February 16, 2015
P-day was super chill and pretty relaxing. Mom sent me an email with pictures of the
place where Taylor and I will be living during school. It looks SUPER nice….and made me just a
little bit trunky, but nothing that a little hard work can’t fix. Anyways, today is part of Çarnaval, so that
means that everything is closed, even the place where we buy our water. Soooo, we are going to have to make our water
last until Thursday. We can just boil
tap water.
I am learning about Elder Carmo. We played chess for a couple of carnival
hours. I won 2 out of 3 matches, but
this is the first time in my mission I have been beat by anyone! Elder Carmo loves to read and spends most of
his spare time reading the Book of Mormon.
He would rather read than do his exercises in fact. He is a pretty serious and quiet person, but
there are occasions where he comes out of his shell and surprises me.
Elder Carmo and I are going to go to this special district
leader training in Aldeota tomorrow.
Then next week the mission is doing a special musical presentation for a
open house and Sister Evans is organizing it.
She found 3 pianists to help accompany.
When I told her that I did not have enough time to practice, she go
really upset so I told her that I would do my best to help her. She originally
planned for each pianist to play for 2 songs, but then she ended up giving me a
3rd song because the music was too hard for the other
missionary. It IS HARD, and I don’t know
how I am going to have the time to learn it in a week!
February 17. 2015
Wow, training today was different and very cool. President Bonini got side tracked very easily
and would go off on random tangents (like how to have good personal hygiene in
the bathroom.) But, his main emphasis
was that we should be the examples for the other missionaries to follow. We are called as “captains” of the army. Also, President changed the organization so
that most of the work that used to be done by the zone leaders will now be done
by the district leaders. Lots of the
grunt work was transferred like retrieving mail and supplies from the office,
and organizing our separate district meetings which replace a lot fo the zone
meetings. Basically being a zone leader
now is just a matter of G.H. (I asked my returned Brazilian missionary what
G.H. meant and she told me that it is kind of like having prestige in a
self-righteous way.) The biggest thing
that I got out of the meeting was that we are called to serve, uplift, support,
and drive our districts.
Today we taught a super confusing lesson. We planned to meet up with our ward mission
leader and our super strong investigator at the home of one of our struggling
investigator’s homes.This investigator has been having troubles with just about
everything we teach her, so we decided to just focus on the basics: Faith,
repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. But what should have been simple was far from
it. She had a lot f problems with
understanding the gift of the Holy Ghost, but our stronger investigator made
some really great comments and really learned a lot from the lesson.
February 18, 2015
Today we actually had a zone training meeting…the ones that
we are told are going to be decreased. I
learned a little better how to prepare someone to be baptized. We were taught something completely different
from what my trainer taught me. Our zone
leaders told us that we should be helping our investigators to prepare for
baptism from the very beginning of out lessons.
My trainer taught that we should only invite investigators to be
baptized AFTER they had received an answer to their prayers and knew the church
was true. Haha, now that I am more
experienced, I fully realize how bad of a trainer he was. My zone leader, Elder Muniz (who was also in
my first zone), was telling me that basically I had to train myself with my
trainer being who he is. Recently my
trainer moved back to the Fortaleza area so that he could be near a high school
girl from his last area…boa sorte.
Anyways, tonight we taught E. and N. and they are doing
really well. Her foot is healing nicely
and hopefully she can come to church soon.
We had a good lesson about the 10 commandments especially the part about
only worshipping God. One of the
problems that a lot of our investigators have is they like to pray to the
Virgin Mary. This is a hard thing for N. to understand and to stop.
We also taught a lesson to a less active member tonight who
told us all about how he was watching some of the Carnaval parades in Rio. He said, “you know it is actually super cool
if you could take out the naked feathered ladies.” Anyway, I can see why the church puts a lot
of effort into taking the youth of the church out of the “world” for the week
of Carnaval.
February 19, 2015
Almost everything fell through today. I guess that it was just one of those
days. We were teaching M. and M. (the
reactivated member’s boys), about family history and it was super hard because
they just kept goofing off. My comp.
didn’t help much when the boys got off on a tangent of ancestors being
dinosaurs., and then Elder C. said, “Yeah, you definitely look like your
ancestors.” They laughed, a LOT, all three of them. Elder C. is 27, but oh he acts like a kid
sometime. Sometimes I miss Elder Ferrao.
