 |
| It is crazy hard to transport your things by bus. |
 |
| Transfer time |
 |
| Sister R. and me at transfers. |
I
got transferred, again. Presidente took a TON of missionaries out of their
areas (ie. 26 areas had BOTH companions leave), and moved things around a
lot. Rio das Ostras now had 4
Elders. Presidente took ALL of the
sisters out of zone Macae. But,
Sister Burris and I are together again.
Yay!
July 15, 2014
 |
| The pile of trash cleaned out of the Elders pigsty. |
Our
house: Well, my bed is a mattress
on the floor, and my desk is a filthy sofa with a plastic table. There are tons and tons of cockroaches
and mosquitoes and fruit flies. It
is just gross. On top of the filth
is the fact that this house is 1-2 hours from our area and the only mode of
transportation is by bus. I think
that I have already expressed my deep hatred of buses here in Rio, but yeah, it
sucks.
On
the bright side, our zone and district leaders are great young men. We have Elder Hawks as a ZL again. He is great. He is now in Jacarapagua where I left 5 baptismal dates, and
I am in his old area. It is cool
to see how much he sympathizes with our situation and how willing he is to help
us out. Our other ZL has yet to
win me over. Our DL, Elder Alves,
was my former Dl when I was with Sister Ramao and he is a great guy. Good
leaders make my life so much better.
 |
| After a thorough scrubbing we discovered our couch was supposed to be white. |
July 17, 2014
I
woke up with cockroaches crawling on my arms and neck. This area is really
trying my patience and endurance. Our “house” is problematic. First of all we live above a bar. In order to turn on the “light” in one
of the rooms, you have to plug in an extension cord that is attached to a
single light bulb that dangles above the desks. The flush the toilet, we have to run a hose from a separate
faucet and fill the tank manually every single time. The shower…I have actually
managed TWO hot showers this week, which is literally a miracle. But even then, these electrical showers
just are so shoddy that they work maybe 40% of the time. Lots of times they stop working about
3.4ths of the way through the shower.
Uggghh. What else? Oh, I have some short of bug that is
biting my hands leaving small itchy red bumps all over my fingers/hands/wrists.
Oh
the joys of serving in Brazil.
Only 23 more weeks. I
mentioned to Sister B the other day that I feel like I am running a half
marathon (which is the farthest distance that I can actually relate to), and I
have hit the 9 mile mark. That is
where you feel wiped out having just run 9 miles but know that you still have
three more to go. The phrase
“endure to the end” has become more important to me.
July 18, 2014
I
am so tired, and I am getting sick.
Today I got up, exercised, go ready, switched my laundry, started our
personal study, then ended up feeling like crap and sleeping until about
noon. Then I got up and we left
for work. Almost 1 ½ hours on a
bus later, we arrived at lunch with a really nice sisters and her 12 year old
son., Gustavo. He was a super cute
kid. When we asked him what he
likes to do, the first thing he said was, “read the Book of Mormon!” He then
proceeded to detail the accounts of his favorite storied with an impressive
amount of energy and enthusiasm.
Way cute!
I
am realizing more and more that I just have no patience to work with
less-actives. It’s always the SAME excuses – “I’m too busy, my health is poor,
other people offended me.” It
drives me crazy. I have learned to
bite my tongue and let my sweet patient companion take the reins with the
less-actives.
We
had a few very positive teaching experiences on the street and we even found a
man, J. , who has already had a lot of contact with our church, but has never
attended a Sunday service. He
asked us what he could do to visit our church. Another cool moment was teaching
with Brother Xavier, who is an 84 year old former patriarch. He is just like a
Brazilian Mr. Rogers. He has been
teaching twice with us now and he has a spirit that just radiates from
him. I just love being around him.
Those
are all the positives. All of our
ward members tell us about how hard our area/ward is. When we try to show excitement and optimism, they just cut
us down with another negative comment. It is frustrating.
July 19, 2014
Today
I had a break down inside of the bank after an ATM machine ate about $150
. The inside part of the bank
wasn’t open because it is Saturday.
Anyways, I just feel like I am so emotionally wiped out this week that
the littlest things are getting to me.
There have been countless things that have gone wrong or have been
really hard this week, and I am just at the end of my rope. I ended up called Elder Hawks and venting
to his sympathetic ear. He gave
Sister Burris and I a good pep talk, and we made it through the rest of the day
without losing it.
One
cool thing we met P. and A. P. is
coming back to church and A is a very intelligent investigator.
 |
| My newest planner |
July 20, 2014
Well,
we worked out tails off this week and we still have a ton to do. This is by ar the most challenging
areas I’ve been in and even the members and missionaries say that it is one f
the hardest areas in the mission.
Church today was just plain sad.
Only about 50 members came to sacrament meeting, and no one sat by each
other. We have a lot of work to do
in the ward itself.
 |
| Only 3 more miles to go. |
We
did have a small miracle today. We
were doing a “Capela Aberta” and I invited a young woman from off of the street
to do a church tour. We had and
AWESOME member help us out, and then afterwards the young woman got emotional
and said that the week before she had been at her lowest low in her life and
she prayed that the Lord would help her to fell better. She said that she felt that this church
washer answer to her prayer.
Unfortunately, she is not in our “area” so we passed on her information
to the missionaries in her area.
Cool
side note: my accent and Portuguese are progressing because most people ask me
if I am from the southern part of Brazil.
#miracles (I am really terrible at languages)
Quote for all time:
Apostle Orson F. Whitney of the quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, explained: “ No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is
wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as
patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. All that we suffer and all that we
endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters,
purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and
charitable, more worthy to be called he children of God…and it is through
sorrows and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain eh education that we
come here to acquire.”
No comments:
Post a Comment