Can I take a picture

 Whaddup family. Life here in Castanhal is choice dude, even crazier that the area I'm in is called miracle cause this week was FULL of miracles. Lemme drop the marvelous miracle montage:

 - The house here is way nice 

 - We got 4 Elders at the joint (shoutout E. Albuquerque, Averett & the Domanator) 

 - HOT WATER in the shower 

 - The Zone's made up of nothing but dawgs (shoutout Zona mais legal) 

 - Elder Doman is a christlike attribute collector 

️ - The church building is SUPER cool here in Castanhal and close to where we live! 

 - The members here seem like such homies & all the dudes my age are dawgs (shoutout Sardinha, iykyk) 

 - There's a seafood restaurant right next to the church whole owner's a member of the church, so she lets us eat at her restaurant for free!! Bless uppp

 - We've been getting POURED on all week, it's good to be back in Pará 

 - There's this INSANELY nice family of recent converts we've been visiting who are so so generous with us. They already made us a bunch of desserts and bought us umbrellas to save us from the rain 

 - Dude that we were teaching gifted me his shirt mid-lesson 

 - Batismoooo this week woot woot!! 

Alright let's slow down, lemme give yall the run down on those last two miraclistic points from the week. 

In the parable of the good Samaritan, the Savior taught us what it means to truly love our neighbor. Those who gives to others what they have, and treat them how they would want to be treated. We met someone this week named Marcelo, who demonstrated this principle to us through his actions and then some! 

There we were, Elder Doman and I, knocking doors in the rain. Seems like it's always raining when legendary stories happen, huh? Little tip for all the kids out there, enfim. Marcelo saw us from out his window and shouted for us to enter his house. 

He let us sit at his table, gave us hot chocolate and warm bread, and listened to our message attentively. He explained that he was Catholic and that he didn't have much interest in being apart of another church, but he believed that above anything else, Christ taught to love. Love him above anything else, and love our neighbor like we'd want to be loved. And he's right! Those are the two greatest commandments after all. 

This guy Marcelo also had a wicked sweet green shirt on. So there I thunk, "That'd be a sweet design for a Zone T-Shirt," and I asked him if I could take a picture of his shirt for inspo. He thought, looked at his shirt, then looked at me, and straight up took his shirt off and gave it to me as a present! You guys I was in shock, both over the fact this dude turned shirtless in like 2 seconds and the fact he just GAVE me his shirt out of nowhere. 

But this guy Marcelo taught me an extremely valuable lesson about charity. 100% this guy has the love of Christ in his heart, and I'd be lucky if I can learn to love and give as openly as he did. 

As for the Baptism tale, you guys this week. Man I got here and we just hit the ground running. We were working hard to teach the mom of the previously stated super nice family I mentioned above, so that she could get baptized this week. It was all green lights for her baptism, but tragedy struck when on Friday she got hit with the dreaded flu. We gave her a blessing and prayed so that she could get better, but no dice. She was worsening and we started to think we'd have to reagend her baptism. 

Saturday we decided to fast for her. We started our fast after lunch, and in the evening stopped by her house again to see if she'd gotten any better. Her daughters told us she was still in no shape to go to church no less get baptized. So we left her house, still with faith that a miracle would happen but accepting the reality that we'd better just advise the ward that the baptism would be postponed. 

But, AS we were writing the message to the ward, and I do mean like I was seconds away from sending, we suddenly received a message from her daughter saying that she had gotten better and that things WOULD in fact work out for her baptism!

Photo we took seconds after learning it'd work out ^

So boom! We quick got over to her house, did a baptismal interview online, she passed, sunday she arrived at church and badda bing badda boom she had her baptism!! Such a miracle. You guys, the situation was completely in God's hands, there was nothing we could have done to change the situation. It was by sheer mercy she was cured enough to be baptized, and by sheer mercy we had the priviledge to participate in her baptism yesterday. Now her and her two daughters are members of the church! 

So there you guys go. First week of the Spring of '26 Miracle Saga doneski. Sacrafice, Obedience and Patience = Miracles. Love y'all incredibly, thank you for reading! Peace ouuutuh 

ELDER HILLSTEAD