Learning

This picture was taken in Dallin's old area.  It's amazing what I find on Facebook!

September 23, 2013

This. week. was. interesting.

Monday was a regular pday despite the fact that we were going to go to the temple and to Zone conference over a two day period of time during the week. That's a lot of time taken from missionary work, and we were surprised that it was going to be like that. For Pday we moved the other elders out of our house and into a new beautiful, white house in their area. It was depressing to see their house in comparison to ours, haha. Ours is totally a missionary house and theirs is like a white porcelain piece of art. They aren't allowed to put stuff on the walls because it's so clean and new. We moved them with this mule drawn carriage which was pretty cool. I think I already wrote about this.... 

Anyway, we woke up on Tuesday completely whipped cause of the move and the stuff we did in the city so it was a good thing that we were going to take a bus ride that lasted for 1.5 hours. You can sleep and it's comfortable. A missionary's best friend is sleep. We met up with the sisters and we all went to Recife together. Me and Bochi almost missed the bus but we literally ran to pay for the ticket and then ran to the bus. We sweated. Then slept. Erasmo had sent us with a box to give to another missionary at the zone conference because he met up with a friend of this missionary's mom. So we left the box on the bus and were super stressed when we realized at the temple. Bochi was more stressed than I was because he had already been companions with this Elder. The Elder is from our group so we know him pretty well. At the temple we did a session which was great. There really is nothing like the temple. You can't feel that kind of peace anywhere else. After the temple we went to buy ice cream and we got fat in the annex. The sisters made brownies. I was really craving something healthy. After the temple we went to stay at some other elder's house in Recife. The bus on the way there was horrible, totally packed and sweaty. It was a relief when we got out. At this house there was this Elder from one of the African islands that speaks Portuguese. It was cool to hear his accent. So we got up in the morning and went to zone conference. A lot of my friends were there. Felipe, Kennedy, etc... we had a good time. Elder Kennedy is finally training. Good for him. His filho (companion) is from Chile so he doesn't even speak Portuguese. Good luck with that buddy.

The conference was sweet. The temple president was the one who was speaking to us and he has already been a Mission President so he knows his stuff. WE talked about how we need to be more efficient in our teaching and finding new people to teach. Stuff we've already heard but repetition is always good. There's always a huge lunch  in the middle of the meeting and there's more food than you could ever want. It's like a big missionary party. At lunch we got all of our mail, 3 packages for me!! ha ha best day ever. 2 from the family and one from Abby. It's always exciting to get mail. The rest of the conference was very spiritual, President Lanius is awesome. He's super tough but very spiritual. His voice is like the black dude from the Sand Lot, but the Portuguese version. 

On the way back we went to the mission office to get supplies. WE picked up this big heavy box of Books of Mormon. Suuuuper heavy. Keep in mind that we had my 3 packages too. It was super hard to carry everything in the bus because there were so many people. I wanted to die. We barely got the bus back to Caruaru. It was another one of those running to catch things moments, with a bunch of boxes. Once again we got back home completely whipped. And got a call from the assistants about the box we lost and how it had a wedding ring in it..(don't worry it didn't)...They were just burning us and not even trying to help the situation. WE called Ribeiro the next day to apologize. We spent some time going to the bus place to look for it. It was nowhere to be found. We failed. 

With the time we had left in the week we taught some random people because we were trying to grow our teaching group. WE had this girl, Mirele marked but she wasn't home Saturday or Sunday so we couldn't baptize her. Depressing... next week it will happen. I went on splits with Vargas and we found this kid, Beto who had already been marked and 8 people in his family had already been marked too. I don't know what happened but I want to baptize everyone! The zone was really struggling with baptisms this week and last week. WE had a miracle happen with the sisters who had one baptism for this week on Sunday. That's one baptism in 2 weeks for our zone. BAD.  So we did another division for Vargas to go there with my companion to do the interview. I was with Jose in the church, but we had split up to be in our separate wards. It was really strange being without my comp but I wasn't breaking rules ha ha. I sang in Church this Sunday. I sang "Come thou Fount" in English. Nobody understood but everyone said that they felt it. Even in strange languages we can feel the spirit through music. It's sweet! Church ended and we did weekly planning. We decided that we are super unorganized and we need to repent and change. I got a call from Erasmo and he was telling me about how we're good missionaries but also how we should love the people we teach more. He passed me a scripture... 2 Nephi 33:3... It got to me. We talked about how sometimes bad numbers bother us more than the fact that the person didn't want to get baptized or hear our message. It was a great eye opener. I owe him some peanut butter. Every day he has been asking me if my package has gotten here so I can give him some.  Funny. Peanut butter is impossible to find here. I also ended up talking to Elder Ribeiro about his lost box and all the things that were inside it. Apparently his girlfriend had gone to the US and bought him a bunch of stuff. He was cool about it and I'll give him some of my stuff. Me and Bochi messed up big time. Well this week was a great learning experience to be less careless and to love investigators.

We're going through a transition of kicking people out of our teaching group and getting some more people to teach. It's a cycle of trying to find the elects. Well family, I love you and miss you. And I was super excited to get my birthday box! It was perfect! The jump rope is better than the one I bought in Sao Paulo, and the pushup bars are making me sore. They let you have a wider range of motion. It's good. And my birthday cereal!! Can't have a birthday without Cracklin Oat Bran. Nobody understands why I pick it but whatever. Man.. gratitude... I love my family! and the Gospe and Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Carroll