"But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." 2 Timothy 4:5
Hey guys,
This week was better, in several ways, although for the most part we're still trodding along in the refiners fire. Aside from the difficulties, i've been learning and growing a lot, and having some very good experiences as i've been praying and studying and trying to figure out what we need to do to get things going here. This week they called a new bishop, our old bishop was incredible, i'm really a bit sad to see him go, but he moved to another area, so they called a new bishop, Macsuel. He made the t-shirts for us (i don't remember if i mentioned, we arranged to make t-shirts for our zone.) He's one of my favorite people here in Alverca, he's 26 years old. Our stake president, who is in his early 30's, talked about how he was only 23 when he was called as bishop, and stayed there for 10 years. It's sort of a scary though to get home from the mission, get life going, and then get called as bishop for 10 years.
This week, we made a goal to work harder, specifically to contact 10 people a day, it was great at first, we were talking to lots of people and we were excited, but then everything sort of fizzled out. We did, however, find an incredible family of 5. I've never seen little kids so well behaved. We're really excited for them, and hoping that they'll progress. the mom said she would come to church this week, and we're hoping to get them to come on wednesday to the Stroganof Night. We also found this russian lady, Natasha, who is very sincere and wants to learn more, but we're sort of stuck because she barely speaks portuguese, and we don't speak russian at all, but between movies and other church materials in russian, we're getting there. We talked to the mother of one of our potential investigators that came to hotdog night, and she said that he came home and said that he wanted to join the 'church of the elders'. Her first question was to ask if we were allowed to get married. We assured her we were, and after that she was ok with the idea. We're excited for that little family to. They live across the hall from Otacílio, who continues to be a blessing in the work. This week we're going to have a family night with Marcelo and Luciana and her friend Tita, who is the mother of one of the kids that came to hotdog night. We have some other members that have people for us to teach. there's a lot of potential in this area, it just hasn't quite gotten going yet, but we're working hard, and we're hopeful this work we'll see things get going.
We are, at least, healthy for the most part. My cough has gone away and Elder Mateer is doing a lot better. We are still living with the Vila Franca elders, but elder mateer found them a house with Remax and they'll be moving in sometime this week. Their new house is super nice, but pretty cheap. It's still hot, but no longer untolerably hot, and it's been getting cooler at night. Last night we went to help some people move, what looked like it would be a quick project turned out to be a 3 hour ordeal with us getting home late and thoroughly exhausted. I've found that helping people usually ends up being a lot more complicated than you expect, but it's generally worth it.
Anyway, not too much happened this week outside of that. All things considered, we're happy and excited to keep working. In conferences and such, President Torgan usually talks about how missions are supposed to be difficult, and if the mission is confortable you're doing something wrong. So that's a plus.
Sounds like things are good out there. Have a great week, and don't forget to help the missionaries.
abraços,
Elder Ammon
