Belesa Presidente (Beautiful President)

Well that was a right short e-mail from you guys. What happened? Only Levi remember that I’m lost in a foreign country somewhere? That’s ok, s’all good. [The weekly family email we sent each week went astray, so Luke only got a short email from Levi this week.]

Did you send another email, Dad, that possibly got lost? Because I only received one that titled, “Spring is Coming” with a message from Levi marked 5:09 am on the 12th of March. It’s ok, but I just was wondering.

So another week, another spiritual dollar. Yesterday we had our mission conference, so we had to travel to Marilia. We had to wake up at about 5am to get ready, so I was pretty tired, and I’m still feeling it in fact, but other than that it was pretty good. Traveling is one of my favorite parts of the mission. It’s nice to see the countryside and other stuff outside of my immediate area. We also got to watch, “The Best Two Years” on the way, so it kinda felt like a road-trip.

The conference itself was good as well, but I guess that the guy who was coming to speak got lost on the way or something, ‘cuz we had to wait almost two hours for him to show up. Which was fine, but instead of a two hour conference plus lunch, we got to have a four hour meeting plus lunch. It was good and enlightening, but I was dozing off at the end.I also got to see two of the Elders from my MTC district, which was way cool. It was cool to converse in Portuguese, although we’re not fluent or even close to it yet. Also President Leal talked to us a bit. With me, he just asked me how I was doing, and I said, "Belesa Presidente", which literally means "Beautiful President", but they use it differently down here. Anyway, he seemed to think that my response was funny.

Well, we lost some of our best investigators this week. We were making some really good progress with them, but unfortunately one of the guys named Ad… got a talking to from their pastor about staying away from those Mormons, so he told us that although he really enjoys talking with us, his Mom doesn’t want us to come back. That was unfortunate. Also, he hadn´t quite grasped the message of us telling him that ours is the only true and living Church, so that may have been part of the problem. He just thought that Church is Church, no matter which one.Also, we got a referral through a member to teach and give a guy named Ric… a Book of Mormon. When we got there he let us in and let us share our message. He and his family participated as well. Normally the lesson is only about 20 min., but they had many questions and it stretched to over an hour. During the lesson, he told us that he had seen us speaking with a lady in the street before we came here (We were doing contacts around his area before we got there), and had thought that we were from some other church. Apparently he’s had some problems with other church’s missionaries, and he said that when he saw us coming to the gate, he was going to lie and say that he wasn’t Ric... But then he said that he had a feeling that he should let us in. And he said that he was really glad that he did, because we turned out to be the missionaries that he wanted. We taught a pretty good lesson, and he said that he would definitely begin to read and pray to find out if our message is true. And at the end, we asked if we could close with a prayer. He said that’d be good, but did he mind if he offered it? We said that was fine. Long story short, the prayer was like 10 min long, and was the kind where he’s talking really loudly while the other people are in the corner yelling “Hallelujah” every so often during the prayer. Very good guy, but I can see that it’ll be a bit of a challenge to change the way that he prays.

In other news, we’re goin’ to the zoo today, so I’ll be sure to get a lot of pic’s from there. I haven’t gotten the mail with the memory cards that you sent, and the next mail day will probably be during the next transfer, so until then, I’ll keep taking the pic’s.

Let’s see, what else. Oh, I got a letter from Elder Morrise over in that Taiwan place. It was nice to hear that he is still alive. And it made me feel better about my language struggles when I realized that I don’t have to learn a new alphabet. It’s weird to think that he and Rob are approaching a year already, and Dave Ridge has a year this month I believe. Sheesh, we’ll all be home in no time.

Well as always, Excelsior!

-Eldizzle =w= Hepizzle