Here are a few thoughts from Lucas's email to me this week.

This week's been a bit hard, mostly on my back. I've started the new treatments twice a week and they at first made me sore in my abs, but the last three days or so my back muscles have really hurt and it's been hard to walk. But I've been out working with Elder Wanlass, as Elder Zanni had foot surgery on Tuesday, and Elder Bortolo's toe still isn't better.

Elders Buchanan, Zanni, Bortolo and Wanlass

We taught an investigator of theirs - João. And we invited him to be baptized August 7th, and he said yes. Which was awesome! He came to church too.
We were finally able to teach a small family that we met 2 weeks ago. It was a bit crazy with the 3 little ones running around and they didn't understand a lot, but they became more open and want us to come back another time.

We had a fanTAStic zone conference with President this week. He gave an amazing training about chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel
, which are the attributes of Christ. But instead of talking directly about each attribute, he instead focused on Christ. He used the first few paragraphs of the chapter as his basis. We watched the bible video and read the verses when Christ called Peter, Andrew, James and John to discipleship. "Come follow me, and I will make ye Fishers of Men." He talked about how every other chapter in PMG is focused on what we DO, but this chapter is focused on who we ARE. Christ made these four men, what they could have never have been of themselves. He offers the same call to us. And he can make us who we never could be ourselves, like Him. Then he invited us to follow the example of Ben Franklin in choosing one attribute a week to work on (Franklin had 12 Virtues) and to do everything we can to develop that attribute that week. There is a list of 54 attributes at the end of Chapter 8. So he invited us to pick one this week and then one more every week for the rest of our mission.