Happy New Year! It is officially 2017, and a new year is starting. Apparently this year will be the best year, because it is the one year of my mission that will be spent entirely in Brazil. This week has been the hottest week to date I think. I think that every single day was over 100 degrees and even the water in the showers here is hot. Even with the heat the work here is progressing. We have been working pretty hard and it seems like things are turning around. We have been receiving references from members and finding more good investigators. If we put the most important things first, there will be space for the other things, but if we put little things first, we won't have the time for the big things. It is really interesting and makes sense. Everything is paying off.
So some good things from this week were that there was a branch fireside on Tuesday. Elder Kaiser shared a message about Christ and how he knows every single pain or problem that we have exactly. That he paid for literally all of our sins and felt every pain imaginable. He knows are struggles and can help us through them if we turn to him. It was a good little fireside that ended with a little game of charades.
Wednesday we had a youth activity again where there were a bunch of video games, card games, and board games. There was a good turnout and we even had an investigator go and he enjoyed it. These activities are good for integrating people into the branch. Then we went and taught a new investigator called Ilaina that asked us to come and teach her. It was a good lesson and she accepted to be baptized possibly this week. She has a weird work schedule and if we can teach her enough commandments this week she could be baptized Sunday.
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were pretty normal days of work. We finally found Lucileia who had disappeared and she is excited to be baptized in two weeks. A funny little story for these 3 days was that we had walked to a way far neighborhood, and when we were returning it pretty much looks like a desert. Well Elder Choi saw a set of stairs climbing up a mountain, and we decided to see if it led where we needed. Well, yeah it didn't, It led to a trail that stopped halfway up this little mountain. since we had already committed, we had to scale a little bit. Another fun trail of Elder Choi.
The struggle on the mission that I have had to overcome would be the desire to work. Especially when it is really hot it is hard to not sit under a tree and take a short break. The other struggle has been trying to talk more. It is easy to just sit there and work on translating and nothing else, but it is more helpful to try and practice talking and building friendships with people. My first transfer i kind of just walked around and taught some lessons, but the mission work is much more than just that. Everything is a process.
Sunday was New Years day and everyone was inside. The streets were empty and everyone was sleeping. So not much happened there. For new Years Eve we had some more BBQ and then went to the roof to watch some fireworks and drunk people in the street. It was pretty good. I hope you guys enjoyed your new years as well.
Until next week!
Love,
Elder Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment