This week was good! We managed to teach a lot more first lessons this week and we finally have more investigators in our teaching pool. Caroline and Luan* are going to officially start the getting-married process here! Unfortunately, this is not Las Vegas and you can’t get married in one day–it could take two months for the papers to get through! In other updates, Arthur is still working on dropping the last cigarette. He is working hard, so I am sure it will work out eventually.
Unfortunately, none of our new investigators went to church — it was another Sunday of sudden illnesses, rain, a death in the family!, sudden work opportunities, and general busyness and flakiness. But Luan and Caroline went to church again, as well as Arthur and Viviane. Viviane is an awesome young woman who has been wanting to get baptized for the last year. Unfortunately, her mom won’t let her. But she is persevering admirably and a very active member in the ward. The only thing that is missing is the water! (and confirmation). She is going to ask her mom again this week — please pray that her mom’s heart is softened.
Cool story — we are teaching a Hare Krishna who stopped us in the street! He wanted to hear about the temple, which apparently is built in a place an old Hare Krishna temple used to be. He also wanted to know about meat, because Hare Krishnas are vegetarian, and he talked with a vegan member of the church who told him that our scriptures said something about not eating meat. So that is pretty crazy, because I am vegetarian and was vegan before my mission because of those exact scriptures. [However, it should be noted that the majority of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not vegetarian]. And I have been to a Hare Krishna temple before and read a little bit about the religion because I think it’s interesting. Weird. We focused on the more important doctrine of the Restoration and his questions about that instead of talking about meat, but I thought that was a funny coincidence.
He called to cancel our second lesson because something came up but said he had been on the church’s website ComeuntoChrist.org and was loving everything. He was talking about how the church is such a great example of service, teaching children, etc., etc. He said he would go to church this Sunday and wanted us to preach him the Bible! . . . And then on Saturday he called to say he had been called to go on a mission for a week as a Hare Krishna and didn’t need more visits. So that was bad timing. But we told him that we had found a member who had already been to the Hare Krishna temple and would visit him when he got back.
Today we went to get Sister Sousa’s fingerprints taken. Next week (the day we find out about transfers!) she is going to do her interview at the American (embassy? consulate? don´t know). Her Canadian visa went through a week after the interview, so if she gets lucky she might be going to Canada really soon! Who knows if we will be in a trio this next transfer again or if I will end up getting transferred to another place when she leaves . . . or just receive a different companion. I´m not sure.
We stopped by the beach. Oh, how I love the sea. And lakes, and rivers, and ponds. . . It was picture perfect–yellow sand, blue sky, picturesque clouds. We did not go to the beach, obviously, but I admired it from a distance! The water was a little dirty because of the rain, but the benefit of not being allowed to walk on the beach is that it’s harder to see that it is dirty!
Love you all!
*All names are changed to protect the privacy of the investigators
Headed to Recife 