1/7
Today was exhausting. We spent the whole day walking around, we taught some lessons, but because carrying a conversation in another language isn't one of my strong suits, all of our lessons were super fast. I should clarify that transfers happened, now I'm with Elder Liljenquist, he's super cool, and we both love to work, but today we worked hard. They don't have many investigators, so today we went around doing contacts. The weirdest contact we did was with this guy who sells fish, he gave me an old knife he doesn't need anymore, so I bought fish from him, they were like, 7 for 10 reais, really cheap, but we talked to him about the Gospel and our purpose here, he was a really cool guy. The coolest lesson we taught today was probably to this guy, Marcelo; He was super intent on us throughout the whole lesson, even with an action movie going on in the background, he was completely fixated on the message. We also had a member pass a reference to us, the reference was one that Elder Liljenquist had already taught, they had progressed until the point of baptism, and then she lost interest, but a member said that she had started coming to church again, so we passed by her house taught her a lesson and challenged her to be baptized, and she responded, "yeah, I would like to be baptized", that was really great to hear, especially after a really long day. So today we got lots of new people to teach, a bag of fish, and a person on date, life is very interesting up here.
1/8
Today was way better, the lessons we taught, the people we talked to, it was all just way better. We had lunch with the first counselor's wife, and she had the cutest daughter who told us about all the fruits in the world and ranked them for us based off of how likeable they are. After lunch we taught lessons for the rest of the day, until an appointment that fell through, and then the stake Patriarch called us and asked if we wanted to drink Terere (cold herbal tea) with him. That was honestly the best Terere I've ever had, the Patriarch is really practiced in the "art of Terere", which made it really good. Terere is something that all the missionaries love, so they all would have been very jealous if they knew what I had gotten to do tonight. The lessons we taught today were really great, there was one that we taught to this baptized kid, Mateus, a less active kid, and Mateus's mom, who isn't baptized, but she's incredibly religious. We spent an hour just testifying and expounding the scriptures to them, and they treated our lesson like it was gold. Now the less active boy committed to coming to church, and the mom told us she wants to be baptized, just like her son. We had talked a lot about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and I think everyone really learned why it was so important, and why it is that we have baptism. We also taught this girl, Giovanna, who was recently baptized. It took a little bit of convincing, but now we're going to teach her Sister, too! Tonight was the first time I've gotten to teach an English class, it was an awesome experience but kind of weird, it didn't feel like missionary work, but that was how we convinced Giovanna's sister to let us teach her. Afterwards, we walked home and this one girl was incredibly snakey with me, but I survived and nothing happened, so we're good. This member also invited us to lunch, which was awesome, because lunch fell through for us tomorrow, so now we won't have to worry about making lunch here, and it was all because of that English class, English classes really are so cool. Then the ZLs called and told me I wasn't doing a good enough job, but Liljenquist and I laughed it off, we know how hard we're working. Also, a guy who runs a shop gave me a sucker today because he believes in the missionaries and wants to be kind to them, and now we're talking about setting up a visit with them, what a great day.
1/9
Today was good, we're lacking in investigators but still had some awesome lessons. People are very impressed by my ability to use scripture; I don't think they know my secret: I'm a fubeca missionary who still studies in English sometimes, Liljenquist and I got to be in a trio today, we were walking in America do Sul, which we've had to adopt as our area since we're running so low on missionaries, when we saw a street dog. Neither Lijenquist nor I thought this was strange, as there are street dogs everywhere, but this dog thought we were pretty special, because she followed us around, and waited for us outside of our appointments for like, two hours. I named her "Scott". There was one point where we were walking down a residential road, and it turns out house dogs don't like street dogs, and so, probably 10 of them decided to gang up and attack Scott. They ran at her and I just stomped in there direction and they all stumbled, came to a stop, and started backing up, still barking at Scott. Apparently, I'm very intimidating. After that, Scott stayed very close to me, until we finally lost her at an appointment. Today we taught Giovanna's sister, Gabriella, who came to our English class yesterday. We also taught some venezuelanos about the Priesthood they had recently received. The Venezuelanos only speak Spanish, but still really liked our lesson, and want us to come back every night. The coolest lesson was to this guy, Papito, he's getting kind of old, and everyone here knows him, but he's easily our best investigator, he understands the principles of the Gospel!
