Papaya's and hammocks???

You know that there is a little boredom when you get pictures of large papayas as a "highlight" of the week!

Soooo what exactly happened this week….We worked our butts off, that’s for sure!  We taught a lot of people, invited all of them to come to church, and only 2 people showed up.  Elder G said that this is really strange and that he’s never been in an area this difficult to work in.  To me, it feels like my stateside mini-mission. I’m tired, but I have been tired since day 1 of the mission because I am putting my all into this.  However, the fatigue definitely got worse this week because the other Elders have decided to hang out in our room talking for ….a VERY LONG time at night.  Sometime until midnight.  It’s getting super annoying!  I NEED my sleep.  It is not a matter of being lazy, or a sleepyhead as they like to call me, it’s that I literally NEED to sleep and they are not letting me get to bed. Then I get up when we are supposed to ….tired!

Working hard with no actual results can really get to you sometimes, but we're STARTING to start to see the fruits of our efforts. The only problem is that we're going to be transferred before the fruits actually ripen. Still, if you think about the role that you play as though you would be in a symphony, it makes a lot more sense. Everyone plays a part, but like in a symphony, there are melodies and there are harmonies. Right now, I'm definitely playing a harmony, but if any of you have ever played in a symphony you would know that just because you play a harmony doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. In fact, sometimes it's even harder than the melody! We can learn something from each one of our trials if we have the right kind of attitude. I won't pretend to say that I have that kind of attitude all of the time, but I'm working on it. I know that when we fall, we can choose to lie down, or to get up. I guess I'm in the process of getting up (you know, that kind of person who ALMOST gets up, and then falls right back down again? That's me! Haha).

With the upcoming transfer I'm a little bit worried about if I'll leave, if I'll stay, if I'll train, or... I don't even know, I just know that whatever will happen is going to be hard! That's the mission! However, when we do hard things we learn the most.

A couple of exciting things happened this week.  We got stopped by this very drunk or drugged (or both) lady, and of course Elder G loves to talk to drunk people and try to teach them.  Well she wasn’t making any sense and it got to be pretty crazy…so I was like, let’s wrap this up Elder and get out of here!  Run away, run away…. haha

Our lesson with G was awesome! (He was the guy who walked in to church last week with a Book of Mormon under his arm.) It was a 3 hour lesson.  He is easily our best investigator that we’ve found here in Fortaleza.  He showed a lot of interest and asks questions that we have had to give very basic answers for.  But, he wanted the profound answers!  I ended up talking to him about how in the gospel we first need to “drink the milk before we eat the meat” just like we learn to walk before we can run.  We ended up teaching him lessons 1-3, the law of tithing, and keeping the Sabbath day holy.  Seriously, he was just so hungry for more and more information. It was a great lesson! 

Another fun experience was yesterday when we were trying to contact some referrals.  So we were walking down this street that the reference was on and we see 2 SQUADRONS of policia especi (special police force) at the end of the street right where the street turned and continued into a favela (slum neighborhood). We ended up turning around because Elder G thought that the address didn’t exist (because he could not see the entrance to the favela). I told him, nah – it’s back there behind the police.  When I finally convinced him to go back, most of the police had left, so we entered the favela and looked for the address.  Unfortunately, there was a birthday party at that address…AND the police force!  We couldn’t really crash the party with heavily armed policemen present! Haha… I guess we will have to go back for that referral!

I bought a hammock this week which I am loving!

I'm running out of time to email, and every week seems to get shorter and shorter. Keep the faith everyone out there! Have a great week! 

Elder Colvin