This week was a rollercoaster. We spend one day walking all over trying to teach people and nothing —- no first lessons, nobody marked for baptism, nobody at home. Then the next day we teach four people a first lesson, five people marked for baptism. That was a pretty great day! Then another day of nothing. Sometimes we struggle to find two investigators, sometimes we have a ton.
Yesterday we left the house at 10:30 — the sun is super high, it might as well be noon, there are people in the street, and . . . we were robbed right in front of our apartment. We saw the guy before he robbed us, but he looked like a normal person — on a bicycle!! He stopped right next to us, and for a second I thought he wanted to talk to us or something (hey, it happens). Sister Anaya was calling our lunch appointment and he tried to grab the phone out of her hand. She sort of reflexively moved away but then realized he was trying to rob us and gave him the phone. [For safety, missionaries are not supposed to resist in robbery situations.] It is almost a little annoying to be robbed by some guy on a bike whose only recourse is shouting “Gimme the phone! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” in order to get what he wants, but on the other hand, way better than being robbed by someone who is actually scary, right? He took the phone, started leaving, came back and demanded my phone as well . . . ha ha, joke’s on him. “I don’t have a phone.” “Gimme the phone, let’s go, let’s go!” “We only have one phone! Her phone is my phone. I don’t have a phone.”(I was almost laughing because it was such a ridiculous situation at this point). He decided to give up.
Note to the wise: missionaries are easy targets because they don’t resist, but robbing missionaries = not a lucrative way of gaining a living! We were glad he only took our phone, and afterwards we marked lessons with five new investigators before lunch. After tribulation cometh the blessings? We joked that next time we will give him our bags as well so that we can help people go to Sacrament Meeting! Sister Anaya didn’t get robbed until the last month of her mission! I was hoping to go a whole mission without getting robbed, but if I had to get robbed it was definitely one of the least scary ways to get robbed.
Yesterday we had an interesting experience. We were teaching a great family. They had already been to church in the past and were interested in the lessons. But unfortunately they think it is interesting to find super crazy doubts/questions about everything but less interesting to actually read the Book of Mormon and pray. If you never knock, God may not respond! We prayed before the lesson for discernment. We retaught the restoration, and it was a spiritual lesson. But it was so obvious that we should stop teaching them — one of them kept standing up and leaving, the other one kept saying totally unrelated things . . . Sad, but we were grateful to not be confused about whether we ought to teach them or not. We have some investigators with potential who will said they would go to church next week. I think our teaching pool is improving — hopefully they really go this Sunday!
Today (for preparation day) we are going to get a new cell phone and hopefully we will get to visit the oldest synagogue in the Americas.
Headed to Recife 