Hello everyone!
This week went by pretty fast. I am now semi-fluent in Portuguese. I can speak almost normal speed and can conjugate things almost correctly, but I don't have the accent or vocabulary. With a little bit more time I will have it.
So this week I had my first service project. We painted the outside of Sister Nelma´s house and did some weeding as well. It was some good service, and they even played some quality English alternative music while we worked. It was good, but also brought back some memories of home. The service project took up most of the day so we didn't have much time to actually work. We just made contacts after that until the English class that I have. There were a few people in the ward that showed a desire to learn English, so I am now a professor of English. We even have a few investigators that want to learn English as well, so we use it as a chance to teach some spiritual things as well. Nothing big, just a prayer and a thought.
The next day we had splits because Choi needed to give a baptismal interview for an investigator of the other dupla (companionship). I had Elder Lemes with me and I was the senior companion because we were in my area. So I was in charge of everything. We went to the house of Markus first, and we had the most spiritual lesson of my mission there. We cleared up his doubts about baptism and the church and helped him to make a plan to stop smoking. He was ready to be baptized if he could stop smoking. It was a powerful lesson and you could tell that he felt the spirit too. He was really humbled and we took the cigarettes that he had. The rest of the day was just normal missionary work and we had a FHE with Sister Natalina that night. We gave a little lesson on faith and will be helping them move houses soon.
Two days later had splits for the beginning of the day as well to give more Baptismal interviews. We arrived at the house of Markus to give an interview and found him smoking with his sister. His sister had given him cigarettes and had been talking with him. She had stopped smoking for 2 months but then relapsed. She was pretty much a devil in his ear and now he doesn't even want to go to church any more. It was sad, because I knew that he wanted to be baptized earlier. He was so humbled in that lesson and had even stopped smoking for 1 day. He had never done that since he began smoking. That entire day was a struggle for me because I was sad, but we just had to work. I hope he will be able to overcome and enjoy the blessing of baptism.
Yeah so this week there has been lots of rain. Generally just a light drizzle with a little more rain luckily when we are giving lessons in homes. The last 2 days though it hasn't stopped raining and right now it is a decent amount. The rain drops aren't huge and it kinda just feels nice. As for the election I heard the day it happened. Every one asks "How do you feel about the new president. What are your views on all of this? Do you still want to be recognized as an American?"
We had another really good lesson with Christiana, Lysla, and Lyla. It took a lot of explaining and going to the scriptures to testify that God can talk face to face with his prophets. They also had lots of misconceptions of Mormons. They thought that we couldn't eat meat for one. I had never heard that one before so yeah that was fun to explain a bit more about our general beliefs. We brought Sister Nelma with us for that lesson and she helped take away some doubts as well. She has a cool conversion story via dream. I don't have the time to explain about it. Anyway that was pretty much my week. Until next time.
-Elder Smith
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