Things Just Got Rio: Missionaries call to repentance and other adventures

Zone leader, APs, Sister training leaders

August 6, 2014

We had our mission council meeting with all the sister training leaders and zone leaders, APs, and Presidente and Sister Cabral today and it was about 8 hours of “REPENT YOU SINNING MISSIONARIES!” (Seriously.) Presidente speaks really loudly and I think he is stressed and running on adrenaline a lot of the time. It just stressed us out way too much. Poor Sister B got a really bad headache, which I think was due to all the stress. I really love and respect President Cabral, and feel his gentle kindness when I am personally interacting with him, but when he gives talks or trainings, I just feel so stressed out as he yells, “Why aren’t you baptizing?! Is this the best you have to offer?! What do I have to show to Elder Holland this month?! NOTHING! “ (Yes, Elder Holland is visiting the mission soon and everyone’s panties are in a twist over it. I am not even kidding about the quote.)

Fortunately, Sister B and I know what we are doing, and we know that it is the best that we have to offer. We also know that we are striving to follow the Spirit in every moment, so we feel very good about our efforts and work.

Sister training leaders and President and Sister Cabral

August 8, 2014

Wow, this week has really flown by! We are finally finding our routine and rhythm and seeing the small results of our hard hard work. Today we taught R., who is a nice 23 year old man. He was a member referral form another ward. We taught with her today and well, it was a little crazy. Sister B and I left the lesson a little dazed, but our investigator set a date for baptism in September.

Amazing food!!!

We had to reschedule a lunch appointment with a gruff little old lady for a dinner appointment tonight. It turned out to be such a fun night for us! She invited the Venezuelan couple that has been such a great help to us, and a recent widow, and a newly reactivated sister. We all laughed a lot, ate some GREAT fish (up there with Dads smoked salmon), and we shared a great message. When we finally left it was 8:45 pm…yikes. We were at least 30-45 minutes, more like a hour with traffic, from our house. We were really worried about making curfew. I remembered seeing a bus labeled “Cascadura” nearby our house, but we had never taken it. We got on and literally 10 minutes later we were already in Freguesia, really close to our house. It was such a miracle, and we felt so blessed and grateful to make it home safely.

Just as an interesting side note: our upstairs neighbor is learning to play the drums and his drumming is causing Sister B. to have some bad headaches.

August 10, 2014

We had an utterly FABULOUS day today. We had 0 investigators come to church , and all of the less-actives managed to come up with last minute excuses not to come, but the rest of the day was just great! Our lunch was fabulous, prepared by a cute little returned missionary, and then we had a great day of teaching. We found new investigators to teach, and we are working with a less active family who has a desire to come back to church. BUT the coolest thing was that an AMERICAN family moved into our ward. Sister B and I were so awkward talking to them, but it was just great to be able to help the cute little kids out and to talk with the mom. The mom, while brave and super sweet, is experiencing that same major culture shock that happens to everyone, poor thing. They don’t speak Portuguese. But, we have a few ward members who are bilingual. I can’t even express how nice it was to speak English with someone, but MAN, I am rusty. I have a hard time expressing myself in English and I feel as though I’ve taken on a lot of Brazilian mannerisms. I think I am going to be weird when I get home.