1/10
Today was awesome! Liljenquist and I sat down for our planning session today and were like, "do we really not have anything planned for the day?" followed by a lot of dread, but Liljenquist and I still went out, intent on finding new people, and we taught two lessons to completely new people; It kind of reminded me of the Nephi scripture, "I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things I should do", because those people were prepared, and we were led for the entire day, one thing to the next, talking to everyone we felt we should talk to knocking the doors we felt we should knock. I can't believe we're knocking doors out here, but people here in the North Zone of Brazil are so closed off, there's absolutely no one in the streets, it's incredible. The other incredible (good incredible) thing that happened today happened as we were leaving our second lesson, we were walking away and heard a voice call, "Elderes", it was Emily! We had cancelled her baptism because she had left on a trip, but because she was feeling sick earlier today, she came back and changed the date of her trip, now she's going to be baptized tomorrow! By far, the weirdest thing that happened though was when some guys pulled up, one guy with half his body out the window and shouted, "What's up, Gringos! You guys are going to get robbed!" A Turkish guy speaking English pulled up to us in Brazil with his friends and we had a conversation in English about what our purpose here is, which was such a weird feeling, multiple times I caught myself switching to Portuguese to explain our purpose. The guys were pretty much just in Brazil to party, but thought what we were doing was so cool. What funny guys.
1/11
Today was great! Today we did Emily's baptismal interview, and she passed! She wasn't able to attend a baptismal reunion today though, so we planned her baptism for next Saturday. While we were waiting for one of the ZLs to finish up the interview, Liljenquist and I heard a bunch of comp horror stories, and I have a newfound appreciation for all of my comps. Lunch was great (because I made it), but our lessons were awesome! We taught the family of one lady that we street contacted about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they loved it! Now we're going to have another family to share the Gospel with! We also might get to help them build a house, which would be awesome, we'll see, we taught two boys, they weren't super interested, but one of them was still very friendly and accepting. We taught Papito today, which was a ray of sunshine-well, figuratively speaking, he lost power while we were teaching, so he was a pretty dark ray of sunshine. The power outage didn't bother him, he kept gesturing in the dark to show the relative sizes of fish here which was not very enlightening. We taught a Venezuelan family which was also great, we got to resolve some relationship differences with the scriptures, and our family home evening fell through, but that was okay because then a member was like, "come on! Let's go drink some Acai!" It was a great end to a very, very busy week.
1/12
Today was awesome! I'm back to 8am church, but we also went to 10:30 church, so it almost made up for having to get ready so fast for 8am church. Our lunch today was great, we had a banana feijao and the bananas were just like potatoes, so yeah, that's a thing. Then, a if that wasn't enough, the Irma gave me potato bananas so that I could make my own banana feijao. Our class today was really good, we studied a talk that I have on my MP3 player, which was cool because I got to hear the same talk but in a different language. Today was the first time I've done any work on Sunday we didn't do that much, we only taught one lesson, and the rest of the time was spent talking to members, which was more like relaxing than working, but it was still great. One of the members we talked to spent a while telling us about his mission, which was really cool to hear about, but his Sister (I thought she was his wife at first, thanks for clarifying before I said anything embarrassing, Liljenquist), his Sister was a really nice lady: I turned down soda so she went into the other room and blended up some mangos to make me juice, she was a really thoughtful lady. The lesson we taught was great too, we taught a recently baptized firme's husband, he got distracted super easily and really likes movies, so teaching him was interesting, but he has a good heart, I hope he and his wife can be sealed.
