I had another great week here in Brasil! Man, this transfer is sure burning by! I feel like I just got here in Suzano. Actually, I still feel like I just got to Brasil, but I´m sure that´ll wear off in about another year and six months! I had some great experiences and funny stories this week. Here is the list:
5. Elder Pereira and I did another activity last Wednesday. It was pretty awesome! Every activity is better. I feel like we are successfully reanimating the ward and getting everyone here excited. For this activity, we used cardboard boxes to make giant cutouts of the Book of Mormon and the Bible. We cut holes for our heads and we wore them for the activity. We shared a message on the importance of scriptures and then played a trivia game. The game involved answering questions or getting a pie of whipped cream in the face. It was pretty hilarious! Brasilians really get into stuff like this.
4. We had a family home evening on Saturday night with Jane and Anderson´s family and some of their friends that were being taught the lessons. It was pretty awesome. That day, it was raining, and we were working in a neighborhood super far away from the family home evening. We had to book it in the rain. We did a 1 hour to 1.5 hour walk in 35 minutes in the rain. We got there just in time. Their friends’ names are Bruna and Jefferson. They are a young couple, and are super cool. Bruna is halfway through the Book of Mormon. They aren´t being taught right now because they had a bad experience with missionaries before I got here. I´m hoping we can change that. We read the Family: A Proclamation to the World for the first part of the Family Home evening, and then we ate and played some games. It was super fun. Jefferson has a pretty crazy life story. He shared it with all of us, and got pretty teary while he was doing so. He grew up in a favela, was abandoned, adopted, and had to drop out of school at age 10 to work to feed his family. His brother got addicted to drugs, but he left cause he didn´t want to do anything to do with drugs. He never learned how to read and write, so his wife taught him after they got married. He works super hard because he never wants his family to experience what he experienced. After the Family Home Evening, he gave us a ride back to our apartment. Before we got out of the car, I told him how impressed I was with his life story. I told him that there are few people on the Earth that would have been able to do what he did and make the same decisions. He teared up again after that. It was a really neat experience.
3. Well, once we got home after the Family Home evening, we realized that we had lost our cell phone. We had no idea where we left it. The next day, after church, we ate lunch, planned for the week, and went back to Jane and Anderson’s house to see if we had left the cell phone there. It wasn´t there, but Jane called our phone. Someone picked up! Turns out it had fallen into the road when we were booking it to the Family Home Evening. Someone picked it up and took it home. It was the first time I felt glad that we don´t have smartphones yet, because if we did, they would have sold it. We drove with Jane and Anderson to this old, abandoned factory where the guy was living. We got our phone and left a Book of Mormon with him. It was a pretty good adventure. It took us like two hours to find the place, and the whole while, Anderson was kind of freaking out cause the registration of his car was expired and we were on a freeway with a lot of police.
2. I had a pretty neat experience listening to the promptings of the Spirit. One night last week, I was lying in bed thinking, which is not normal. Usually I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow cause I´m so tired. However, this particular night, I was wide awake. I felt prompted that we should use the Area Book the next day. Up to this point, we had just been knocking doors and contacting in the street. Elder Pereira said that it sounded good to him. The next day, I looked through our Area book, and found a woman that was baptized four months ago. Elder Pereira didn´t know who she was. We decided to visit her. She ended up being super happy to see us. Her name is Cristina, and she hasn´t been to church the last couple months for a couple reasons, mainly because she received a calling and was super stressed out and didn´t know what to do. She wants to come back to church. We are going to start helping her and visiting her. It was really cool to see how the Lord works through us.
1. Well, the crowning moment of this week was about the funniest thing anyone has said to me since I´ve been in Brasil. We were teaching Victor. He is 18 years old, married, and is about to have his first kid. He is super cool. We contacted him and his wife a couple weeks ago, and he was really excited for us to come back. He thinks my accent is super cool. Saturday was the first day we went back there and they were actually home. He had and accident at work, so he is going to be there a lot now, so that good for us to teach him. A metal bar the weight of ten cars fell on his hand. He didn´t lose his hand, but it completely pulverized some bones in his hand. Like, they are literally destroyed. He is on some pretty heavy meds. Well anyway, we were teaching him the Restoration of the Gospel. I was explaining to him about the Great Apostasy, and I was talking about how tons of churches got started. I said, "So Victor, all these good people wanted to follow the Gospel of Christ, but they didn´t know the will of God. They began to start their own churches, but the churches weren´t the Church of Christ, they were the churches of men. So, Victor, what do you think these churches of men lacked?" He responded, completely seriously, "women?" It was so funny. I started dying. I was trying not to because I didn't want to offend him, but I couldn´t help it. It was ok because he started laughing too. I´m still laughing about this.
Scripture of the week: 2 Nephi 33: 6 and 7. I love these scriptures. We should all delight in the clarity that is the Plan of Salvation. We know where we are going and what we need to do to get there. We have guides in the scriptures, prophets, and the Holy Spirit. The world can be confusing, but we have a light set before us. We can have hope for ourselves and our fellow men because of the Atonement of Christ. All is possible. We don´t need to give in to despair, gloom, and confusion that the world presents us. Happiness in this life is achievable through Him.
2 Nephi 33: 6-7
6 I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell.
7 I have charity for my people, and great faith in Christ that I shall meet many souls spotless at his judgment-seat.
I love representing the Savior in Brasil, I love my companion, I love the Gospel and Atonement of Christ, I love my family, and I love my Redeemer. I am ready and excited to work harder, learn more, and love better this week!
Love,
Elder Warren Matthew Dudley
Pictures:
#1-6 Our apartment
#7 Elder Pereira and I as the Bíblia and O Livro de Mórmon
#8-9 Our awesome activity
#10 Elder Pereira, Cristina, and me
