Hey Mom and Family! 9-24-12
Well, I’m now fine. Apparently your guys' prayers totally worked, I’m OK, I just have a little bit of a cough and a runny nose, but the blood stopped a day or two later, and I haven’t had anything close to a headache. I completely forgot about the meds until the very end of the cold, and by that time it was too late. I guess I’ll save it for later if I get sick before I go home. They have this sinus Tylenol medicine that really helped though, so that was alright. I guess it clears out the sinus and relieves pain so it was a good combo. I gave a cough to my two companions though, but nothing too bad.
So about Elder Monteiro, we're totally fine, apparently I’m the only one in the house that likes and interacts with him. I feel kind of bad. I think all he needs is a friend. So I’m trying to play that role. It's not that I still don't think he's a little bit annoying, but I feel like I can understand him a lot better, now that my fever's gone at least. I think he's gotten a lot better now as well. We're all humbling ourselves now and he wants to change and is asking us to help him change, by having us tell him if he does anything that annoys us. It's cool to see how the gospel changes us in our lives.
Anyways, this week was tiring. We did a lot of divisions to see the needs of our zone. I did a division with the elders that live with us that also happen to be district leaders. They're working hard, but they're just not seeing results and for that they're feeling a little bit down. Anyways, while they were doing a division, Elder Duffy did another division with one of his old companions. This other kid, elder Benício has a cool story, he was an atheist like 3 years ago, but just out of nowhere felt like he should try going to church to prove if there was a God or not. He went to a Mormon church, felt something, and decided to believe and get baptized. Now he's on the mission, but is having problems with the mission in itself. He thinks that the mission is corrupted with slackers. It's tough because he's got a point of view on the work just completely different. He's more with a mind state of a missionary that's NOT Brazilian or of a South American way of thinking. The people here make decisions a lot faster and quicker than in the States. We usually find a ton of people that have interest and teach them and if they don't go to church or fulfill the things that they said that they would do and that we have invited them to do, then we move on. Sometimes we find, teach and move on all in the same day or two, depending on their "moliness” level or on how un-prepared or prepared they are. The mission idea here is to find, teach and baptize in two or three weeks if they're married and don't have an addiction. He's stuck in another idea of staying with someone and helping their faith grow by the baby steps, so that in 4-5 months the missionary finally gets to point of inviting them to get baptized, and finding out that they usually DON’T even WANT to get baptized or maybe want to get baptized further in the distant future. (Most of the time they drag their feet for a reason. They ALL want to be compliant here in Brazil.) But anyway, by this time you're already out of the area! I say to leave these investigators and let God prepare them for another missionary in the future to find them and finish the process. I suppose it all depends on faith. On believing that God is preparing someone that will be baptized two weeks from now (which is what we are all told to pray for here).
Anyways, after that division on the Thursday we had a conference with an Elder Matsagarde from the 70. It was cool. I was exhausted and it was hard to stay awake, but he talked about reverence along with many other things. He talked about a ton of deep doctrine. I don't have my notes with me so I can't really remember all that he talked about. As weird as it may sound, but he talked about chastity as well, (weird to talk about chastity with missionaries) but he said how Exaltation and Chastity mean the same thing. About how we need to live the law of chastity to the letter so that we can receive exaltation.
Anyway, yesterday for church we had a stake conference. Our mission president was there. He talked about how we as members of the church need to be a blessing for others and talked about how to do that, by talking about the gospel with others. It was an interesting talk. It's crazy to see how many church leaders have Ipads here. I don’t know about in the states, but here if you're in the stake or the 70 you have to have an Ipad. Which is crazy because they cost about 2000 Reais here! Anyway, Elder Matsagarde and a good part of the stake leaders had one yesterday and Thursday.
Anyways, these past couple of days have been great, we're still teaching Lucas and Luana. They' went to church yesterday and they seem to be progressing well. There’s this girl (Yasmin), she’s about 11 years old, and we're just waiting for her parents’ approval. Her mom (who’s less active for 16 years) said it's ok, but her dad who cheats on his wife all the time is against it. So they're having this constant fight. And then there's Lenilza and her family. Lenilza just needs to stop smoking, and her niece needs to get married. Other than that we're always on the search.
Something cool happened Saturday as well! About 2-3 weeks ago we put up these signs all across the city that are basically ads like: "Want to be baptized like Jesus Christ?" and then our number and whatnot. Anyways, this girl Maria called us Saturday and said that she wanted to get baptized. We still need to go and teach and get to know her but I hope it all goes through. Anyways, things are going great, I saw some letters from Keenan, it sounds like he's in the office now? Anyways, thanks for the prayers! I love you!
Elder Williams
Peter being Peter...
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