WEEK 54: Cold Tacos

TUESDAY

New transfer! I made my planner all Brazilian themed.

THURSDAY

Big day today.

Today we met with a really cool guy at noon named Hélio. He's a middle school art teacher and suuuper into painting and french. We hit it off really well. We taught him at his school cuz he only had his lunch hour free. So that was a cool change of venue. He said that about a year ago a missionary gave him a paper with info about the church on it, and he always wanted to visit but never found the time.a few days ago he sent in a request online to receive a free copy of the Book of Mórmon, and that's how we met him. 

He said he's always looking for new ideas, new things to paint. So he invests a lot of time looking into different religions to get inspiration. He was actually a religion teacher himself. It makes it a lot easier to teach when people actually have a good understanding of the Bible.

Anyways he was really excited to start reading the Book of Mormon so he could find new things to paint about. I really admire how he sees the world through a canvas. I can't wait to keep teaching him.

After lunch we were walking to some houses to go visit and we passed in front of this house we knocked on (or clapped at, rather) a few weeks ago. The girl seemed really shy and not that interested when we stopped by that day and I didn't think much would come out of it so we didn't come back to visit. But today as we passed in front I felt like we should change plans and pay them a visit.

So we did. The mom let us in and we talked for a bit and taught them a lesson on the Restoration that they paid a lot of attention to. Then we noticed they had a few boxes out and stuff in piles and she said they were moving. We asked them when they were planning on leaving and they were like "in a few minutes" lol.

So we asked if we could help and she almost teared up and said yes.

We cancelled our lessons and spent the next 4 hours moving some realllly heavy furniture haha. As we moved stuff with them we found out that she's a mom of 6 kids, her husband's in prison, she's pregnant, and has almost no money to pay for all her expenses. She said she had no idea what she would have done if we hadn't come along because she had no one to lift all the heavy furniture.

I learned how important it is to serve, to make time for others, even if it means cancelling your plans for the day. We may not have visited all the people we wanted to visit today but at least we were able to help this sweet mother switch houses before she lost ownership of her house. They'll all be coming to church on Sunday.

It was a good day. 

FRIDAY

We've been laying low today and most of this week because Elder Zúñiga hurt his foot playing soccer last week. We went to the hospital and did an X-ray and turnz out it's probably broken. He's been walking on it for the past week and a half. Don't know how that happened...

Anyways we'll probably be house-bound until the doc clears him to be able to continue walking each day.

SATURDAY

A drunk guy stopped us (happens way more than it should) and talked to us for about 30 minutes about stuff that didn't even make any sense. We tried to walk away after we realized the convo was getting nowhere but he kept following us and persisting lol. We talked to him for so long my tacos I had just bought got cold. RIP

SUNDAY

We taught the lady that moved today. We stopped by with two other youth and taught the Plan of Salvation. It was really powerful. We ́ll invite them to be baptized soon. They're a cool fam

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A quote from a 1976 conference talk:

I dare you to look up at the stars, not down at the mud, and set your sights on them that, up to now, you thought were unattainable. There is plenty of room at the top, but no room for anyone to sit down.

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PICS:

1) Gettin big with a statue at a junkyard

2) Jatobá. Tastes so good but smells so bad

3) Me & Zúñ durpin on the way to an appointment

4) It's the rainy season so we see a lot of rainbows nowadays

5) Zúñiga's X Ray

6&7) Planner this transfer

8) We went down to Rio and visited the Christ the Redeemer