Busy

Waiting for the bus

 



September 16, 2013

Beleza!

 

This week was sweet. I learned a lot about the area and me and my comp work really well together. Pday this week was just the transfer and we pretty much just spent the whole time in Recife and on the bus on the way back from Recife. My comp is super legit, Elder Bochi. He has 9 months on the mission so we're from the same group and the same amount of experience. He's from Rio Grande Do Sul.  He's short and likes to goof around so it's easy to get along with him. We teach super well together. He fills in the gaps that I make and I fill in the gaps that he makes, so at the end of the lesson, we end up destroying our investigators with our knowledge. Everyone in the ward says he looks like this dude in the ward who just got off his mission. EVERYONE.  We just laugh about it. 

So being the new DL (District Leader) is pretty sweet and kind of hard at the same time. I have to know what's going on in every area and call them all every night. We have 2 pairs of elders and 4 pairs of sisters. President just put us in this zone to have leadership I guess haha.  Sometimes I wish I wasn't calling elders every night because then it would be so much more easy to criticize them. You kind of have to be gentil with the sisters. One of them "got their phone robbed" and asked me for help.  She wanted to know if they would have to pay for it. I just told her what she wanted to hear and that she wouldn't have to. Ended up she didn't. Sweet. This other sister from Saõ Paulo wanted to pass her numbers from the week in English because there's nobody in her house who speaks English, and she's learning. Just the little things that you do to help people out gains a lot of respect. 

 

So this week we marked 5 baptisms. GITERDUN. 

 

Junior, Gleice, Eline.

 

This is a family we've been working with for about 3 weeks now. We've taught them twice. From the beginning I knew this family was going to get baptized, I just didn't know when it was going to happen. The guy that gave us their address said not to talk about baptism in the first lesson, and that it was a delicate situation. This time we went, we went in with the intention of hitting them super hard with the spirit and going for the kill with the baptismal invite. I brought Elder Vargas with me to help out because he's really good at just speaking in general. I wouldn't be able to say the things he says if I was speaking in English. He just speaks really eloquently. We talked about the atonement in detail. How Christ suffered and really gave them some imagery to let them really feel the message. Then we talked about repentance and baptism. How we have to take advantage of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by being baptized and repenting, so that his suffering for us wasn't in vain. The spirit was way strong and the message made a lot of sense to them. We had a chance to invite them to be baptized, and marked the whole family for the 28th. Woo! Now we just have to keep checking up on them. Cause if we don't, the devil will.

 

Mirele.

This week we got a call from Erasmo saying that there would be a family night with an investigator there for us to teach. We got excited. We went there early to teach and there she was. Mirele is 15 and is caio and cacios cousin. She works down the street from their house and sews with a member. We taught her the first half of the first lesson and her mom came and picked her up. It was fast. So the next day we taught the whole thing and invited her to be baptized. She said yes. It was just too easy. I asked her what she thought when she found out that the church of Jesus Christ was on the earth again.  "Much better", she said... Wow.. Marked her for this weekend but she didn't go to church so we might have to mark her for later. 

 

Elisane.

This lady is a reference from a family in the ward. Has a 4 year old son. She also sews. Taught her the first lesson, went back, taught the Book of Mormon because she didn't read, then challenged her to be baptized. YES. It's too easy. The Lord is blessing us too much!  We went have Saturday with 5 baptisms marked. The sad thing is that the zone didn't baptize. We tried! Elisane went to church for the second time so she's good and ready.

 

This week was a load of learning experiences. I think we caught 3 wrong buses and got lost in the center(city) like 3 times. It's fun I guess. Got to learn by experience. It's sad to say that the Zone Leaders won't be living with us anymore. Their area is a long ways from ours so the President let them move. Their house is sweet. And clean. And expensive. We took a ghetto horse and carriage to get their stuff there. Like 4 miles away on highways and interstates. haha. Only the missionaries.

 

Well I'm glad to be here. I'm really enjoying my mission and the people we're teaching. It's just being a good experience right now. Christ lives.

 

Love you all!

Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll