Conference Fiasco

Happy late birthday to me, Happy on time birthday to Bailey!

Monday March 31st

            So this P-day was pretty good.  First off I really enjoyed my emails and especially Dad’s email when he shared the thought: “The refiner’s fire has the power to reduce you to useless ash or to turn your spiritual strength into a gift worth giving!” 

            I finally made my birthday cake that Mom sent months ago.  I guess I can celebrate Bailey’s (my oldest sister’s) birthday since she turns 25 today.  The cake was actually pretty good.  The sad part is that was my last of the cookie and cake mixes in my stash.  I guess that I will have to wait until my next package! 

            The rest of P-day consisted of watching both Mulan and the Lion King.  It was so great to watch Mulan in English!  But we watched the Lion King in Portuguese.  "O Circulo sem fim" does not come close to “The Circle of Life” that I grew up with.  All- in-all it was a good distraction for me for a little bit.  Now I am ready to work again!

Elder B. made a little bed for his Movie watching.

Tuesday April 1st

            Today we were going to visit with P. and C. before our weekly planning session, but Elder Cet. didn’t think that it was a good idea, so we didn’t go.  I hope that nothing will happen to them to affect their upcoming baptism…because we can’t visit with them again until Thursday.

            Anyway, we got a referral from a member at lunch to visit a non- member family who lives above a bakery.  When we went to visit them that afternoon, I had to go upstairs alone because the only access was a very rickety spiral staircase that could not hold my companion.  It went okay, but it felt weird not to have my companion by my side.  Other than that, nothing super exciting happened, just the typical missionaries routine/marriage counseling.  I don’t know what it is with people, but within the first 15 minutes of talking with them, you can know how their marriage is and what their family problems are. 

Wednesday April 2nd

            Today we had specialized training from the assistants and interviews with President Souza.  Elder B and I were last on the list to be interviewed.  Training was good. We learned how to explain the Book of Mormon in a little bit better way so that people would actually read it instead of throwing it away.  It was pretty good, especially for Elder Car. first training that he has given.  Anyways, at the end of our meeting we all decided that our goal for baptisms this month as a zone….80, EIGHTY!!! Not even joking. The cool thing is that I think that we can actually make it this time because a bunch of us have entire families on date for baptism. 

            The interviews went a little long, so we ate lunch and came back to the chapel and still waited for our interviews.  While we waited, we got the chance to talk to Sister Souza and she LOVES the piano!  I talked with her for a while and she basically did exactly what mom did with our family.  All five of her kids play the piano.  During the interview with the president I think that I spoke pretty well. President Souza and I talked for a while about how I could be a better missionary.  He said that the trait that is holding me up from being a better missionary is my willingness to accept advice from my leaders.  Well I already know that it is a problem of mine that I have a comeback whenever I am criticized…this actually boils down to PRIDE.  So I need to work on this.

Thursday April 3

            We had our weekly meeting with Erivan, our ward mission leader, and got some things accomplished.  We also talked about funny stories and experiences Erivan has had.  We had a blast.  He fed us lunch too.  I am going to miss Erivan, he is really a great ward mission leader! 

            We spent the rest of the day/week teaching people about prophets and general conference.  I hope that it catches on so that we can have a good turn out for conference.  We passed by one investigator and had a difficult conversation with the.  He was so contentious that it was very frustrating for me.  I have never had such a desire to punch someone like I did this guy, but still I kept my cool on the outside.

Friday April 4th (missing page)

Saturday April 5th

            Where to begin…All of our efforts and planning for this week fell to pieces with trying to broadcast General Conference in our chapel.  Well, WE didn’t have any problems with it, but our Bishop didn’t even show up so without the “presiding priesthood” present they would not broadcast the session to our chapel.  We had to turn away lots of our investigators and less actives who showed up for the conference, and Of course we also missed a session because we had to wait at the chapel to tell people who we had invited that it would be shown at the stake center instead.  We did end up getting the second session broadcast and we had 6 investigators show up for that.  The other missionaries hat 5, so overall we had 11 visitors watching conference.  That turned out well, and I personally really enjoyed conference. I hope that everything goes well tomorrow.  P. and C. passed their interviews for baptism!!

Sunday April 6th

            Well I didn’t think that things could go much worse that yesterday, but they did!  C. got really sick last night and ended up going to the hospital to check it out….so the baptism fell through.

            We watched the priesthood session on Sunday, which was lucky because we only had one counselor from the bishopric present to preside.  That is really tough when your leadership fails to follow through because there is nothing that we can do to compensate. Our bishop actually told us that our investigators aren’t important and his concern is the members of the church.  So what can we do? I didn't get to watch Sunday’s conference because of the same authorization issue and we couldn't watch conference in our chapel and so I bit the bullet with one of my zone leaders and was running behind everyone trying to relocate them to the stake center (we had marked 42 investigators just in my companionship alone) annnnnnnd we had to wait in the chapel to apologize to anyone who was late. Other than that, this week was great and we still had 9 people visit conference, so that was good.