and he said he was going to come to church next Sunday. He had never said that to us before. It was awesome. Things are going great; the members feed us lunch EVERY day so it's awesome. We eat oatmeal for breakfast pretty much everymorning or nothing if we are short on money haha dinner is very scarce here too. So all is well here just trying to be more brave to say things to people so I can really start participating in the lessons.
We got to teach in a school today. It was so cool. Everybody was looking at me all big eyed and stuff cause I'm from the United States. They got quite a kick out of it when I tried to speak Portuguese and say stuff about the church; it was so fun though. I loved it! Everything is going great. I'm just trying to work hard so i can baptize and bring people to this gospel. It truly does bring so much joy in our lives. I looove the Brazilian kids; they are so nice to me already. We had a family home evening with a members family last night and all the little kids ages 2-10 sat on the couch with me and Elder Cavalcante . It was quite crowded but they are so innocent and love the missionaries. The conditions here in some of the houses are quite poor, but the people are so humble and willing to give everything for the missionaries. They are so very nice to us and im so grateful. Keep the faith!
Love Elder Halford!
They have a new address to send packages letters and everything to us...
the address is:
Elder Skyler James Halford
Caixa Postal 13008
Cep: 91010-971 – Porto Alegre - RS – Brasil