Today was exhausting. We spent the whole day walking around, we taught some lessons, but because carrying a conversation in another language isn't one of my strong suits, all of our lessons were super fast. I should clarify that transfers happened, now I'm with Elder Liljenquist, he's super cool, and we both love to work, but today we worked hard. They don't have many investigators, so today we went around doing contacts. The weirdest contact we did was with this guy who sells fish, he gave me an old knife he doesn't need anymore, so I bought fish from him, they were like, 7 for 10 reais, really cheap, but we talked to him about the Gospel and our purpose here, he was a really cool guy. The coolest lesson we taught today was probably to this guy, Marcelo; He was super intent on us throughout the whole lesson, even with an action movie going on in the background, he was completely fixated on the message. We also had a member pass a reference to us, the reference was one that Elder Liljenquist had already taught, they had progressed until the point of baptism, and then she lost interest, but a member said that she had started coming to church again, so we passed by her house taught her a lesson and challenged her to be baptized, and she responded, "yeah, I would like to be baptized", that was really great to hear, especially after a really long day. So today we got lots of new people to teach, a bag of fish, and a person on date, life is very interesting up here.
1/8
Today was way better, the lessons we taught, the people we talked to, it was all just way better. We had lunch with the first counselor's wife, and she had the cutest daughter who told us about all the fruits in the world and ranked them for us based off of how likeable they are. After lunch we taught lessons for the rest of the day, until an appointment that fell through, and then the stake Patriarch called us and asked if we wanted to drink Terere (cold herbal tea) with him. That was honestly the best Terere I've ever had, the Patriarch is really practiced in the "art of Terere", which made it really good. Terere is something that all the missionaries love, so they all would have been very jealous if they knew what I had gotten to do tonight. The lessons we taught today were really great, there was one that we taught to this baptized kid, Mateus, a less active kid, and Mateus's mom, who isn't baptized, but she's incredibly religious. We spent an hour just testifying and expounding the scriptures to them, and they treated our lesson like it was gold. Now the less active boy committed to coming to church, and the mom told us she wants to be baptized, just like her son. We had talked a lot about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and I think everyone really learned why it was so important, and why it is that we have baptism. We also taught this girl, Giovanna, who was recently baptized. It took a little bit of convincing, but now we're going to teach her Sister, too! Tonight was the first time I've gotten to teach an English class, it was an awesome experience but kind of weird, it didn't feel like missionary work, but that was how we convinced Giovanna's sister to let us teach her. Afterwards, we walked home and this one girl was incredibly snakey with me, but I survived and nothing happened, so we're good. This member also invited us to lunch, which was awesome, because lunch fell through for us tomorrow, so now we won't have to worry about making lunch here, and it was all because of that English class, English classes really are so cool. Then the ZLs called and told me I wasn't doing a good enough job, but Liljenquist and I laughed it off, we know how hard we're working. Also, a guy who runs a shop gave me a sucker today because he believes in the missionaries and wants to be kind to them, and now we're talking about setting up a visit with them, what a great day.
1/9
Today was good, we're lacking in investigators but still had some awesome lessons. People are very impressed by my ability to use scripture; I don't think they know my secret: I'm a fubeca missionary who still studies in English sometimes, Liljenquist and I got to be in a trio today, we were walking in America do Sul, which we've had to adopt as our area since we're running so low on missionaries, when we saw a street dog. Neither Lijenquist nor I thought this was strange, as there are street dogs everywhere, but this dog thought we were pretty special, because she followed us around, and waited for us outside of our appointments for like, two hours. I named her "Scott". There was one point where we were walking down a residential road, and it turns out house dogs don't like street dogs, and so, probably 10 of them decided to gang up and attack Scott. They ran at her and I just stomped in there direction and they all stumbled, came to a stop, and started backing up, still barking at Scott. Apparently, I'm very intimidating. After that, Scott stayed very close to me, until we finally lost her at an appointment. Today we taught Giovanna's sister, Gabriella, who came to our English class yesterday. We also taught some venezuelanos about the Priesthood they had recently received. The Venezuelanos only speak Spanish, but still really liked our lesson, and want us to come back every night. The coolest lesson was to this guy, Papito, he's getting kind of old, and everyone here knows him, but he's easily our best investigator, he understands the principles of the Gospel!
