A very happy Carnival to everybody, há.
So, I got transferred. I'm on my way to a city called Adamantina (I think thatś what it is) in the state of São Paulo. It was another 10 hr. bus ride, with another 2 hrs. to go. Right now I'm in a city called Presidente Prudente for the P-day, and Iĺl get to my new area tonight. Itĺl be a change as Campo Grande is the biggest zone in the mission with about 24 or so missionaries, and Adamantina just has two (2), me and my comp, so I'll see how the change goes.
Há, so Carnival is tomorrow.
Last night as we were getting a ride to the bus station, we had to take an alternate route as the parade/party was right in the road. All the youth in our ward are at Youth Conference right now, as they do it during Carnival to get all the youth out of the city I guess. Fortunately, in our mission, its not as big so we can still work during all the craziness. I'd like to know how Jeff Johnson is doing there in Rio de Janeiro, cuz thatĺl be some craziness there...
This last week we found a couple of good prospects. One lady who manages a local hot dog restaurant is already almost halfway thru 1 Nephi. The only problem is that her husband is a Catholic guy who didnt really appreciate our visit, and doesn't want to hear more. Fortunately, the lady is still reading and went to church yesterday, so I'm hoping that'll it'll continue well there.
Last night was pretty cool. we arrived at the bus station at about 10:00pm as my bus was to leave at 10:50pm, only to find that the bus had a flat tire, so the bus ended up not getting there until about 1:30 am. So it was us and about 8 other Elders who were getting transferred. We tried to talk to a couple of people about our message, but at 12 in the morning all the people who aren't drunk are asleep, so it didn't work out all that well. One of the Zone Leaders had a guitar there, so we held an impromptu sing-a-long there at the bus station. Occasionally somebody would wander by and listen, so I got to let the Brazilians hear a bit of Weezer and Social Distortion. One guy who had had a couple of drinks already wandered by asked me if I knew any Brazilian music, so I attempted to play some songs that I've heard while Ive been here. It didn't work out to well, so I ended up just playing “La Bamba” and he seemed to like it. He was singing along at the end, though in what language I'm not sure. Good times!
Welp, thatś sáll from me.
Im sure that Ill have plenty of new stuff to talk about next week with the new area and all.
Till then -Me
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Thirty (30) Bibles
I think that we´re being tested this last week. I dunno why, but it just seemed like we faced a higher percentage of rejection compared to other weeks. I´m not discouraged, as I know that´s how it goes sometimes, but it was disappointing to see. For example, usually the references that we get from the reference site when people call using the pass-along cards are usually pretty good, as the person has to make an effort to call so it shows that they actually wanna do something. But this week we got a couple of people who just wanted the free DVD and to stick with the Bible, and another older guy who has about 30 Bibles in his house and just wanted to show his knowledge of biblical stuff. He did accept the Book of Mormon and the invitation to read it, but on the return visit we found that he was only looking for contradictions and not the truth. The 30 Bible guy was interesting. While the lesson wasn´t very productive, it did give me some more first-hand experience about why Prophets and Apostles are so important. This guy studies various versions of the Bible everyday, but I saw that with a lot of study but no guidance by the spirit or interpretation by a living prophet, his doctrinal stance on everything was all over the place. For example, he threw out his TV, magazines, newspapers, and all the pictures of his family because he believes that violates the commandment to not make any graven images. Needless to say, he wasn´t too happy with the pictures of the various scenes of the Book of Mormon in the front of the book.
