Week #28

Bazinga!

Random Thought: Elders know how to do magic!

Good week! Wednesday we had our day planned out and our first stop was a members house. So we went there and she talks with us for a while, gives us three or four references and then decided that she is going to go contact them with us right then! So she went to get ready (even here in Brazil it takes an eternity for a girl to get ready) and woke up her son so he could go with us in the car. I want to pause here and say that when you get a ride in a car here you realize how bloody far you walk each day! Seriously! We talked with a member and on average with all of our appointments we walk 10-15 miles each day depending how many appointments we have and where they are! So while we were driving in the car I just thought,"this is too easy". You Elders and Sisters in the States have it way easy!! Anyways we ended up contacting all the references she gave us and now we have a bunch of new investigators!

Now as my random thought said, all Elders know how to do magic. Also, all little kids know it! I've learned about four or five magic tricks out here already and I love to use the toothpick trick my dad taught me! Anyways, one of the families we contacted had four children and a fantastic way to break the ice with the kids is to call them over and do magic for them! It also gets the parents to open up a little too. So I did a few magic tricks and then we started the lesson! It was wonderful and we scheduled to go back there!

Thursday we stopped by some recent converts and the little boy there looked like he got punched right in the eye. So of course I asked him what happened and he said it was the wasps! They all showed me this big wasp nest they have in there backyard and told me that what happened was they were all throwing this fruit at each other and someone hit the wood right under the nest and the wasps were startled a little bit so they stung the little guy! So someone (I won't mention who...me) threw a rock at the nest, hit it dead on and yelled ,"RUN!" So Elder Bresciano sees me running around the corner with a HUGE cloud of wasps following me! I didn't know they were following ME until I saw his face with sheer terror on it. Then I started running faster! We ran out into the street and I stopped and none of the wasps were around me so I just started laughing. I looked over and Elder Bresciano still had about ten around him so he took off up the street while taking his tie off and then stopped and used his tie as a weapon and killed every single one of them! So we go back to the house and help kill some more with sandals and it was super fun! So I looked at one of the young men at the house and at the same time we just said,"again?" then we did it again! Haha good times. (Don't try this at home)

On Friday we had divisions and Elder Grantham and I went to a members house and then to a reference she had for us! We taught the first lesson and asked if she had any questions. She said yes and asked us what we thought about a verse she read in revelations about people having a mark on their foreheads or there hands. We asked her what she meant and she started talking about how she read on the Internet that the government might start putting computerized chips in peoples foreheads or hands and if they try to take it out they will die. So as you can imagine it was a weird subject to talk about. I didn't know how we resolved her doubts but after talking a little she didn't have any more questions!

Sunday!!! Sunday was weird. We went with the bus in the morning like we do every Sunday now but we kind of became discouraged because not a lot of people were getting on the bus. It's really discouraging when you work so hard during the week and then the investigators don't come to church. Then we arrived at the church and one of our investigators arrived at the same time! I was SOO happy! The meetings started off normal but after the sacrament we had testimony meeting. Well there was a man visiting and he is kind of...not all there. So he wanted to bare his testimony but our branch president said not to let him because he would preach things that aren't beliefs of the church. So this guy gets up to bare his testimony and we are trying to ask him not to but he was adamant that he was going to! So he did! Half of it was really nice but the other was really strange and he did say a few things that we don't believe. After he was done a few other people got up and bore really powerful testimonies and it brought the spirit back really strong, so it all turned out good!

John 14:15

Com muito amor,
Elder Roman Laws