Working Hard

 

March 18, 2013

Hello World,

This week was pretty normal.  We had some pretty cool teaching opportunities and a lot of effortless success.  I feel like God is blessing us a lot.  First off we started teaching this dude named Paulo and his wife Juliana.  They live right next to the church and are very legit.  He owns a bar and is from Rio de Janeiro.  I can't really understand him because he has a different accent and talks super fast.  He's pretty sincere about learning what the the truth is and he really wants to change.  He owns a bar across the street and wants to stop selling alcohol.  He said he would go to church to become spiritually boosted so that when he prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true he would recieve an answer from God.   It turns out he didn't go to church.  We were a little disappointed but had 5 more investigators come to church anyways. We will see what happens with him later.

The family we've been teaching for a long time now (with Kelly, Adriana, Mariana etc...) is just catching fire. Everyone wants to be baptized. They even have a friend who wants to be baptized.  It's awesome. They really love the joy that the church has brought them. Their kids get so excited when we come over and just want to play with us the whole time. Oh and they feed us every time. It's awesome. We kind of just sit with them and talk for half of the time and the other half we teach.  We always end up leaving with some kind of cake or fruit.

We had 2 baptisms this week! Adriana and Kelly. The whole family came to support them, even Adriana's mom who doesn't really like the church.  I made cookies again and everyone died even though they weren't amazing because the stoves here are gas and the ingredients are a little different.  But it was good.  Pretty much the whole ward was there because Saturday is when they have some meeting.  I never know, haha.  It was awesome and exciting.  I love baptizing people.  Something about a baptism just makes you forget about everything else that's going on.  I baptized Kelly.  She came into the water laughing because the water was cold.  It was spiritual and a really happy moment for her. At the end of the month we will baptize Adriana's sister, Andreza, and Kelly's kids, Henrique and Allessandra.  We're going to baptize another girl who goes to church with her friends but her mom doesn't like the church.  She really wants to be baptized and asked her mom.  Her mom said she would have to talk to us! Cool.

Our number of lessons this week was really low because we were helping a sister in the ward build a quarda ropa(It's closet-like cabinet with shelves).  It took us 2 days to build because it was huge and weird but, we got a legit reference out of it and I learned a lot of new words for building stuff.  It's always fun to learn some new vocabulary.

Awesome. This week went by way fast. The weeks here feel like days because every day is just jam packed with stuff to do.  I got so tired this week so it was harder to speak portuguese.  I just have to push through the tiredness and think as hard as I can to push it out. Oh, a funny thing happened this week.  We unlocked the church and the alarm went off.  It was super loud and we didn't know the code.  We tried to call the Bishop but we didn't have a signal!  I ran to the side of the church and called Painho and got the code and ran back and then tried to stop sweating.  It was hilarious. Oh and it turns out people in Brazil talk about the politics of America sometimes too.  They hate Bush and think Obama is nice. Good thing I don't know how to talk about politics in Portuguese.....

Well, I'm glad I'm here and know that the church is true.  I'm so grateful to have been born into this faith and to know the truth and to have the opportunity to share it with others.  It truly changes lives and gives people hope.  Christ lives.  Families are eternal. And the Church is true.

Love you family. You already know I pray for you every day! Hope everything is good on the other side!
 

Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll