Ben In Brazil

Greetings gente, TUESDAY We've been spending a lot of time with families who haven't been to church in a while. I especially love one family who lives on a dirt road in the outskirts of Pedregal. Not everyone has had the missionary lessons in their fam so we retaught them the Restoration, and it really meant a lot to them. It's going to be so great to see their family in church this Sunday. WEDNESDAY It's definitely winter here now. Don't get me wrong, it's still scorching hot in the day, but at nights and the early morning it actually gets pretty cold. I'm glad I've got a blanket. People here are really sensitive to the cold though. It's funny to see little kids dressed up in parkas and thermal hats when it's 60 degrees out. THURSDAY So Ruy owns a huge gym in Pedregal and it has a lot of visitors each day so I thought it'd be a good idea to put some of our pass-along cards that have information about church on the fron...

TUESDAY Bus rides are an opportune time for street vendors to make big sales because everyone's sitting and listening with nothing to do, so every bus ride we get bombarded with people selling everything from popsicles to peanuts to toothbrushes. Today a guy walked on to the bus and started to give his speech advertising his product, which was a "magic" pen. He was like "ladies and gentlemen I have here a pen that can erase any mark it makes!" and I was like "so... a pencil?" Lol I said it too loud and everyone on the bus laughed. The poor guy didn't get any sales but for his sake I actually thought his pen was kinda cool after his demonstration. WEDNESDAY We did a lot of work today; lots of work with less actives. A lot of them are planning on coming to English class on Saturday and church on Sunday. THURSDAY IT''S THE FOURTH OF JULYYYYYYYYYY.  One of the best holidays of the year. I'm grateful for all this holiday ...

Hello world! Didn't do a day-by-day this week lol. Things are pretty much the same as usual, but that doesn't mean things aren't happening. We taught a bunch of lessons this week and started teaching some new investigators. Last week we were having a bit of a dry spell but now we have plenty of people to meet with. We talked with Taynara a bit about temples again. I'm so so excited for her to be able to go to the Campinas temple next year. She's an example to me and her testimony is already so strong. Really our biggest struggle is getting people to come to church. Commitment works a little differently here. Culturally, people don't really say no to invitations to things like church, they just say I'll think about it or say they'll totally be there and don't show up. But it's alright, doesn't really get me down. It makes it that much more special when people actually do come through and come to church or pray about what we're teach...