Week Fifteen

This week went by quickly, again. But it was a good week. We also had Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday. The missionaries in the Stake were part of choir which was ... "fun". The chorister asked President Gomez for our help, and the President and his wife came to all the sessions and spoke which was good. During the Priesthood Session we sang Elders of Israel. The last part we were supposed to sing "precisamos cumprir" again, but slowly. But there were a lot of people who thought it was "Sagrada missao precisamos cumprir" so when everyone started singing different parts it just died and sounded like "prreeuuhhhhmmm" and blank faces. So yeah there's that. The other sessions went better.

We made 2 new investigators this week. Venilson and Jessica. Venilson was like perfect. He already had a good firm knowledge in the bible and he was also very open minded. Like almost all of his family are already members. He was keeping our commitments, and really wanted to believe what we were teaching. Then on Thursday he moved to a different area.  So that kinda sucked. But we planted a seed and passed on the reference for the other missionaries where he is moving to.

One day this week we were at Melena and Genillson's house. We had already finished our lesson, and the mom and brother of Melena showed up and we talked a bit because the brother is a member of a different stake. We ended up talking about Halloween because Melina thinks that it is a pretty holiday. That kids get to go and ask for candy. And she was explaining it, and played a video on youtube for her mother to understand. The music of the video was Thriller by Michael Jackson. Genillson put a blacklight in the electric socket, turned off the light, and put this strobe light that he built and put it on the ceiling. For like 2 minutes we had a pretty banging Halloween party.

Still excited for November 7th. But right now we need to continue to find new people. We have one reference that we are waiting on right now. A member wants to have family home evening with them, and have us there. But we have a few that are close, they just have a few small hang ups, and we have a lot that are difficult to find, because they are never in their house when we show up. But that's the next 2 years of my life haha. Less than 2 now but you know what I mean.

I hope everyone is doing well! I love you and miss you all.

Luke

Week Fourteen

Hey, this week passed by really fast. I don't know what happened but it feels like I just had P-Day yesterday. But this was a good week. We went to the cartorio with Janiel and Marisa to finalize their marriage. And we were able to finish everything. He is going to be married and baptized on November 7th. So I'm really excited for that. He's pretty excited as well I should add. It's relieving that we are going to have a baptism this transfer. So that was really awesome. Now we need to find new people to teach. That's always a need, but right now we really do need more.

We had zone meeting this week on Tuesday. That was fun. I learned a lot and heard a lot of good ideas on how to better our work. We need to be having Ward Council more often but our Bishop here doesn't think it's necessary to have the missionaries. So we kind of don't know what to do there. Eventually I think we are going to tell him that this needs to change or call the Mission President. Because the Bishopric needs to be more involved with our investigators.

Still waiting on Sergio and Andressa to finalize their marriage as well. They said they don't need any help, but they have been putting it off a little bit. Josefa as well. We had some hot days this week not going to lie.

Also we have new missionaries in our apartment now. Jacentino was re-opened. They put Elder Olievera and Mateus (Matthew) there. Matthew is a missionary from Corta Praza. Corta Praza is basically members that are waiting for their mission calls to come. It's a calling to do everything that a missionary does, but in the mission they live in. He lives like an hour or two from here and he will stay until December I think. But they are both doing well. It will be hard because the older missionaries that were there were dead and left 0 investigators for them to teach. But they are working hard.

But I'm doing well. I have more to learn in respect to the language but I'm working hard.

I miss everyone,
Luke

Week Thirteen

This week was great. We had some pretty warm days but it was fine. It went by pretty quickly. We've been working on some new investigators this week so that was nice. We made plans with Janiel this week to go and get the documents for his marriage so that this can happen within the next few weeks. Also, we're going to go with Juliana to get Josefa's documents so she can get married and baptized as well. (Juliana is the daughter of Josefa who is a member). But I'm pretty excited for that. Should go well I hope. We need to continue to find new investigators though.

This week we stopped by Gysettes's house. We're going to go there for a family home evening today. She is a less active that we are working with. She had a bunch of family over and someone asked me if I could offer a prayer in English. So I did. It was awful. I messed up so many times. I kept trying to say e and com for and and with. And I couldn't remember that Irmá is sister in English. And I've been trying to think completely in Portuguese so it was difficult for form the sentences in English. So yeah, I guess that's both a good thing and a bad thing.

Oh, one more thing. Some 16 year old girl hugged me earlier this week. She's a friend of a recent convert who is 17. We were just talking outside of his house and when we went to leave she just said "abraco, elder". And I couldn't formulate the words quick enough to say I can't hug people, so it just kind of happened. Elder Mariano and Mikey were laughing hysterically when we turned to leave. So yeah, sorry I don't have much to say this week. I'll try to think of more next week.

Luke

Week Twelve

Hey, conference weekend was good. We had a mission tour this week on Friday, Elder Fernandes who is a member of the 70 came to talk to us. It was really fun. All of the missionaries in Maceió were there. Sergipe had theirs the day before. So I finally go to see more missionaries. But there are still 1/2 of our mission that I have to wait until Christmas to see. But it was really fun. Elder Fernandes gave a really good talk. I learned a lot. Part way through his talk he asked for the tallest and the shortest missionaries to come to the front. I wasn't the shortest, there are a few that are shorter than me but I knew immediately that I would have to go up. Elders Lima,  Rossa, Pedro and Mariano all yelled my name and I ended up having to go up. He then compared us to David and Goliath and started talking about how we need to have the faith and strength of David and also to know that we were called specifically of God just like David was. Well "Goliath" left to sit down after Fernandes was done with him. Fernandes put his arm around me and kept talking for a few more minutes. So there was that. He called me Davi whenever he saw me after that.

Conference was good. I could understand whenever I listened, but I had trouble focusing on the voice overs. But there were a few good talks that I caught from beginning to end. I don't know what it is but voice overs are really hard to focus on.

Since Jacentino was shut down its weird having a big apartment to ourselves. We have separate bathrooms so that's cool. Some areas have 4 missionaries to one bathroom. So that's been nice.

We are still waiting on our investigators to get married. It's been tough but we have 4 that are progressing really well. They are all ready to get baptized but only need to be married. All four are working on it, but I'm only impatient because I want to be here when they get baptized. Janielle is progressing remarkably. It's been really great to see him grow. He and his spouse who was inactive before are doing really great. It's been great to watch them grow.

I heard about Emily's mission call, she sent me an email. That's really cool. Barcelona is going to be sick. I was happy to hear about that.

I wanted to see the eclipse but the full eclipse was at midnight and I was too tired to stay up so I went to bed. That camera can zoom pretty well.

Have a good week!
Luke