R., the lady who got baptized last week, is already experiencing a little friction in the house since the baptism. She´s doing great, but unfortunately her husband is being a little bit negative. Like I said previously, he stopped participating after the Word of Wisdom lesson, and usually greets us with a smile and everything, but R. says he always makes comments after we leave about how the church is messing with his life (For example, R. makes hot chocolate or a drink called Cevada instead of coffee in the morning for everybody, and he´s a little miffed about that) and if she does something wrong, he usually blames the church for some reason or another. It´s a bit difficult, as we´re trying to be friendly and all, but he just sees her entering in the church as something of a nuisance. But, in an event that I can only attribute to divine inspiration, when R. was feeling really down last week and doubting her decision a bit, she talked to her neighbor in front of her house. It turns out that the guy´s brother is a member of the church, and he knows a bit about the church and has a really good opinion about it. He basically told her that there will always be challenges, even after baptism, and that she shouldn´t give up at the first challenge. She said that she took confidence from his words and has hope.
Welp, that´s all from me.
Till next time.
-Me
R., the lady who got baptized last week, is already experiencing a little friction in the house since the baptism. She´s doing great, but unfortunately her husband is being a little bit negative. Like I said previously, he stopped participating after the Word of Wisdom lesson, and usually greets us with a smile and everything, but R. says he always makes comments after we leave about how the church is messing with his life (For example, R. makes hot chocolate or a drink called Cevada instead of coffee in the morning for everybody, and he´s a little miffed about that) and if she does something wrong, he usually blames the church for some reason or another. It´s a bit difficult, as we´re trying to be friendly and all, but he just sees her entering in the church as something of a nuisance. But, in an event that I can only attribute to divine inspiration, when R. was feeling really down last week and doubting her decision a bit, she talked to her neighbor in front of her house. It turns out that the guy´s brother is a member of the church, and he knows a bit about the church and has a really good opinion about it. He basically told her that there will always be challenges, even after baptism, and that she shouldn´t give up at the first challenge. She said that she took confidence from his words and has hope.
Welp, that´s all from me.
Till next time.
-Me
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Little Purple Pansies
I’m happy this week, as R´s baptism went very well. She was doubting a lot whether she should actually get baptized, but in the end her asking and praying about the whole thing led her to make the decision to get baptized, for which we were very grateful. Now our project will be keeping her going strong and see if we can get her husband to have more interest. He didn’t even come to the baptism, even after she invited him, which was kinda sad, but we’ll see how things go.
Last night we decided to go do some street contacting in a part of our neighborhood that we haven’t been to before. We managed to find the heaviest concentration of churches that I’ve seen yet on my mission. There was one block that just had a school, and 7 churches on it, each one at the side of another, with another 5 or 6 nearby. And all of them where having meetings at the same time. It was a bit nuts, with the Hallelujahs from one church mixing with the rock band of another, and the various pastors yells all combining to make a big spiritual ball of sound. I felt sorry for the little “God Is Love” church as the Baptist church’s singing and band made it impossible for anyone to hear there meeting. It was pretty amazing, and I wish that I had brought my camera.
As we continued to walk, it seemed that all the churches seemed to let out at about the same time, so we tried our luck with some people that we passed by. Unfortunately, it was a big group leaving from the JW's church, so we didn’t manage to get even one person to listen. More luck was had with a group of Catholic’s who thought that the pass-along cards that we were offering where saints and readily accepted.
We’re having to revamp our investigator pool, as many of them aren’t progressing. Every week we get a bunch of people who say there reading and will definately go to church…but when we show up at there house or call on Sunday morning there either asleep or are waiting for a distant relative that they haven’t seen in a while to show up at their house. (A common excuse around here. I dunno why.) Lauren’s comment about that is right, as most people are asleep when we come knocking. Also, we need to figure out how to motivate some husbands of some families that we’re teaching. We have about 3 or 4 families where the wives really want to go to church and get baptized, but the husbands either don’t want to get married legally or aren't motivated to go to church, so unfortunately progress is very slow with them. How come the men are so much harder to get to do anything?
On a closing note, some guy from the stake high council spoke in our ward yesterday about the importance of things like Family Home Evening. He explained how he always let even the smallest kid have part of the planning, even when the ended up singing “I Am a child of God” for 4 months straight every FHE. It reminded me how we used to sing “Little Purple Pansies” every FHE. Good times!
