September 21, 2015 - Ipatinga

All I can see is a Belo Horizonte

 

Things are going good and the ward members are great. Last p-day we were able to play soccer with some of the members and I actually wasn´t that bad. I know I surprised myself too. This p-day activity is cleaning the Apartment, which it is in need of. I have actually cleaned it on my own a little, that´s how you know it´s not good. Hopefully I´ll also get a nap in.

 

We teach a lot of people one lesson. Either they say they are not interested or we can never find them home again, or last of all they just don´t answer the door. What is almost harder than not knowing the language is knowing that we have a great message that could bless their lives and families, but they don´t want it. One of the hardest things this week was a guy that we have been teaching only needed to come to church to qualify for baptism and he actually was at a church. We know this because as we walked to church we passed him. We stopped and talked (I didn´t talk much, mostly my companion), but he just didn´t want to go.

 

This mission is full of hills. The motto is "called to serve a mission in the hills," translation to English. About half of the hills are so steep I wouldn´t ride a bike down them. Quite a few turn suddenly and would send you flying over a ledge. I´m going to have calves of steal by the time I´m done here.

 

My trainer, Elder Barbosa has been on his mission for 18 months and this is only his third area. He says that the last mission president didn´t like moving people a lot, but President Fernandes does. He has actually never watched the Pirates of the Caribbean and really likes music. He said the last president didn´t allow any music, but I´m glad the current one does. Elder Barbosa is always hungry, he really likes pizza.

 

Randoms:

* A guy said that he loved Christ and wanted to become Jewish. I don´t think he believed me when I told him that Jews don´t accept Jesus as the Christ.

* We visit the ward mission leader a lot - he´s really nice and his name is Mazinho.

* We attend noite familiar (FHE) whenever a person invites a non member.

* We were taken to an all you can eat Brazilian BBQ by a return missionary that is a computer programmer.

* One of the questions I get asked the most often is, Estados Unidos?
 

Elder Quain

 

We also got to see our fist baptism this week. It was kind of funny for the interview. The Missionaries weren´t in our area, but we have the closest chapel, so they came to ours for the interview. They needed us there to unlock the chapel. They came with the investigator and they needed their district leader to give the interview. There ended up being 3 sets of missionaries there for the interview. It was fun and I got to see Elder Nelson. We kind of hove our own language right now. A mixture of English and Portuguese. The Baptism was two days latter and there were a lot of people. That should be happening every week. At least that´s the goal.