Chapter 24: Transferred to Santa Marta

A zone conference

A district conference

A farmer's market outside of Elder Anderson's house

12/31

Today was awesome! We had a zone reunion this morning which meant that I got to see Gardner and Steed, and it was awesome to catch up with them. It was an awesome chance to talk about our likes and dislikes of the mission (dislikes being all the things that won't exist when we're mission presidents someday), and all of the new things that have happened for us. Everyone is giving me a lot of pity: "What's your area? Oh, Grande Circular? I'm sorry." I don't like pity. We have so many investigators and lots of them are progressing, so I have no complaints against this area. The message that our district leader and the zone leaders (because we were lucky enough to have the zone leaders with us) gave today was awesome, there haven't been many messages that I've really loved, but today we talked about persevering and loving the work, and I participated a lot, enough that afterwards I realized that the gift of tongues had really been working, because I was able to share the thoughts I wanted to in another language. Since today was December 31st lots of people were celebrating the last day of the year and lots of people were selling stuff in the farmers market, I even found a Christmas present for Williams as we were trying to navigate the market. It was a Christmas present since we're joined at the hip and can't do anything without the other person there, we planned to do presents after divisions when we could buy stuff with another person as our comp but I saw the sandals he really wanted for a good price so I told him to stand where he was and not turn around for 30 seconds while I got him his gift. He didn't listen, surprise killer. But he was happy, so it was worth it.

1/1

Today was fun, we had a little more success than when we tried to work on Christmas. There were tons of fireworks last night, I set my alarm for 11:53 so that I could pretend I was a cool kid who was physically capable of staying awake past 10:30 and when I woke up to take pictures of fireworks, there was another guy in our house who thought our house was the greatest viewpoint around for fireworks. I really wish social boundaries existed here. Also, equally big as the 12:00 celebration was the 6:00am celebration, happy 6am! (I have no idea why that's a thing) One of our lessons (our only lesson actually because no one wanted to celebrate with us) was with Elioni, we challenged his son to be baptized and we're going back tomorrow to hear what their family wants to do, their son could be baptized, or they could all wait and try to get baptized together, so it's an exciting time! Because we basically just walked around aimlessly since people cancelled on us one after another, we decided to stop by the house of the Matoses so that I could steal water from them, and I'm very glad we did because Elana wasn't having a great day, but we made it a little bit better, I prayed to know what I could share with Elana who was struggling with a Son who didn't want part of the church and one of the scriptures I had recorded in my booklet fit perfectly, I'll share it at the end as a Spiritual thought because this was definitely the best thing that happened all week. Also, Elana taught me what my beans and rice were missing so I'm finally a true Brasilian.

1/2

Today was kind of disappointing. We passed by the three most interested families we were teaching to leave baptismal invitations with them. The first guy we passed by has a pastor for a dad, which we found out when he would interrupt us after every sentence of our lesson as if he was trying to show how much more he knew than us. Williams and I made awkward eye contact many times trying to figure out the quickest way out of the situation. The Pastor's son was still interested in our message, he's a gentleman with ~50 years and spoke to other missionaries before, super cool guy, so we invited him to the baptismal reunion, he was scared at the commitment, which we knew would likely be the case, but we've at least got to try to help these people. We gave a summarized lesson of The Gospel of Jesus Christ to Elioni and his son before we extended the invitation for their son to be baptized. He didn't accept which was sad, because it looked like it crushed Elioni a bit. We also extended the invitation to be baptized to Mara and her family. They've progressed so much, Mara has really taken an interest in the Gospel, but tonight she said that she wasn't feeling baptism yet. Then she invited us to dinner and after much more protesting on her part than was necessary, we got to do the dishes.

1/3

Today was awesome! Everyone's already looking at me like a dead man: "you guys have how many transfers here?" everyone asks, so we tell them, "we have two together here", and then comes their dreaded response, "oh yeah, Elders never stay together for three transfers, that's wrong, one of you's getting kicked out. Which one of you has been here longer?" To which I'll angrily respond, "I do." I'm already ready to respond if we get a call tomorrow: "Elder Anderson, you're going to be transferred to *censored*", and I'll respond, "no thanks" and hang up the phone. Today we briefly did splits; Alves and I went off to teach lessons while Lopez and Williams stayed behind so that they could waste Williams money on an ungrateful person. Most of the lessons that Alves and I tried to teach fell through, but we did have a cool one with this lady we'd never talked to before, but opened her door for us today; She told us that she was really interested in the Gospel and our message, she'd lost contact with the Elders but already knows a lot about the Gospel and has been to church a couple of times, we'll definitely have to come back to visit her (because she's already ready for baptism) We also had dinner with the family of an Elder who came back to show his family where he served, he speaks English pretty well so everyone told me to ask him something in English, so I asked, "does it bother you that the toilet seats are always warm here in Manaus?" The best thing that happened by far today was William's thoughtful gift of a speaker, that was an above and beyond thing to do for a "late Christmas Present".

1/4

Today was a wild ride. As the last day of the transfer, we tried to work extra hard, we actually woke up our investigators, so much for building trust (it was 10:00, who sleeps that long?) It was at lunch today that the fun began: Elder Williams was stirring a pot of jam-in-progress, and knowing that today was the day we'd receive the call about transfers, I was ready to take over for Williams at a moments notice. Well, Williams got a call, he left, and after a while was like, "Elder Anderson, come." I was like, "No thanks, I prefer to not die", unfortunately I lost the battle of wills and Williams made me talk to the AP on the phone: "Are you hearing me, Anderson?" I replied, "unfortunately." Alves asked how I could possibly want to stay in this area, but I love the people here. Now I'll be in Santa Marta, senior comp, District leader. Then we had to tell everyone the news. All day long I was stuck dealing with being overemotional, probably because of all the people telling me how much they love me, who wouldn't cry at the leaving of those people? Sister Matos even sewed my name onto a towel, beautiful cursive as a birthday present, which she totally didn't have to do, but it's the coolest thing ever! We passed by a bunch of investigators to tell them goodbye, we wanted them to all know how much they mean to us. Then we did a family home evening with Irma Joyce and Shirley while Presidente Matos got stuck in traffic for two hours, with the Souza family, and now the Sisters are going to help with the marriage!

1/5

Today was incredibly busy. We had church this morning at 9 (finally), I liked it so much more than church at 8; When you're trying to establish contact with investigators and bring them to church, 8 is just too early. I got to bear my testimony since today was a fast Sunday, and I accidentally told everyone I was leaving over the pulpit when I talked about working in Grande Circular as past tense. Then I started tearing up, my ward member friends started tearing up, we were all just having a blast. After church, we started passing around houses to say goodbye, Irma Matos decided that she hadn't given me enough and gave me lots more to cook with, including the "Matos Mix of Herbs", essential to everything she makes. We passed by Joyce's family, they told their daughter who loved to play with me that I was going; She started crying, now I feel like I'm leaving my siblings all over again. Karey's daughter wasn't sad, they're following me to my next area. We talked to all of our investigators, I shared my testimony about God's love and plan for them and they all made me promise to stay in contact. Elioni even made a cake so that I could enjoy his expertise one last time. I told Elioni I loved it and his wife was like, "great! Now he's going to get a big head!" Moises and Sara were also very sad to hear I would be leaving, they wrote me a really nice note: "We love you, Anderson. We will miss you (heart) Venezuela-EEUU (heart)". All of the little girls in our ward drew me going away cards with nice messages too. Oh, how I loved serving in Grande Circular.

I mentioned something about a spiritual thought, I felt like my emails have been missing something, however horribly long they are, and I realized that many times they don't share, at least in the same way I see them, my spiritual moments, and so, this is the great one that happened with Elana this week:
Irma Matos has a son who's fallen away from the Gospel, and though he's a terrible influence, how can a mother forget her child: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." (Isaiah 49:15) That was the verse that I shared with her, and the message is this: Even should we have family members that treat us wrongly, that cause us tearful nights of remorse, yet still we love them because that's all we can do, God likewise will never forget of us. As the divine creator of our souls, God will always be there, to bear our burdens with us until the day that they're taken from us.

Muito amor, 

Elder Anderson