Welp, that’s about it from me.
Thanks again guys.
-Me
Last night we decided to go do some street contacting in a part of our neighborhood that we haven’t been to before. We managed to find the heaviest concentration of churches that I’ve seen yet on my mission. There was one block that just had a school, and 7 churches on it, each one at the side of another, with another 5 or 6 nearby. And all of them where having meetings at the same time. It was a bit nuts, with the Hallelujahs from one church mixing with the rock band of another, and the various pastors yells all combining to make a big spiritual ball of sound. I felt sorry for the little “God Is Love” church as the Baptist church’s singing and band made it impossible for anyone to hear there meeting. It was pretty amazing, and I wish that I had brought my camera.
As we continued to walk, it seemed that all the churches seemed to let out at about the same time, so we tried our luck with some people that we passed by. Unfortunately, it was a big group leaving from the JW's church, so we didn’t manage to get even one person to listen. More luck was had with a group of Catholic’s who thought that the pass-along cards that we were offering where saints and readily accepted.
We’re having to revamp our investigator pool, as many of them aren’t progressing. Every week we get a bunch of people who say there reading and will definately go to church…but when we show up at there house or call on Sunday morning there either asleep or are waiting for a distant relative that they haven’t seen in a while to show up at their house. (A common excuse around here. I dunno why.) Lauren’s comment about that is right, as most people are asleep when we come knocking. Also, we need to figure out how to motivate some husbands of some families that we’re teaching. We have about 3 or 4 families where the wives really want to go to church and get baptized, but the husbands either don’t want to get married legally or aren't motivated to go to church, so unfortunately progress is very slow with them. How come the men are so much harder to get to do anything?
On a closing note, some guy from the stake high council spoke in our ward yesterday about the importance of things like Family Home Evening. He explained how he always let even the smallest kid have part of the planning, even when the ended up singing “I Am a child of God” for 4 months straight every FHE. It reminded me how we used to sing “Little Purple Pansies” every FHE. Good times!
Welp, that’s about it from me.
Thanks again guys.
-Me
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Rice can grow in the sink...
The Steelers won, eh? Huh, I´m surprised that the Cardinals even got in. There´s a couple of Elders in the zone from Arizona, so they were a little miffed with that one.
This week was a bit rough, Friday especially. After that day, I´m concerned about pastors and people from other churches who don´t want to understand the message. We taught a fairly large family that day, and the dad happened to be a pastor of some local church. Fortunately, he wasn´t the kind of pastor who wanted to do Bible bashing that would impede the message. Unfortunately, he was the kind that liked to show how much knowledge he had and would launch off into various off-topic stories in the middle of the lesson, which impeded the message all the same, and despite all our efforts, he kept on talking.
We also taught a couple of references that we got from a less-active guy. His name´s R., and we´re teaching him and his wife, (who´s not a member) and helping him to get back into church. When we taught there on Thursday, his wife had two friends over, two girls of about 15 and 20. They showed interest in the message and wanted a Book of Mormon. When we returned on Friday, they both had many questions and doubts, but the older one told us "I think that I´ll have to read and pray about it for myself before I decide", which is exactly what we wanted to hear. The younger one, however, told us that she had read and gotten an answer, although not a positive one. Apparently she read, and then asked her mom about it, for which she received the answer that she should stop reading the book. After that, she opened the Bible and found a scripture in Jeremiah that she said is her answer. I don´t remember exactly what it said, but it was something like "All of them and their prophets are adulterers, and they serve the God of Baal". She then told us that we obviously serve the God of Baal, and that she didn´t want to hear anymore, Sheesh! It was definitely the first time that somebody has told me that in my life. So thus ended our teaching experience there.
