Working Hard

January 8, 2013

 

Family and friends...

This week has been a little different. I've made a lot of progress with a lot of things. This week we were practicing placing Books of Mormon and street contacts because we got to proselyte around Sao Paulo yesterday. Each companionship got 4 Book of Mormons to place in 3 hours. I was pretty scared at first because when people are by themselves doing their thing, idk why, but they just look menacing... haha. But I dared myself to place the first one. It was so easy. It was this guy sitting in one of those little magazine stands. I went to buy some gum and after I bought it I gave it to him and gave him a brief overview. He seemed pretty excited and grateful for it so that broke the ice for the rest of the day. We ended up placing all of our 4 books in about 20 minutes. Easy as pie. People are really nice here and are probably just excited to get something for free, haha. We always told them what it could do for them, of course. There was this one lady in a store we talked to who knew some English and she said she had already been given a Portuguese Book of Mormon. Pretty much everyone within a mile radius of the CTM has been given about three... but we said we could give her an English one so she could compare and learn English. It was way cool. We're going back today to do that. Hopefully her wanting to learn English will drive here to want to read the book even more. People just don't know what they're missing. The gospel is for everyone. I don't know how I was so blessed to be born into it. That's one of the things Elder Holland said to us when he spoke on thanksgiving... He just doesn't know why we're so lucky either. So of course we had a lot of rejections because the whole city has been thoroughly scanned with missionaries but we ended up taking some Book of Mormons from one of our district members cause they couldn't give them away. So by the end of the day we placed 7 Books of Mormon. Pretty sweet. We had the record for the day.

Portuguese is coming along. I've been studying real world vocabulary for the past week because all I knew before that was gospel vocabulary. I figure I'll need to say stuff about food and stuff so I can survive when I get to Recife. My companion and I gave a 30 minute lesson to our district yesterday too. It was on the doctrine of Christ. That topic never gets old, and can always be refreshed. We found these sweet videos the church semi-recently put out about Christ. They're called Bible videos about Christ or something like that. They're way realistic and not cheesy at all so that's always good. They definitely brought the spirit into our lesson.

We got some Brazilian roommates this week. That's always fun. But not this time. One of them wakes up at 4 every single morning and goes to bed at 12 every night. I don't know how he's living. But if he keeps doing that, he's either gonna die from sleep deprivation or something else...

On another note... That's insane that Ashton is engaged! I thought it would never happen. Jk I saw it coming from a mile away. haha That's cool that is was in Sim's park. Lots of classic memories there. Great Suwanee spot. Glad she's happy.

Things I need.

More sunscreen... Its like 15 bucks here and I only have 2 and I got burnt proselyting.

Face wash and creme

2 in one Oldspice wash. They do not sell body wash here so I'll need like 3

Ties. As long as they don't have cartoons on them, they are considered to be conservative so send as many good ones as you can. Orange and red ones.

And some fun surprises I guess. I would like hand written letters from everyone. Sorry I can't respond to everyone's individual letters because I don't have time but ya know...

Maybe some candy?

I love you all. I love hearing from you every week and getting the updates and whatnot. I need some more sports updates, so Landon get on that! Ate proximo semana!

Love, Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll