Those dang Mormons praying for Showerheads....

BATISMO!

I´m going to have my first baptism this Saturday!  Vxxxxxxs is 16 years old, and became interested in the church when Sister Willard and Sister Santos taught about the Plan of Salvation during a Family Home Evening activity at a less active member´s house.  He´s really sensitive to the spirit, and his understanding of the scriptures when we read them together is amazing.  

We set up a baptismal interview with our zone leaders for this last Saturday, and we dropped by the night before, to finish teaching Vinicius the last few commandments and remind him of the Elder´s visit the next day.  We asked him how he was feeling about getting baptized soon, and he hesitated, which immediately made my heart drop.  He told us that he was worried that it was too soon to know if he wanted to be baptised, and that he wasn´t sure.  We went through a few of the baptismal interview questions with him, to try and show him that he really did have a good foundation, but we left super worried.

But, the Elders came the next night, and after the interview Elder Emirich told us that they had prayed about it together during the interview, and that Vxxxxxx had picked this Saturday to be baptized.  Sister Willard and I were on cloud nine for the rest of the night, and made sure to tell Elder Emirich how happy and grateful we were that he had helped Vxxxxxx feel ready and excited about his baptism as we walked to the ônibus together.  He just shrugged and said it was the spirit, not him.  It was funny though, because they got on the ônibus that would take them back to their area, and as it was driving away, they stuck their heads out the window and shouted BATISMOOOOO!!!!!  It was a great night, and we´re very excited.

MAXXXN

Maxxxn is a recent convert that we visit pretty frequently, the one who was all excited to go to the temple my first week.  We´ve been reading the Book of Mormon with him, and one night when we dropped by, he told us he wanted to read Chapters 13 and 14 of first Nephi with us, because he was confused about what they said about the ´great and abominable church´.  Sister Willard and I just kind of looked at one another, like, oh boy.  But we explained that it was just symbolic of the churches that twisted the true doctrines of Christ during the great apostasy, and he understood after that.  

The next time we stopped by, we were starting to read chapter 16 with him, because that´s where he said he was in his reading, but a few verses in he told us, with this slightly guilty look, that he´d already read it, and he just wanted to read it with us because he liked that chapter and wanted to read it with us.  I thought that was adorable, and we got to the part about Lehi finding the Liahona, and he blurted, ``This was the part that I liked!`` with this happy smile on his face.  It was hilarious, he was so excited about the Liahona, and we showed him the illustration that´s in the front of the Book of Mormon about that scene.

Portuguese Fail of the Week

So, in Gospel Principles yesterday, we were learning about fasting.  After the class ended, I was telling Sister Willard and a couple of our investigators that every time we need more rain or snow back home, we would fast, and would always receive way more than we expected, and how my mom would always say it was because of those ´dang Mormons´.  They were all laughing, so I was feeling pretty happy that I shared this story until Sister Willard told me that every time I´d tried to say rain (chuva)  I´d said shower head (chuvera), which was why they thought it was so funny.  

So that was awesome.  

I´m starting to realize that listening to me speak Portuguese is probably a lot like reading a MadLibs.  Like, most of it makes sense, except for a couple random words here and there.  I cringe every time I think about it, but at least it was funny for everyone else.

Sugar Cane

So, I ate straight sugar cane for the first time this week.  One of the elders just brought a chunk of the cane to district meeting last Tuesday and used a kitchen knife to saw off the husk/bark/hard outside thing and gave us chunks to eat.  It was my first time, so everyone was watching expectantly as I put it in my mouth and sucked on it as instructed.  After a couple seconds, I just said, ``Sorry, but this tastes like wood.``  They thought that was funny, and told me I needed to bite it hard enough to get the juice to come out, and then suck on it.  It ended up being really good, though kind of messy to eat.

