Excited

July 22, 2013

This week was sweet. A breath of fresh air that I needed to get excited again. We found a lot of new people to teach and did a lot of service. It was just good.

So Monday we had a regular day of work instead of pday because we went to the temple for the whole day on Wednesday and it counted as our pday. Monday wasn't a really well planned day. We kind of just went from house to house of the people that are in our teaching group. We taught a couple lessons and contacted this chick, Lua. We got her name from the mission office and hunted her down. She said she had never talked to the missionaries before and doesn't know where we got her name. We taught her any ways. She's 17 and used to go to the baptist church. It was a cool lesson. Kind of an awkward girl who kind of just did everything we said. I think she was nervous. Don't know why but we gave her the Book of Mormon and the challenge and she took it. She lives with her family and her boyfriend's family so that's a bummer for the baptism potential but we'll work it out somehow. She lives super far away so she'll be a once a weeker. When we were walking back from her house Mainha called us saying there was a sister in the ward who was moving and she needed our hope. Yes mam! So we went to this lady's house and took all of her stuff by hand from one side of town to the other in like 50 trips. It was fun. Always good to do some manual labor to serve it up. Just something different period is fun.There were lots of young men there and we had a good time.

Tuesday I woke up and was sitting on our couch sipping my morningly protein shake and Felipe saunters out of his room and says there's a service project to do for the Bishop in Bondade. We hopped right on that service project not knowing what we were getting ourselves into. Turns out we had to make a roof out of concrete.

So basically what we did was hauled gravel and sand up a ladder in a tin can to the part of the roof that was already finished, and then we mixed it with water on the roof. I had a shovel in my hads for about 4 hours straight just killing this service project. Everyone kept saying "O para ai! Look how hard the americano is working!" I asked, "Do Americanos not usually work??".... "no, they're usually mole(loose/bleh) Glad I could break that stereotype. I was super dead after the project.




My legs were dead. My back was dead. My brain was dead. My neck and arms were burnt to a crisp. Good thing the Bishop's wife made us some bomb food cause I was just dead. I guess my body isn't used to that manual labor anymore. So we were done with that and tried to find this kid Alisson who lives in the neighboring area, Bondade but is planning on going to our ward with his grandma. So we went on the hunt for his house. Impossible here because the numbers are retarded. I went on a mini split with Felipe because he knows his area better than I do. It was cool. I'd like to be his companion one day because we're good friends. Eventually we found it but he wasn't home. Dang it. Then the day ended and we went to sleep early because we were just dead.

Wednesday was the bomb. We woke and went straight to the temple. It's like a 45 minute bus ride. We wanted to get there early cause Elder Borges wanted to baptize his dad who died a while back. He baptized him but we couldn't watch because "We didn't have any family names to do." I'm not sure if that's a real rule but it's fine. I'm just glad that he got to do it. He was way happy after and it was just cool.
We ate lunch in the temple and it was really good food. Bought some stuff in the distribution center and did a session at the temple. The temple is just perfect. It's just a break from the outside world and normal life. It really is the house of the Lord. The session was full of missionaries and other random people and a guy from our ward, Artur was one of the oficiantes. He was really excited to see us. Good guy. After the session we took tons of pictures and headed off to Burger King across the street. (The only place in Brasil where refills are free). It's kind of just tradition to go there after the temple. Americans eating burgers. Tradition.


Thursday I really don't remember what happened. Sorry.

Friday. Uhhhh same deal. Don't remember.

I'll just write about some of our investigators. Jerlaine is the daughter of Claudenice, an older lady in the ward. Recently she stopped working and started studying and so she's at home to receive us. So we taught the first lesson to her and she understood everything and didn't have questions. She'll read and pray for sure. So last week we found a family knocking doors. Well just one door. Elder Amaral and I both got a feeling that we should knock on this one door and we found this family. Adriano is the dad and he got baptized like 12 years ago and hasn't gone to church in 10. His daughter goes to the Assembly(that can be corrected), and the mom just stays at home. This family is super legit. Adriano works every day and is dead when he gets back at night so we have to teach them all on Saturday. But the lesson was just awesome with them! They had tons of questions and were super willing to learn. Breath of fresh air! So all we have to do is reactivate the dad and the family is as good as baptized! OH! I almost forgot. We finally talked to Angelica's husband. He used to be from the assembly but is way open to new ideas. Their son has seizures a lot so they really are relying on god in their lives to help their family out. He knows he needs to include God in his life to get the blessings his family needs. It's great. The only problem is they have to get married! We taught him the first lesson and he liked it and will read and pray. He already went to church once and had some doubts about just the way people dress. Really easy to clear up. Angela already has a testimony so that's great. We'll go back there tonight I think.

I got the package! Supér excited to get my man-watch back. I was using this little digital one and gave it to Painho. He was super excited. I'm glad. Candy is always good. Brasilians can't handle the American candy. More for me I guess. And that orange tie is the one I wanted you to send! Props. I love you mom!

Well that's about it. I can't think of anything else but I love this gospel. Love being a missionary. Love my family. Love Jesus Christ.

Love, Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll