Chapter 33: Emergency Transferred

Video Clip - Fanta in Santa Marta (~30 seconds)

3/3

Today was the first time I've done a real district reunion. We're not supposed to meet as a zone, sometimes the Zone Leaders get permission so that we could establish goals as a zone, but I got the feeling that it was happening a lot more than it should have been, so I decided to be a pain in the posterior and tell the rest of the zone that we were breaking off. I asked one of the older Elders to give a training today and share their wisdom with the rest of us which went really well. After the reunion we looked around for areas close by to get food because our ward hadn't marked anyone for us to eat with today. Apparently they had asked someone from a different ward to make lunch for us though, which we found out at 12:00 when they called to find out whether we were close to their house or not for lunch. Because of the horrible bus system, it was almost an hour until we were able to get to their house. I felt bad about being so late but we had no idea we would have lunch with anyone today. Today we were complaining to an Irma about the intelligence of some people we talk to when two power transformers exploded, destroying the power lines and plunging a massive part of Santa Marta (our house included) into a blackout. I'm on splits with Elder Ketchum right now and joked with him for a while that he's really lucky to have power in his house since most missionaries live in primitive societies here that haven't discovered electricity yet, and good heavens, he believed me. I fear for him.

3/4

Today was fun. I worked with Ketchum which was really cool. Ketchum was quite shocked when I gave him a pancake bigger than his plate this morning. Turns out that having a giant pan has its advantages. Lunch today was the first time in three weeks of being here that Ketchum had tambaki, something must be wrong with his ward. I might die when I go back to the States and they don't have tambaki with farinha and vinagrette. The lessons Ketchum and I taught today were... interesting. Ketchum doesn't know how to talk, like, at all, so our lessons today were mostly just me going ham on our investigators while Ketchum got some practice listening to people talk. I always asked him to bear his testimony but other than that, there was not much that he was able to do. I felt bad, he was so slow, even with his testimony that people would always cut him off in the middle of him talking and ask how long he had been learning Portuguese for (to me, they would just ignore him like he wasn't there and hadn't been talking), which is a horrible thing to do to someone who is still trying to learn Portuguese and lacks confidence in basic speaking. It sounds like the methods we used to teach today were pretty new to Ketchum, so hopefully he feels like he learned a lot from our work together despite all the horrible things he had to go through.

3/5

Today I returned to working with LilJ he was excited to work but feeling pretty sick, that's a hard combination, I felt pretty bad for him. Terra Nova called and requested that we do an interview for them so we had to cut our work short today to help them out. We taught a new lady today, we asked her name and she told us her friends call her "white". We never really figured out why. It was a really good lesson and she loved hearing our message, but while we were at her house it started dumping rain, so we ended up getting stranded in her house for an extra hour. I never knew how much small talk was possible to do in the space of an hour, now, unfortunately, I've been educated. Because of all the rain it dumped, we had a small river become a very large river, the water level rose at least seven feet, which was no exaggeration, the water came up to my knee and was pretty forceful, One lady started freaking out when I entered the water talking about a hole nearby, or something unimportant like that. Ater our soggy walk through the river we were quite a sight, carrying our shoes and socks in hand while walking barefoot on the road, which is probably the least clean my feet will ever be in my life. Fortunately we only ran into all of Bishop's kids so now they'll pass along to their dad the weird fashion choices the missionaries here make.

3/6

Today wasn't super fun, LilJ and I are pretty sick. Today we went out to try and teach a couple families with members. Tuesday we received a training about using members to get investigators to church so we decided to give it a try today and take members with us so that they could make friends with our investigators. The first person that we went to visit was our investigator, Bia, a 17 year old girl, so we brought one of the young women with us to teach Bia about the Sabbath day. When we got to her house Bia insisted that we stay outside today because, "inside is a disaster", so we were like, "sounds good" and taught on the doorstep; At least, the young woman and I taught Bia, LilJ became occupied when a man tried to engage us and talk about having us over some time, in the middle of our lesson. So LilJ was busy talking to some guy on the road, and I was teaching a 17 year old girl with an 18 year old girl as my comp, trying to pretend like I couldn't feel "the spirit of Presidente" whispering, "não pode..." Other than disappointing Presidente in that moment, we had a pretty good day. We went to teach Ana Clauja and she told us about what a blessing it is that her husband who was in prison is now out on parole (? ...we think, I don't know these words in Portuguese), so we were like,"oh... that's cool..." then, at Presidente's recommendation, we bought "miracle drops". I'm not really sure what they do, but we have them now. We're going to try mixing medications.

3/7

Today was interesting. We ate in our house today because the lady that we had lunch with said that they were busy working. I'm not sure how they ordered food because Santa Marta has nothing, LilJ and I have never been able to order food before. It was nice to eat in our house because when we were done it gave us more time to study. Well, I sat down to study (in a hammock, of course, you can't study anywhere else) and of course the phone immediately starts ringing (it's a universal law; as soon as you relax, your phone will start ringing in another room). It was the APs, strange, because the APs only call for transfers. Well, I picked up and said, "this better not be an emergency transfer" which is probably not the most respectful thing ever but the AP tried to play it off, "what? Who said anything about you guys getting ET'd? And what if it is?" The APs won that one. Now, Monday, I'm heading to Larangeiras with Elder Young to be their District Leader. We tried to help as many people as we could get ready for Sunday, we taught lessons to firmes, new people, and everyone in between. We decided to put Aidukaitus's promise to the test, he promised that if we made appointments the way it taught in PMG we would have an 80% success rate, instead of the mission wide 20% success rate we had been having. We didn't have too many promise they would go today, but we did have enough. We also taught a new lady in what was probably one of the coolest proofs of what I learned with LilJ: We committed her to baptism on the 21st on her first lesson. LilJ and I have done that dozens of times here, but when we got here, we could barely do contacts, so it's cool to see how much we've grown.

3/8

Today was really sad. We had ward conference (we had a lot of people in Sacrament!) which was an awesome experience. Bispo Gomes was released after six years of service, and Bispo Souza was called which we're super excited about! He used to be our Quorum President, he's an awesome guy! After they had sustained the Prophet, the Apostles, stake officials, etc. Bispo Gomes asked me to stand and everyone gave me a vote of thanks for my service in Santa Marta, which was honestly a really cool moment since missionary work is often a very thankless work. As it was the last day before being transferred, we tried to visit as many members as we could before tomorrow to say goodbye to them and express our love to them as well as our investigators. We were really blessed to run into so many people, so many things just worked out, like the Fanta that we found in the gutter. It was a good day.

Today's message is more of a plea than anything else. The adversary attacks us with so many things in our day, and one of the biggest ones is fear. Russell M. Nelson simply stated, "faith is the antidote for fear", all that we need to do in our day to stay focused and not be fearful is to have faith. The prophet Elisha was known for many things, but one of the greatest was that he was fearless. 

15 And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?

16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 6: 15-17)

To view heavenly hosts, you have to have a lot of faith. Does that mean that Elisha never had fears? Of course not! All of us learn line upon line, and we can handle fear the same way that Elisha did. Pray that your eyes may be opened, for there are more heavenly hosts hoping for our daily victories than many of us realize.

Muito amor,
Elder Anderson