TRANSFERRED to Windermere Portuguese North

 These last two weeks have been BUSY. Transfers came around and they surprised me real good. Last week I left the Windermere ward to serve in the Orlando Portuguese Ward. My new apartment is about 10 minutes away from my old one. I'm whitewashing the area with Elder Taylor.

My last week in Windermere english work was great. I'm gonna miss the area a lot. I had a really good relationship with a lot of the members and the people we were teaching. 

My first week in Portuguese work was nonstop. We've been so busy we've had to skip some meals and haven't had time to unpack yet. The missionaries in the area before us didn't do much, but there were a TON of uncontacted referrals and stuff. Our teaching pool already has some amazing people in it, which is a huge blessing and miracle. 

We do a lot of english classes along with the spiritual lessons. The English classes are fun because it helps us get to know the people we are teaching. We have a lot of freedom with how to teach the english classes, so Elder Taylor and I take full advantage by inviting people to memorize the lyrics to Forever by Chris Brown. 

We've had a lot of really spirit-filled moments. Last night we had a lesson with Celly, Edson, and Lucas. When we walked in, Celly had the Joseph Smith Restoration video playing on the TV and said she was just trying to learn more about the church. We talked about the Restoration of Christ's gospel and the Spirit was really strong. They immediately understood and recognized the truth of the message. I was definitely touched by the Spirit, too.

There was a huge BBQ in the Portuguese ward on Saturday so that gave us a good opportunity to get to know the people in the ward and introduce some of the people we are teaching. Elder Taylor and I work well together and I can tell people like us together.

President Cooper's  (my old mission president in Brasilia) daughter Raquel is in the ward. She leads out on zumba classes and invites a ton of nonmembers. It's a good opportunity for Elder Taylor and I to improve our zumba skills and find new people to teach. 

Raquel and I surprised President Cooper by giving him a call. It was awesome to talk to him again.

The guys in my apartment right now are awesome. All of them have Brazilian families which has been really helpful for my portuguese. We started freestyle rapping last Tuesday and haven't really stopped since then. Sometimes we rhyme when we order our food to flex on the fast food workers. My freestyle skills have increased exponentially.

Funny story time: We played ninja strike after dinner with the Merkley family. Ninja strike is basically a game where you swipe at each other's arms to get each other out. Long story short, Elder Reynolds accidentally gave a mean uppercut to Elder Brower's face. Brower busted his lip, ran to the bathroom, got blood everywhere while I fell to the ground laughing.

Well this was a long email but to sum it up, we are grinding and having a lot of fun!

<3 Elder MacLay

Dropped my oatmeal

My companion Elder Cook got sent back to his original assignment in Brazil. I'm in a trio with Elder Brower and Reynolds until transfers next week. We are covering both the Windermere and Olympia wards and the work is POPPIN. We've been super busy and the members of both wards have been feeding us like crazy. There was a two day span where we got fed SEVEN times. 

I did exchanges with Elder Spillet, who's a new missionary and one of my favorites in the mission. We had one of my most memorable days of my mission. We had a really powerful lesson with Barbara and put her on date for baptism on March 20th. 

We also had lunch at the Rampersand's house. They are a really nice catholic family and they live in Isleworth, which is the neighborhood where all the rich celebrities and CEOs in Orlando live. They are an extremely kind and humble family that wanted to feed us because they heard we dedicate two years of our lives to teach the gospel. Their house is SO COOL and they want to have us back.

We went fishing with a guy named Juan as a pass-off lesson with the sisters. Juan is a total homie and taught us the basics of fishing. We hit it off and we'll be setting up a time to meet with him again.

Fishing was a bust tho, all we caught were little tiny fish to use as bait for big fish.

A member took us out to eat at the Bay Hill Club. We show up and find out it is BOUJEE. Everything on the menu was really expensive. Turns out, this club hosts the Arnold Palmer Invitational which is this huge pro golf tournament that will be going down this next week. 

We are teaching a Brazilian lady named Danielle and she is awesome. She likes coming to the english ward but we generally teach her lessons in Portuguese. My portuguese is rusty but I've gotten to use it a lot more lately.

I started reading the book The Infinite Atonement and it's cool how often it emphasizes the importance of The Atonement of Jesus Christ. Without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, there wouldn't be any other doctrine, hope, or salvation. There's nothing more important to understand than The Atonement of Jesus Christ.

<3 Elder MacLay