On a highly better note, Ros. decided to get baptized this week! She´s been going to church every week, but still felt that something was missing for her to be baptized. We couldn´t quite figure our what it was for a while, but after praying and studying for a bit, we felt that it was probably just the fact that she was feeling scared, as she already received an answer about the Book of Mormon. On Tuesday, I asked her if she had asked God about her baptism date. She said she hadn´t, and said she would. When we came back, she said that she had prayed and now felt ready to be baptized, so this week it´ll happen.
We were really happy and grateful for that opportunity. We wanted to help with her husband as well, but he didn´t like the Word of Wisdom discussion too much,and told us that he preferred not to participate from then on. In any case, we were grateful for the blessing of being able to teach Ros.That´s about it from this end.
President might be coming to visit this week, so we spent some extra time with some neglected house cleaning. Our kitchen sink is really messed up and doesn´t drain right, so Elder R. messed with it today. When he opened up the pipe, he found that the reason was because of bunch of rice that somebody had poured down the drain (I think it was me) had gotten stuck and had started to sprout and grow. Heh,it was the first time that I had seen rice growing in any form, much less in the kitchen sink. It was pretty cool. I had forgotten that sinks here don´t have a garbage disposal...my bad judgment.
... sáll from me. ´till next time.
-Eldah Heperi
This week was a bit rough, Friday especially. After that day, I´m concerned about pastors and people from other churches who don´t want to understand the message. We taught a fairly large family that day, and the dad happened to be a pastor of some local church. Fortunately, he wasn´t the kind of pastor who wanted to do Bible bashing that would impede the message. Unfortunately, he was the kind that liked to show how much knowledge he had and would launch off into various off-topic stories in the middle of the lesson, which impeded the message all the same, and despite all our efforts, he kept on talking.
We also taught a couple of references that we got from a less-active guy. His name´s R., and we´re teaching him and his wife, (who´s not a member) and helping him to get back into church. When we taught there on Thursday, his wife had two friends over, two girls of about 15 and 20. They showed interest in the message and wanted a Book of Mormon. When we returned on Friday, they both had many questions and doubts, but the older one told us "I think that I´ll have to read and pray about it for myself before I decide", which is exactly what we wanted to hear. The younger one, however, told us that she had read and gotten an answer, although not a positive one. Apparently she read, and then asked her mom about it, for which she received the answer that she should stop reading the book. After that, she opened the Bible and found a scripture in Jeremiah that she said is her answer. I don´t remember exactly what it said, but it was something like "All of them and their prophets are adulterers, and they serve the God of Baal". She then told us that we obviously serve the God of Baal, and that she didn´t want to hear anymore, Sheesh! It was definitely the first time that somebody has told me that in my life. So thus ended our teaching experience there.
On a highly better note, Ros. decided to get baptized this week! She´s been going to church every week, but still felt that something was missing for her to be baptized. We couldn´t quite figure our what it was for a while, but after praying and studying for a bit, we felt that it was probably just the fact that she was feeling scared, as she already received an answer about the Book of Mormon. On Tuesday, I asked her if she had asked God about her baptism date. She said she hadn´t, and said she would. When we came back, she said that she had prayed and now felt ready to be baptized, so this week it´ll happen.
We were really happy and grateful for that opportunity. We wanted to help with her husband as well, but he didn´t like the Word of Wisdom discussion too much,and told us that he preferred not to participate from then on. In any case, we were grateful for the blessing of being able to teach Ros.That´s about it from this end.
President might be coming to visit this week, so we spent some extra time with some neglected house cleaning. Our kitchen sink is really messed up and doesn´t drain right, so Elder R. messed with it today. When he opened up the pipe, he found that the reason was because of bunch of rice that somebody had poured down the drain (I think it was me) had gotten stuck and had started to sprout and grow. Heh,it was the first time that I had seen rice growing in any form, much less in the kitchen sink. It was pretty cool. I had forgotten that sinks here don´t have a garbage disposal...my bad judgment.
... sáll from me. ´till next time.
-Eldah Heperi
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