August 19th

 This week was pretty busy for me, the last week of the transfer always is.

In the office, I spent a lot of time wrapping things up for the heroes (missionaries going home) and the new missionaries getting here next Tuesday. This transfer there will be a lot of changes. Like I’ve mentioned, out of the group of missionaries going home there are a lot of leaders; 11! We’re losing a lot of experienced missionaries, but at the same time this will give a bunch of others to learn and grow with new leadership callings. It should be cool to see what happens!

So something that happened this week that got me a little nervous… One of my responsibilities is to take care of all the foreigners on the mission (passports, documents, etc.) and in order to leave the country without a fine, you need to have your passport and an orange card that we get from the police. But, to not talk about the whole process to get this card, I’ll just say there are things that you need to do to get it, and those things weren’t done with one of the missionaries that are going home on Monday! So when I got to the police station to pick it up and found out that his card was in São Paulo, it was pretty stressful. I talked to a few people in São Paulo and with President Scholz and we’ll probably just end up sending him without it even though the church will have to pay a fine. I didn’t know about this process because whoever was executive secretary when this elder got on the mission didn’t do some of the necessary steps and there wasn’t any way for me to know. But now I’ve learned from it and know what to look for, so hopefully it won’t happen again! Learning from experience is something that I’ve been doing a lot recently!

My comp Elder Vilas Boas also had his bday yesterday, and his mom got ahold of one of our recent converts, Fátima, to make a cake for him and have it ready in our apartment when we got home. I’ve been talking with the other elders that live with us and we had Fátima drop it off with them and they brought it up to the apartment to get it ready. I was with him, Elder O’Neill, and Elder Seaman. So when we got home we walked in and there was the cake ready and 6 liters of Coke!! It’s funny because we aren’t drinking it anymore, but Fátima doesn’t know! We also bought 2 pizzas, goof times!

So last Thursday on the 17^th I hit the 1 year mark! So crazy! Can you believe it’s already been so long? With one year down I’ve been thinking a bunch about how the first half of my mission has gone and what I’ve learned. Sometimes when I think about myself before the mission, it doesn’t even seem like I’ve changed much. But then when I pay attention to small stuff and remember things that I did while at home I can see the differences. I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned until now is how to appreciate the small blessings we receive every day and how to depend on the Lord in all parts of my life, not only with church related things. All the study we do as missionaries and seeing the gospel in action in the lives of those who didn’t know it before has really opened my eyes to how much Heavenly Father and Christ love each of us personally. They’re waiting to bless us in all we do, but we need to ask for their help and seek it out! My testimony of this has grown so much, that when we are obedient and sincerely look for the Lord’s help we’ll get it. Sometimes we don’t get the help we expected or in the way we hoped, but in the end the Lord’s way will always help us in the best way possible. Yesterday I got to do a split with my first companion and trainer, Elder O’Neill. It’s hard to believe, but he’s heading home on Monday! It made me realize how fast time has gone! It just seems like a few months ago that I was with him in Araçatuba, my first area, dying of heat and not understanding anything in Portuguese. We also realized that now I have the same amount of time on the mission that he had when he was training me. Even though it really didn’t seem like it at the beginning, time goes by super fast out here, and it’s only going faster! I’m really grateful that I have one more year to serve as a missionary. I’ve made mistakes, had success, made lots of memories, done some things I should’ve done differently, but I’m learning and I’m ready to take on this last year! The mission is great!

Love, Elder Odom