32. To My Family

A letter to my family in Nampa, Idaho, written on a bus en route from Rio de Janeiro to Recife on Monday, April 13, 1970, as I was being transferred from Rio de Janeiro to Maceió, Alagoas, in northeastern Brazil.

Dear family,

Please excuse this letter if it starts looking a bit sloppy. I am writ¬ing it on a bus as we are heading out of Rio de Janeiro for parts un¬known. Get out a map and search around for northeastern Brazil (the part that sticks out towards Africa) for a city called Maceió in the state of Alagoas. That will be my new home for the next few months.

We just finished a lunch stop in a town called Muriaé in the state of Minas Gerais. We left Rio at 7:00 this morning and will reach Recife, Pernam¬buco, tomorrow night about 10:30—or, in other words, about a forty-hour trip by bus. This is a big country, and we aren’t even covering half of it. After arriving in Recife we will stay overnight with the elders there, and the next morning (Wednesday) I’ll take a four-hour bus trip to Maceió. My traveling companion is going on to João Pessoa, Paraiba.

There territory we are covering now is quite hilly grassland with occasional patches of farmland. The air smells so fresh and the sky appears so blue here in Minas Gerais. I guess spending an entire year and four months in Rio’s smog and congestion and traffic made me forget what clean air and sky were like. Earlier this morning we traveled through a most beautiful tropical forest while still in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has twenty-two states. Until today I knew only two of them: Guanabara, where the city of Rio de Janeiro is, and the state of Rio de Janeiro. By the end of this trip I will have also been in the states of Minas Gerais, Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, and Pernambuco.

Last Saturday night I learned I was to be transferred but did not know where. Sunday afternoon I went to the mission home to pick up my tickets and to learn of my new assignment. Later Sunday afternoon, at sacrament meeting, I realized how attached I had become to the branch and its members in the seven months I labored there.

The Brazilians are a warm, emotional people, a people you grow to love very much, and you might imagine, therefore, what an experience it was to say good-bye to all of them. I had served as branch organist most of the seven months and so found myself to be more known than I had ever imagined. It was kind of like being hero of the night. Then after all that I had to pack, and here I am this morning, or rather afternoon now, traveling.

As I consider how quickly the last seven months passed, it causes some concern as to how rapidly the remaining eight months will slip by. How fruitful and productive those months will be is largely mine to determine. Success in missionary work, or probably in any work, is when preparation meets opportunity.

Yesterday my heart swelled with gratitude as I realized that both branches were individually stronger and larger than the single branch I came to seven months ago. To see in such a short time the building of the kingdom and the strengthening of Zion is most gratifying.

Next Sunday, which I will be missing, is another district quarterly conference, at which at attendance of 1,400 is expected. The goal in January was 1,000, and some 1,150 Saints attended. The Lord’s work is going forward! Learning of new stakes in Lima, Peru, and Tokyo, Japan, made me happy. An article in the last Liahona said that before the end of 1970 there could likely be nine or ten new stakes in Brazil, São Paulo’s two stakes becoming two or three more, with stakes also in seven other cities, one of which could be Rio. The Church is growing faster in Brazil than in any other nation of the world except the United States! Wow! It is exciting and humbling to be a partner with destiny.

Look on page 24 of the February 1970 Improvement Era. Have you ever seen a more beautiful picture of Sister McKay?

May the choicest blessings of heaven be yours. Smile and be happy. Until some other time, tchau.