(Week 8): Chapter 8: Diseased Dogs And Fabulous Fruits

Visit to the Manaus Temple.










Elder Anderson, Emily, and Elder Kasnocha on Emily's baptism day




Anabela, a sweet little girl in Elder Anderson's mission



 
A drawing Elder Anderson made for Anabela
 

 
 
9/10
Today we had a zone reunion and it was great to see [Elder] Gardner, he's doing awesome.  [Elder] Steed was hitting the grind as usual, today he read off a spiritual thought he had written in Portuguese, and it sounded awesome! Today was especially hot, so my companion said we should return to our house until three. We only spent a hour and a half there but it felt like such a waste. There's a lot of safety reasons to return, it's super hot outside and my companion saw someone get robbed at gunpoint because they were isolated; The street was empty because of the heat so it was easy for him to corner someone, and that could have just as easily been us too. I don't know how I feel about returning and spending more time in our house, it's what [Presidente] Caetano recommends, but there's got to be a better way. Maybe we could go out proselyting right when we wake up and use the time later to study. We had a goal to teach three lessons today, but no appointments, and everyone on the street kept turning us down so [Elder] Kasnocha told me, "when you keep getting no's it's time to knock doors." The first lesson we taught today was amazing, the lady couldn't believe I'd only been here for a week. The second lesson the lady and my companion were really fighting so I bore testimony which helped de-escalate things, and we left. The third house we got three baptismal commitments so that was pretty awesome! Then we talked to some ladies who had been hurt by other members of the church and so they were less active now. What a roller coaster of emotions.
 
9/11
Today was very interesting: I started off with the normal stuff, studying, and then things got really crazy, I made something besides egg and onion sandwiches! Just kidding, the really fun stuff started off at lunch. The father promised me his daughter, who winked and stared at me for a slightly uncomfortable amount of time. Sure she's 27, but age is just a number. The dad took slightly longer to give her away than what happened with Lamoni and Ammon, I blame it on the language barrier, which is, by the way, lessening significantly: Today I replied to most questions in a normal amount of time, and I made everyone laugh due to my dashing good looks and witticism. We also decided to do splits for a half day, no idea why, I guess these Elders really wanted to see how cool it was when I wrote in my journal. I can't blame them; It is pretty wild. My temporary companion, De la Rosa, didn't have keys to get into the house. I helpfully suggested picking the lock, or climbing the gated community. He was against these ideas. So we went to a members house to use their phone and call the other companionship that stayed in the house with us. Then we shared our sad tale with the members and they gave us food to make us feel better and I held a non-diseased puppy which is probably the only time this mission that would happen. It was very nice, my heart definitely melted a little.
 
9/12
I'm not really sure what happened today. Mostly because Kasnocha and I just returned from Brazilian football, where I absolutely killed it; Which means that I did a passable job for a Brazilian of the lowest social tier who hated his country and culture. Just kidding, all those soccer games as a kid must have paid off because I did do decent, and even scored some goals. My first goal they all cheered, "Élder!" in their bloodthirsty excited way, and after that it was just high fives and weird sweaty side hugs.  The other awesome thing that happened today was when we visited a less active family, they gave us this AWESOME juice and bread with cheese, I haven't had cheese since I left the CTM. They also gave us this amazing chocoate peanut butter ball which puts Reese's to shame. I just about died, it was all so good. Everything here just grows so well, I absolutely love it. Anyways, afterwards I gave a quick message, and to see them all listening so intently to my words, probably just because of my broken Portuguese they were trying to understand, but seeing them really listening was so cool, I can be a great missionary even without great Portuguese, it's so cool.
 
9/13
Today we woke up early and rushed out the door because we had interviews with Presidente [Caetano]. We sat in the chapel for an hour and a half before he arrived, but it was okay, it just gave me more time to practice Portuguese; speaking of which, today was awesome, I really understood what was going on with everything, conjugations, pronunciations, it all came super easy. I was able to understand some really fast talking where people would choose their favorite syllable to pronounce for a word, just share that, do that for multiple words in a row, and then expect me to understand. Well guess what? I understood! I even out spoke a three year old (?) for the first time ever; well I either knew how to speak better, or my pronunciations were just so terrible that it made her go, "huh?" after every sentence unless I spoke slow like how people had to talk to me at first. I also got to be a doctor which meant I got to clean a cut and use my expertise to make the call as to whether or not that three year old needed stitches. She didn't, but the teenagers watching her were very concerned.  Also today I was a scripture story machine. Whenever people had questions, I hit them with probably six times the amount of stuff they wanted to hear, but it was awesome to answer sincere questions, and they were really happy too. I also understood an incredibly basic joke today so that awesome: Today Kasnocha asked this lady that we've been teaching, Mara, for her last name, he said, "Mara, what?" and she replied, "Maravilhosa" which is marvelous, and it was marvelous to understand a joke.
 
9/14
First baptism. It almost didn't happen, because of me. Probably because I told Emily, "you don't need to go through with this." How's that for being a good missionary? If she were baptized unprepared it would have hurt her, not helped her.   Then I proceeded to bear testimony of what baptism is, what real love is and how she really is loved. She started to cry when I told her, "you don't need to go through with this." but that testimony really fixed things.  After that testimony she told me that she did want to be baptized, and she was baptized for the right reasons. I really am starting to see why I'm here, the strengths that I have are critical for baptism and the Lord can use them to fill gaps.
 
9/15
Today was awesome! We had church and one of our investigators who we weren't expecting to come just showed up, it was so cool! She really liked it and even shared a really cool story in second hour with everyone, she is so brave. Emily got confirmed and she seems really happy. After church I made lots of new friends playing with kids, and Anabela [one of the kids] tried to teach me a Portuguese tongue twister. Just to be clear, apparently all of Portuguese isn't supposed to be a tongue twister, I asked. Then we went home with Anabela and her family for lunch for the second day in a row. They are so nice! I made a portrait for Bela but I didn't realize until after I looked at the photo that her left cheek was way off so it kind of ruined it. They looked at it and were like, "wow that's so good, make sure you write your name!" so I signed it and they were like, "okay, cool, you're done" and then ran off with it, but it was at a pretty good stopping place so that's okay. One scary thing is that it took me a bit of time to get back into my drawing groove and I've only taken a break for like, a month. We went to a birthday celebration too today, so now I guess I can say that I've taken part of the Brasilian Sunday festivities. We talked about how great the birthday lady (47) was and I used my many years of wisdom to advise her. She really liked Kasnocha's and my messages though, so I was glad we went. I'm pretty sure she's not a member but she was still super receptive to the Gospel. When she asked me how many kids I want, I fluently responded, "as many as my wife is willing to have" at least the Gift of Tongues works for the really important phrases.