Oi!
How is everyone doing? Hope everything is going well! Being here in Porto Ferreira is the best! I love it here.
So here are some of the highlights of my week! Our investigator Ademir came to church again on Sunday which was great. It was good to see him since we haven’t been able to catch him at his house in a while. We tried a couple times this week with no luck. His cousin Zelda has also shown some interest so we will start teaching her this week. We found two new investigators this past Wednesday! They are Rafael and Lucia (possibly their daughter too). We have shared with them the first lesson and it went well! They are great! This past week we have spent most of our time contacting. When I first got here we had no investigators so we have been doing A LOT of contacting. I took the lead in most of our contacting this week so that was super fun but also hard! We are going to start teaching an English class. We talked with the ward mission leader and he said it was alright. So we are excited! That will be fun, for the members as well as for everyone else! We have a district meeting every Tuesday so that's great to be able to get to meet all the missionaries in our district and get to know them. Had our first planning meeting which was good too.
To answer some of your questions, Porto Ferreira is small, pretty nice town. Not too busy and pretty laid back. The people are great, I love them. The weather has been great. Cold at night and hot during the day but not much rain just rained one day. The language is going okay. I seem to speak better than I understand so I am the opposite of what the norm is I guess. My companion says I speak well for only being out of the CTM for two weeks. I guess I am doing well speaking but I do not understand a lot of what is said. So I can start off a conversation pretty well but once it gets going and everyone is speaking pretty fast I get a little lost haha. But I know that will come with time. I have to be patient. I will keep going forward in faith. The Lord never gives us an obstacle without a way to accomplish it.
A funny story about language. The other night apparently I woke up in the middle of the night after my comp got back from going to the bathroom. When he came in the room I was half awake, half asleep and kind of out of it. I thought we were in a lesson for some reason lol. As he walks in the doorway, I ask 'Podemos terminar nossa lição com oração?' (Asking if we could end our lesson with a prayer.) He said ' O que?' (What?) and I then proceeded to start saying a prayer out loud in Português hahaha! I ended the prayer with Amém and then asked him 'Falou?' ('You spoke?') He was just like “dude you are weird”. And then I went back to sleep. Hopefully that is a sign my Portuguese is getting better if I am dreaming in it haha.
We also had a crazy experience this week. Unfortunately a lot of people here, like in many other places, turn to alcohol and drugs when things get hard. My comp says that many people here struggle with addiction due to a lot of things but mostly a lack of hope. Anyway we were on our way home from a less active member’s house and it was like 9 pm. To get home we had to go through a field to the street on the other side with lights. We start going through, trying to be aware my comp is looking left, I’m looking right, and this guy in front of us just stops for some reason then starts to go again. We finally get all the way through the field to the street with the lights, the guy is waiting for us and he has a gun. He is not speaking clearly but starts blurting out questions, mostly asking who we were and where we were from. You could tell he was on something. We told him “calma calma calma, nós somos missonários”. (Be calm we are missionaries.) After he calmed down a bit and we talked with him it turns out he was high as a kite on cocaine. He thought we were sent to kill him for some reason. He said he had stopped in the field to turn around and shoot us but decided to wait instead to ask us who we were. The Lord was definitely watching out for us and definitely blessed us by prompting him to ask who we were and then calming him down. Pretty crazy experience!
On a lighter note you know how much I love Brazilian food lol. I had some of the best ice cream I have ever tasted. It is called Bejô. It is made in São Carlos and is only sold there and here in Porto Ferreira. It is literally the best ice cream I have ever tasted! I love it. I am definitely going to put on some weight here haha. But I actually have finally found one Brazilian food/drink I do not like. I absolutely do not like Caju Juice! It is definitely the worst juice I have ever tasted in my life haha! But, I take one for the team and drink it when people make it for us. I just try to chug it so I taste as little as possible!
There were two articles that I read this week in the Liahona that I absolutely loved. The two articles are: Hold to the Rod by Daniel L. Johnson and Go Forward in Faith by Anthony D. Perkins. Read them! They are so good! In the article about holding to the rod he talks about the vision of Lehi and how we all kind of fall into 3 categories. Those who let go of the rod early on due to peer pressure or respecting the world's opinion more than that of our Heavenly Father. Then there are those who hold to the rod when things are tough (when they are in darkness). They seek God's help through prayer and scripture study etc.. but when things are resolved or things become more calm/ easy they then forget and let go of the rod. I liked his analogy where he compared it to "whitewater knuckles". When you are in the rough rapids you make sure you hold on tight to the rod but when you are in still waters you let go. The last group is those who hold fast CONTINUALLY, make covenants with Him and ultimately reach the tree of Life/the Savior and gain eternal life with Him. Christ ministered and taught for 3 years performing miracles and still few recognized Him for who He is. Let us recognize Him & His hand in our life as our Savior, and always remember Him and His sacrifice for us. I leave my testimony with you of the truthfulness of these things. I know if we continue with a steadfastness in Christ, have faith, immerse ourselves in the Doctrine of Christ, seek Him diligently in prayer - we will obtain eternal life with Him.
Love you all! Thank you for your support. Happy Fathers Day to Dad & all the fathers. Thank you Dad for being such a great Father. I owe so very much to you and your example. (Today is Father’s Day in Brazil.)
Com Amor,
Elder Davis
No comments:
Post a Comment