Week 33!

hey there my good old family,

how's lifw going in colorado, utah, washington, and wherever anyone else is living that is reading this?  in case you're wondering me and Elder Fikus are staying together in Vichadero for another 6 weeks!  yeah we get along pretty well and we work super hard.  we're here in Rivera once again because we have to come in for the first district meeting of every change.  but we had a great time today playing soccar, having an asado and recieving zone T Shirts.  this week has been another interresting week in Vichadero.  we realized that someone has been breaking into our house and stealing money! not to worry, it was only like 50 pesos ($2.50) that they stole and nothing more.  but we've been on a hunt trying to find our who it is because we ALWAYS lock our doors and have our windows closed so we don't know how they are getting in.  but oh well,  this last sunday was Elder Fikus' 21st birthday!!!  we made some chocolate chip cookies because his mom sent him some brown sugar (they don't have brown sugar down here, and if you find it it's super expensive and doesn't taste the same) so we made cookies and a cake!  the next day (Monday) we went over to the Bishop's house and had a family night with them and made s'mores with them because edler fikus was also sent marshmellows because there isn't any down here either and they absolutely LOVED them and kept saying stuff like "you guys must really miss your food back there" because they loves the s'mores and we also brought some chocolate chip cookies and they had NEVER tried any of those before.  haha oh yeah this last sunday we were walking down a street like at 7:30 or so at night and we passed a tiny evangelical church like literally probably 6 feet by 12 feet where a guys was just going nuts so we started walking slower to try to hear what he was saying and a lady came out and invited us into the meeting so we went in for a little bit.  he was one of those pastors that was saying like one HUGE prayer  and didn't take a little break in between words, it was also in portuguese so it was even harder to understand.  but while praying he goes up to a lady in the front row (first row out of the three rows in the room) and puts his hand on her head and from what i could tell from the VAST AMOUNT of portuguese i know (Joke) said stuff like "be filled with the spirit! let the light of Christ fill you! keep filling! FILL UP! MORE! MORE!" while he was saying stuff like that she started shaking and like moving her head really weird.  haha it was definitely a different expirience that i've never been able to see! hahaha after like 5 or 6 minutes we left, while we were talking after we both were saying stuff like how weird the atmosphere was in there.  like we could literally tell the difference in spirit in there.  but besides all of that stuff happening we really didn't have anything else...  we've been just trying to find new people to teach.  we really need to find some new people to teach...  so we'll see how this next week goes :)  hey these two pictures are of my zone in Rivera!  it's tied for the biggest Zone in the mission! 13 companionships! 26 MISSIONARIES!

thanks for the emails and the love!

Elder Atkinson