Leading with Love works

Work Together

Sister Mareski and I had a cool experience the other day.  We had run out of names to look up, so we decided to spend the last hour of our day knocking on doors.  We opened up our map to pick a street close to us, and we both felt the spirit about a specific street.  The only problem was that we were not both feeling it for the same street.  The two streets we were feeling where on opposite sides of the same block though, so we decided our spirit radar was saying that somewhere on that block we needed to find someone.  

So we knocked on doors all the way around this block.  We didn´t find a single interested person on either of the sides that we had picked.  We did, however, find two different people on both of the sides that connected the two streets that we had felt strongly about.  It was a testimony builder about how we need to work together, because if we had just done one of the sides that we had picked, we wouldn´t have found either of these people.

Sorry, Not Sorry

So, we had a bit of a scare the other night.  We were heading home, and we heard someone calling, ``Meninas!  Meninas!´´.  We looked around and saw this guy coming down the street towards us, and we did not recognize him.  There are a couple bars near our house, and we both immediately assumed that he was one of the drunk people, and we took off.  I was in full ´We are about to be assaulted mode´ because he sped up when we did and kept coming after us.  We were close to Irmão Dangelo´s house, which is just a little ways from our house, so we half ran there and rang the doorbell.  Thankfully Irmão Dangelo was expecting someone else, so he was quick to answer the door.  I don´t think he was expecting us to zoom through the door the second he opened it though, bless his heart.  Still, we explained why, and he told us we could head inside and he´d stay in the doorway and keep an eye on him.  The guy passed and continued on in the direction of our house, disappeared for a minute or two, and then came back with a chair and sat on the corner of our house.  Fortunately, and unfortunately, this made us recognize who he was.

We actually do know the guy.  There about five different churches within a hundred yards of our house, and we´re friends with Anderson, the guy who stays outside to keep an eye on the cars while the people are attending their meetings.  Occasionally he can´t come, so his dad comes in his place.  Apparently this was one of those nights, and it was Anderson´s dad, Valdimar, who was just heading to work and tried to say hi to us.  We were mortified that we hadn´t recognized him, and Irmão Dangelo and his family just started laughing.  We left to go home again and actually talked to Valdimar, and he felt super bad that he had scared us.  I don´t feel bad for reacting the way we did, but we both felt like complete bobos.

Entrevistas

We had our interviews with President Marsh in Campinas this week as well.  I always feel kind of nervous when I enter his office, because I half expect him to be like, ´´What the heck is going on in your area Sister?´´  But, it´s always just a good experience.  He is always super positive, and praises us for the work we´ve been doing.  The whole ´lead with love´thing works, because I was feeling super motivated afterwards.

Other Stuff

I finished the Book of Mormon in English this week, and I´m going to really crack down on reading it in Portuguese now, because I´m still only in 2 Nephi.  We also learned that we can earn the Personal Progress medallion here on the mission, and I´m super excited by the idea, and want to start soon.  It´s exciting to have new goals, especially when you know that it will make you a better person because of it.

That´s all for this week!  Love you guys, and hope you have a great week.