WEEK 50: I LOVE BRAZIL

TUESDAY

Today just couldn't have gone better. Every single door we knocked on turned into an amazing lesson and we found so many excited people to teach. I don't know where all these amazing, enthusiastic people have been the last few weeks of my mission but I sure am glad we've finally started to find them. We had so much more planned today but we only got half of it done because we spent so much time teaching. We only were able to do two contacts today cause we were so busy haha. These are by far the best kind of days; days where you're running around frantically trying to fit all your teaching appointments in. And on top of that nearly everyone we talked to is super ready for church on Sunday. People we met today are already talking a bunch about it and getting all ready for this Sunday haha. If everyone ends up following through I don't think we'll have enough people with cars to take everyone there and back, but that's a good problem to have and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

THURSDAY

Some quality lessons today. We visited Paulo and set goals for him and his family to follow the Word of Wisdom. I've got hope in them, I hope they have hope in themselves that they can quit smoking, drinking, etc.

FRIDAY

We headed up to Brasilía today to have a conference with Elder Costa from the area seventy. He's a really classy guy, I liked hearing from him.

SUNDAY

We've been having a whole bunch of lessons this week and seeing lots of progression with the people we're visiting. Man it makes me happy to see the real changes they're making in their life. On Saturday night, we passed by Vilaní's house, a lady we've been teaching for a while, and out of the blue she said she isn't going to come to church for this Sunday. We asked her why and she pretty much just said her head wasn't in the right place for church or something like that. Haha it wasn't really clear what she was talking about. But we talked to her a bit about the reason why we go to church, and about the Sacrament. She still wasn't convinced on coming tomorrow so being the persistent missionaries Elder Zúñiga & I are, we said regardless of if she's coming or not, we'll be at her doorstep 8:30am Sunday morning knocking at her door.

After gathering up other investigators we headed to her house Sunday morning in a member's car and pulled up to her house. Right as we started clapping (clapping is how you knock on doors in S. America), she came out all dressed and ready for church. It made us soo happy. She was all happy too. It turned out to be a really great sacrament meeting. A few good talks on how to develop a testimony

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The past couple months I've been doing a General Conference marathon. In other words, I've made a goal to listen to every General Conference talk ever recorded on audio. Right now I'm in 1975. Every once in a while I'm going to be putting a favorite quote on these weekly emails.

Here's part of a poem that was in a conference talk I heard this week that I loved:

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night

Boa noite galera,

Elder Young

PICS:

1) Elder Zúñiga giving me a fresh cut

2) A mall by our house

3) Paulo & an old radio thingy from the 70s that still works

4) A tired Elder Souza