I got some letters and our house received a lot of stuff from the mission. They bought something like $72,000 worth of stuff for us missionaries. So now we have new garbage cans, a new blender, each one of us has a fan now, and a lot of other stuff I don't remember, lol.
Don't be sorry it is getting hotter. I actually found out my area is one of the cooler ones because it always has a nice sea breeze blowing through. Other areas are much much hotter, so maybe I don't want to transfer this transfer period.... but wherever I am called I will work. My companion has been here 6 months already, and I have only been here for 3 so it is likely he will get transferred as well. I think I will not stay because usually you do not stay in the area you were trained in too often. My companion thinks I’ll be made a trainer already next transfer. We will find out next Monday. I really hope not because I can barely speak the language. But everyone compliments me on how I barely speak with an accent. My goal with the language is to get people to think I am from Brazil natively ;) but it will be hard with my golden hair. Yes I am drinking my crystal light but not too frequently. Yes they drink lots of soda but I think more juice than soda. They have some crazy fruits down here!!! Like there is this one where it is super sweet if you suck on it. But, if you bite it, it instantly becomes overpoweringly bitter. Weird huh? I haven't tried it yet but I want to.
Well, thank you for your prayers and everything. We still aren't having too much success but it's mostly because of the new area. We feel like we are wasting our time there because we can't focus there while we have investigators in the favela still, so our numbers have suffered. But we are finding new people still in the vila and they seem interested in the Gospel.
The family we were teaching? We invited them to be baptized in 2 weeks and we think we scared them with it. The husband said "we have been catholics for 33 years, we aren't gonna change everything in less than a month." After he said that Elder Ferreira and I really sat down and thought about the way we were teaching investigators. We discovered it is not the way that Preach My Gospel teaches us to teach. Because we taught our own way we scared them. Because really, through the Gospel they CAN change in just 2 weeks flat! So Elder Ferreira and I changed the way we teach people. We are following Preach My Gospel a lot more closely now. For example, we found a new investigator whose mom is living with him in the Favela. We taught him and his mom the new way we decided to change to, and by the Spirit. The change was completely visible. They both accepted baptism when the Spirit confirms to them it is true.
So... the work continues and we learn and better ourselves every day, and find new people to teach every day.
Love you all lots and hope this week is a good one for you!
Elder Baldwin
No comments:
Post a Comment