April 3, 2015
I will say it again: I hate holidays. They suck. Everyone here is drunk in the streets. The
only difference about Sexta-fieva santa is that they are all drunk on wine
instead of beer. Not even joking. Wine is cheaper than grape juice here. Sad.
We had a bunch of people tell us that they wanted to come to
church and that they would, but we will see about that. We did have this super cool contact where
this guy had a flat tire and he was really struggling. We passed by him, but then I said, hey let’s
see if he wants some help. He gratefully
accepted our help, but in the end we couldn’t help at all because their car’s
spate tire has one of those master locks and it just wouldn’t come off. Anyways, he was super friendly and we gave
their reference to the missionaries in their area.
April 4, 2015
Wow, conference was awesome.
I thought that it was kind of funny that almost all of the talks were
about marriage, especially in the first session which was the one that my
family attended in SLC. Our
investigator, M. went to both Saturday sessions and to the Women’s session
rebroadcast on Friday night. She took a
bunch of notes so that was good to see. I
have reached a point in my Portuguese that I can take notes in
Portuguese as I am listening. Sometimes,
when the English speakers speak quickly, the translators also have to talk very
quickly to catch up, and then it is hard to take notes. But when Boyd K. Packer spoke, it was super
easy because he spoke very slowly and I could understand the Portuguese
translator without a problem. I loved
his talk about the cookies and a kiss…only problem is that I brought cookies to
the conference with me so the other elders gave me a hard time.
After the last session, we taught M. She showed us her notes
and the answers to questions that we asked her last time we met. This time there were no hearts or poems next
to my name! She loved conference and
said that she would bring her little sister to the Sunday sessions.
April 5, 2015
M. is our only investigator who keeps her commitments. We seriously were running after these
investigators today and no one came to conference. The stake center is about 30 minutes walking
distance from our area, and we left to try to get people to come after each session. No one else came. Yeah, we are going to have to drop a bunch of
people because they will not keep commitments.
But, M and her little sister did come to all the sessions today The little sister has never been baptized
into any church, but she has expressed interest in the past in being baptized too.
I have all of my notes about conference written down in
another notebook, but my favorite talk from all the sessions was President
Uchtfdorf’s talk about Grace. This
morning I studied that topic and I had been reading the same scriptures that
Presient Uchtdorf shared in his talk. It
really touched me.
I also thought that it was hilarious when Ucthdorf started
talking in German. I could actually
understand the Spanish speaking guy and then when President Uchtdorf got up to
speak, I couldn’t understand him and I thought wow, I have lost my English
completely!
April 6, 2015
Well I am sick and tired of this whole contact lens thing
with Elder Shelton. We have to go BACK
again next p-day. It is ridiculous and a
huge time waster. Ever since he got
here, we haven’t been able to have a normal p-day. On the bright side, we got a free haircut
from our investigator. That was nice
because my hair was getting really long.
Anyways, with M. we are just trying to draw out the lessons to fill the
time until her baptism. We left her to
read D&C 76 this week.
April 7, 2015
Today I went on splits with Elder Cooper. It was alright, but we did a couple of things
that I wasn’t so comfortable with. It
was just his teaching style which was taught to him by his other
companion. One thing that they do is
pray with their contacts so they can “count” it as a lesson. Our president told us that we shouldn’t say
prayers or try to count contacts like a lesson.
So yeah, I didn’t feel so hot about that. Anyways, other than that we did really well.
We are both ancient in the mission and we both teach well, and I LOVED working
in a pair for a change. One of the
annoying things though is that President Bonini called a last minute meeting in
Aldeota at 8:00 am. It takes at least an
hour to get there. So we have to finish our divisions by 6 or 6:30. That means that we have to wake up about 5 am
tomorrow.
April 8, 2015
Well we got to the bus stop at 6:20 and the other elders
waited for us until 6:19 and then went back home. So, I had to go to the
meeting with the same clothes on that I had on yesterday. This meeting turned out to be really good and
super annoying at the same time. I was
all about our responsibility to get results for the Lord. For 3 HOURS…yeah, 3 HOURS of listening to our
assistants pounding their chests and telling us how hard they work. But I have passed through their areas and I
know that they only have one active convert out of 17 baptisms. I have also had zone leaders brag about the
same thing, telling us how you shouldn’t go even one week without a
baptism. The annoying part is that
everyone knows that those two elder baptized a LOT of kids under the age of 12
and a LOT of girls and that when they leave the area none of their converts
stay active. These kind of elders are
annoying especially because they usually don’t keep all the rules and they
still get results?! I work my tail off,
and keep all the rules, and I see almost no results.
Well the meeting was so long that we didn’t have time to go
back to our area for lunch. So, I ended
up paying for Elder Cooper at Burger King.
The plus side to that was that there were a lot of other elders there
and the restaurant let us use our coupons.
I love coupons! We got to talk
with a bunch of the other elders and I ate lunch with Elder J. Silva. That was
nice to catch up and it turns out that he is living with Elder Nogueira and
Elder Yarrington, my two “sons” in the mission.
I could only imagine how that would work out. They both get super stressed, super
easy. Kindof funny how three of the four
elders in that house have been my companions.
I heard that Elder N. and Elder Y. got in an argument because Elder Y.
wanted to study Spanish for some reason, so Elder N. argued with him that he
shouldn’t be studying Spanish when he still couldn’t speak Portuguese. “You need to study your mission
language!” It’s kind of funny. When we finally got off the splits we visited
with a bunch of people and also dropped them.
That was sad for me. No we have
almost no investigators.
April 9, 2015
We had our zone training today, and it was actually really
good. Our new zone leader is Elder Wood
and he is a good leader. His family sent Easter chocolates so that helped make
the meeting even better! This meeting
was Elder Medrado’s last one. (I love that guy) and a couple of other missionaries
first zone meeting. Elder Guilherme (or
Barros da Silva) was excited as always, but now a little bit more because he is
finally not the newest in the mission anymore!
April 10, 2015
Just as an example of how non-commital Brazilians are, there
is this member who is waiting for his mission call who has promised to go
teaching with us three times this week and has stood us up all three
times! It is bad enough when
investigators flake out, but member?
That is just cruel. M. is still
doing well but there is this drama thing in the ward about dating and it is
just all very confusing to try to understand a teenaged girl’s world. Fortunately the drama is not stopping her
interest in the gospel. She said that
she is having a hard time because all of her friends abandoned her ever since
she started coming back to church. But
she is very committed and has attended all of her meeting including seminary.
April 11, 2015
So almost all of the teacher’s quorum members have set goals
to serve missions and so we are planning to have them come and teach with us on
Saturdays. They are a pretty dedicated
group of young men. I don’t remember
being that dedicated at a teacher.
April 12, 2015
Today in sacrament meeting, the bishop read a list of the
names of members whose temple recommends have expired, or are about to
expire. I am pretty sure that you can’t
or shouldn’t do that. One of our
strongest recent converts didn’t come to church today. We stopped by to see him and he said that he
was thinking about leaving the church.
His brothers are always looking at porn, which his mom supports, and
they make fun of him for going to church.
We talked to him and helped him through it, I hope. I am tired…so very tired. And then there is the issue of my shoes which are all passed the expiration point. I took them to a different repair man and he was appalled at the repair the other guy did. I am hoping to be able to get my Mr. Mac shoes replaced and then I will just repair my other cheap pair. I am especially not looking forward to riding
the bus all the way to Aldeota tomorrow. It has been miserably hot and raining which is a weird combination. At the end of the day, my feet look like this:
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