Priorities

We were having lunch with this adorable Irmã named Jxxxa.  She is super tiny and slender, but then she turns around and she´s six months pregnant.   It blows my mind every time I see her.  Anyways, she has an adorable three year old named Marcelino.  Marcelino´s at the age where he´ll just repeat what you say, and Sister Willard said, ``Marcelino, fala, ´Eu amo Jesus Cristo!´``  Trying to be cute or whatever.  This boy looked up at her and said, ``Eu . . . amo. . . BATMAN!´´  I was dying, it was so funny, and also made me more excited to be a parent one day.

OWL

I saw an owl this week!  We were walking home one night, and I was just looking at the side of the street and saw him.  He was just sitting there.  I interrupted whatever Sister Willard was saying and said, ``Sister, I think that´s an owl.´´  We immediately stopped and were cooing over him for about ten minutes.  I was seriously less than ten feet away from him, it was awesome.  He got annoyed by our attention and flew up onto a fence nearby.  Before I could stop her, Sister Willard took some pictures of him, which probably blinded the poor guy, but on the bright side, now I have some pictures of him. 

In General

Our pool of investigators dropped from about fifteen people to one, (Vxxxxxxs) over the past two weeks.  Axxxxxla, the one who was all curious about baptism my first week cut us hard.  She wasn´t at home when we went back to teach her at the time we had marked with her, and when we called, told us that she´d give us a call and reschedule.  We waited until last week before we decided we´d try to call her and see if we could teach her again.  She answered the phone, and asked who was speaking.  Sister Willard cheerfully announced that it was the sisters, the missionaries who had visited with her two weeks before, and Axxxxxxla promptly hung up on us.  So that was not great, and we lost our last three investigators.  We´ve been scrambling to find more people to teach, but it´s not going very well.

We don´t have an apartment here in Paulínia, it´s actually a little house that´s about a fifteen minute walk from the chapel.  I have my own bathroom, which is awesome, but only the other shower has warm water at the moment.  I really want to get that fixed.  It´s only Sister Willard and I at the moment, though the house is definitely big enough for four, and we are the only sisters in our district.  I tackled the bookshelf that had all of the Liahona´s that have been collected over the years, and organized them by year and month.  I found a New Era from 1997, so that was wild.

We normally spend P day just trying to get stuff done.  We clean the house, send emails, get the money we need for the week, go grocery shopping, occasionally go get açai, and by the time we get back to the house it´s time to go again.  We send email´s at the English school of one of the member´s houses.  Her name is Rxxi, and she is the sweetest.  She´s recovering from a surgery on her legs, so it´s only been this last two week that she´s been able to leave her bed.  She´s healing fast, and attended church yesterday using only a walker, which made Sister Willard happy cry.

We normally take the ônibus everywhere, because our area is huge, and it´s only R$ 1 to take the bus.  We have lunch with the members every day, and they certainly take good care of us.  We rarely eat dinner because we can hardly walk after these lunches, but it´s all good because the food is amazing.  I've started running up and down our driveway in the mornings for morning exercises for fear that if I don´t, I´m going to have to roll home if the Irmã's keep feeding us like this.

For the most part, you can´t tell that it´s winter here.  Scorpius is up, and we had a cold spurt for a couple days last week, but those are pretty much the only indications.  On a similar note, I learned the Southern Cross constellation, which has been one of my goals here on the mission!  I´m pretty excited about that.

I think that´s it for this week.  Thank you all for your emails and support, it means a lot.  I was reading in a Liahona this morning about how a mission is really a family affair, and that missionaries should always remember and be grateful for the sacrifices of their family.  So, really, thank you guys for all the support you give me.  Every time I want to do my best, whether with lessons or just making contacts in the street, I tell myself to act as if my family was watching.  You guys motivate me so much, and I love you all for it.

Until next week!  Love you guys!

P.S.

This picture is our Ward Mission leader, Oxxxio.  We were leaving his house after having lunch with him, and his wife said something along the lines of, ``They´re gone, get the ladder!``.  I was like, what, but they ran and got a ladder and he climbed up into this tree that was in front of their neighbor´s house and started pulling these weird fruits off of it.  I was laughing so hard, they were so pumped that they could get some of this fruit.