1/10
Today was awesome! Liljenquist and I sat down for our planning session today and were like, "do we really not have anything planned for the day?" followed by a lot of dread, but Liljenquist and I still went out, intent on finding new people, and we taught two lessons to completely new people; It kind of reminded me of the Nephi scripture, "I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things I should do", because those people were prepared, and we were led for the entire day, one thing to the next, talking to everyone we felt we should talk to knocking the doors we felt we should knock. I can't believe we're knocking doors out here, but people here in the North Zone of Brazil are so closed off, there's absolutely no one in the streets, it's incredible. The other incredible (good incredible) thing that happened today happened as we were leaving our second lesson, we were walking away and heard a voice call, "Elderes", it was Emily! We had cancelled her baptism because she had left on a trip, but because she was feeling sick earlier today, she came back and changed the date of her trip, now she's going to be baptized tomorrow! By far, the weirdest thing that happened though was when some guys pulled up, one guy with half his body out the window and shouted, "What's up, Gringos! You guys are going to get robbed!" A Turkish guy speaking English pulled up to us in Brazil with his friends and we had a conversation in English about what our purpose here is, which was such a weird feeling, multiple times I caught myself switching to Portuguese to explain our purpose. The guys were pretty much just in Brazil to party, but thought what we were doing was so cool. What funny guys.
1/11
Today was great! Today we did Emily's baptismal interview, and she passed! She wasn't able to attend a baptismal reunion today though, so we planned her baptism for next Saturday. While we were waiting for one of the ZLs to finish up the interview, Liljenquist and I heard a bunch of comp horror stories, and I have a newfound appreciation for all of my comps. Lunch was great (because I made it), but our lessons were awesome! We taught the family of one lady that we street contacted about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they loved it! Now we're going to have another family to share the Gospel with! We also might get to help them build a house, which would be awesome, we'll see, we taught two boys, they weren't super interested, but one of them was still very friendly and accepting. We taught Papito today, which was a ray of sunshine-well, figuratively speaking, he lost power while we were teaching, so he was a pretty dark ray of sunshine. The power outage didn't bother him, he kept gesturing in the dark to show the relative sizes of fish here which was not very enlightening. We taught a Venezuelan family which was also great, we got to resolve some relationship differences with the scriptures, and our family home evening fell through, but that was okay because then a member was like, "come on! Let's go drink some Acai!" It was a great end to a very, very busy week.
1/12
Today was awesome! I'm back to 8am church, but we also went to 10:30 church, so it almost made up for having to get ready so fast for 8am church. Our lunch today was great, we had a banana feijao and the bananas were just like potatoes, so yeah, that's a thing. Then, a if that wasn't enough, the Irma gave me potato bananas so that I could make my own banana feijao. Our class today was really good, we studied a talk that I have on my MP3 player, which was cool because I got to hear the same talk but in a different language. Today was the first time I've done any work on Sunday we didn't do that much, we only taught one lesson, and the rest of the time was spent talking to members, which was more like relaxing than working, but it was still great. One of the members we talked to spent a while telling us about his mission, which was really cool to hear about, but his Sister (I thought she was his wife at first, thanks for clarifying before I said anything embarrassing, Liljenquist), his Sister was a really nice lady: I turned down soda so she went into the other room and blended up some mangos to make me juice, she was a really thoughtful lady. The lesson we taught was great too, we taught a recently baptized firme's husband, he got distracted super easily and really likes movies, so teaching him was interesting, but he has a good heart, I hope he and his wife can be sealed.
As for a spiritual thought: This week we
talked a lot about the joy that we have as Saints, which is defined
really well in D. Todd Christopherson's "The Joy of The Saints". We can
only truly receive joy through obedience to divine laws, the
commandments. In Portuguese, the topical guide references "joy"
as, "Alegria, Ver também Obedecer, Obediência, Obediente" (Joy, see also
"to obey", "obedience", "obedient"). As saints, we define true joy as
obedience. Obedience is not restriction, it is liberation that gives us
access to the fruits of the Gospel and qualifies us to have Eternal
happiness.
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson
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