February 20, 2015
Today we visited people with J.V. and N. (the two young men
who are recent converts) and that was a big mistake. If we take them in the future it will have to
be one at a time because they just mess around. We visited with a less active
member and had a good lesson about faith.
I am really hoping that he will start coming back to church. His biggest problem is that he works on
Sundays, but his nonmember wife is interested in learning more about the
gospel. That visit went well with the
two boys, but the other visit was kind of funny. It is interesting to watch the youth and how
they just go and go and then they just stop out of nowhere. It was hard to give continuity to the lesson,
but in the end it worked out okay.
We visited with a recent convert family tonight as taught
them how to make tapioca. They thought that it was hilarious that an American
man was teaching them how to make a Brazilian cultural food. Elder L. Lopez taught me how to do it and now
I am pretty good at it. Brazilian
tapioca is almost like a crepe.
February 21, 2015
We found a really cool young couple today. We have been teaching one other the other of
them for a long time, but today we got to teach both of them. They have a super-cute little kids who loves
to talk (think Levi when he was little.)
He is only 1 ½ years old so no one can understand him, but he just
chatters away.
We had an answer to prayer today when we felt we should go
and visit with R. Turns out that she was
really desperate for help because her son’s meds ran out and he started having
more seizures. Apparently, they don’t make
the medicine anymore that helped to control his seizures. This was the first one in 4 years and it was
a pretty bad one. After his big
seizure, the young man asked his mom to
call the Elders to give him a blessing, and right after that we showed up at
their house. It is moments like that that remind me why I am on a mission.
February 22, 2015
 |
| Rain soaked Elders! |
Stupid rain! Whenever
it rains, everyone stays inside which makes contacting hard to do. We got pretty wet looking for investigators
who were sleeping. My shoes that used to
be waterproof aren’t anymore. There are
some holes in them and I am just hoping that they can hold out another 3
months.
 |
| Will these shoes last another 3 months? |
M. came to church again today and
she said that she believes that the church is true, but that she didn’t
understand why she should be baptized.
She asked us, “How is it that even if I am a good person, charitable,
obey God’s commandments, that I cannot be saved without baptism?” We taught her about the Plan of Salvation and
also a little bit about baptism for the dead.
Then all of a sudden, she got really interested and then she said that
she knows that God wants her to be baptized and she will prepare herself.
Church
was really good this week. Another two
of our investigators came. We were all
very entertained by a little sparrow that flew into sacrament meeting and
landed on the chorister’s head, twice.
Then for his finale, the little bird flew in for the closing prayer.
We taught an interesting couple today. He is 34 and she is 18, and they are living
with a member. They were having a hard
time because she lost her phone so she called her number and a guy answered it
and gave them an address to come and pick it up. The only problem is that the address is in
one of the most dangerous parts of the city.
Nobody wanted them to go, but she jumped on the back of her boyfriend’s
motorcycle and said, “If I am going to die, I am going to die with him!” Yeah, not too smart.
Then tonight we had another interesting situation happen
when a drunk guy called us over to talk to him.
He said, “I am going to kill someone right now. I have the gun and my motorcycle, and this
guy is flirting with my wife. I want to
kill him, what do you say?” He was super agitated and if we hadn’t been there
to calm him down, I think that he would have done it. Even after we had been there for a while, the
police came to visit his neighbors and stopped to see if there was anything
that they could do to help. I just
thought, “Man, God is sending you a LOT of support right now, don’t do this
thing.” It was an intense ending to our Sabbath night.
Oh and on another note, Sister Evans called me tonight to
tell me that there was another pianist who backed out of the program because
the music was too hard. So, I guess that
I will be playing another 2 pieces. All of the good pianists in our mission
were sister missionaries from my group and they have gone home. I hope that I have time to practice.
 |
| Elder Dornales is more addicted to Rubix than any of us. |
Post script: I
received an email this week from Sister Evans relaying to me that Elder Colvin
finally got his sister’s camera!!!!! It took three months, but it finally made
it and now he can take a few more pictures of the last part of his mission. He
has been without a camera for about 6 months. Thankfully, he has had housemates
who have let him take a few pictures with their cameras.
