Scaring the Drunks

Sad as it seems, I completely forgot about the 4th of July until yesterday. Too bad, as I was gonna celebrate by lighting something on fire. Also, I´m a bit tired of hearing all the news about Michael Jackson dying. If it happens in the USA, it becomes the question of the week for people to ask me around here.

Yeah, so the big news this week was the mission boundaries changing. I guess it happened to all or most of the missions in Brazil. (BTW, I hear that the Rio North and and Rio mission are now one mission. Does that mean that Jeff Johnson and Jenny Morrisse are in the same mission now?) We lost the state of Mato Grosso Do Sul (Where I was in Ponta Porã and Campo Grande), along with about 24 or so missionaries who were there to the Cuiabá Mission. A good chunk of the Elders that´d I would be coming home with went there, including Elder Mont... It was actually pretty sad to hear about it, and President had a meeting for us last week, and he was feeling it too. We did gain a couple of cities here in the state of Paraná though, so maybe I´ll get to go there sometime. Who knows? I was glad to stay put here in Londrina, but I did think that it would have been interesting to say that I served in 2 different missions, if I had had to switch.

Some companionships got shifted around, so my comp. Elder Per... went somewhere else, and now I´m with Elder Lima. He´s from the city of Belém (Bethlehem in Portuguese) in the state of Pará, which I found out is a city that sits basically on the equator. He said that 105 F weather is pretty normal for him, which makes me happy that I´m not serving there. Unfortunately, he´s suffering a bit for the cold here., (65 F for him is cold) and usually walks around in a long sleeve shirt and gloves. Ha, he´s a good guy, and we get along pretty well.

This week, church moved from it´s 10:00 am time slot to 8:30, which resulted in many people not showing up to church yesterday. I personally like the 8:30 time better, but 10 was a lot easier for our investigators. The frequency is kinda low at our ward, at times approaching the number of people that would go to church in Adamantina. (That´s worrysome). Those who do go to church seem to be a happy, motivated lot, which helps when we have investigators at church.

President challenged us to invite people to get baptized more, even in our contacts on the road, so we´ve been having success on that front. Those who do accept a visit already know why we´re there, and so they´re more prepared. I´ve also found that it helps scare away drunks. Last night we were doing contacts when some drunk guy approached us and started begging for money. (At least he was honest. I asked him why he needed money, and he said he wanted more beer.) I told him that we didn´t have any, but that we could help him to be baptized and could even show him the baptismal font. He looked a little fearful, and left in a big hurry after that.

Not much else from me.

Hey, I thought that Rob and Alex would be home by now, but not till next week, huh?

Did Levi get all his mission shopping done?

´till next week.

Excelcior!

-Elder =w= you-know-who