Week 8

Ya, it´ll be probably quite a while before I can send some pictures. I´m still looking for places I can buy a camera for not too much. Generally cameras here are more expensive. At lest from what I´ve seen.

As for the baptism, yes, I baptized one of them. I baptized the daughter. The water was seriously hose water. I also got to confirm the mom. I confirmed someone. In Português. It was actually really cool. I was unprepared, not expecting that I would actually be asked to do it as an``Alemanha´´ with not much Português. I had trouble pronouncing the confirmation, but when it came to the blessing, I was able to just say what I felt. It was short, but when I sat down, I realized I said things I wouldn´t normally have said because they were either bold (which I´m not) or used grammar I wouldn´t have thought to use. After Sacrament meeting, I went to talk to them, and they looked different. Better for sure. You could tell they had the Holy Ghost.

Ya, I realized there were actually 2 black guys in the choir. Only during Sunday though. I´m positive Saturday morning there was only one. And the famous black guy, Alex Boye, I´ve seen before. We watched EVERY I´m a Mormon video in the MTC during our breaks. I like his accent, especially since he´s not white.

I recieved a few answers during conference as well, but I also have been recieving a lot of answers here in the field from experiences such as lessons, trials, and straight up revelation through prayer. This week I also learned the meaning of the scripture ``Pray always that ye may come off conquerer...´´ I recieved an analogy between appointments the other day: ``If I were a soldier in enemy territory, how much would I pray? Constantly. And this world is always at war, and we are always in Satan´s territory.´´ Now, I pray always, and it has helped me a considerable amount. Also, my companion was being lazy this morning and I had things I needed to do, but because he didn´t want to do what I wanted, I didn´t have the time I needed to finish it all. Then, on the bus I was praying for help to not feel so angry, and I recieved an answer that I just needed to talk to him about it because holding it all in was only hurting me. Then I realized that the whole situation was just part of his plan for me, and I realized the mission really does prepare you for marriage.

It sounds like things are going well at home with the drivers exams finally getting passed.

Something here I love is the fruit. There are so many different fruits I´ve never seen before. It´s so good to just go buy fruit, throw it in the blender, and make some really good juice. And there are these Lanchonettes every block in the city. There´s on in particulary that our zone loves. It´s in a mall in our area, and for $R6, you can get a huge thing of the best, fresh juice, and two different kinds of bread stuffed with different kinds of meat and cheese. We went there again today for lunchy. It´s so cool there, I wish I could just drive you guys there every now-and-then.

Here´s my ``funny´´ stories for the week. One day, I was trying to say something was ``fun´´ but I didn´t know the word for fun, so I just said the word in the Português sentance, and my companion asked ``What´s fun?´´ and I wanted to start singing the song from Spongebob really bad, but he wouldn´t have got it at all. Also, one day, we were walking on the street, and it just started pouring. I know rain since I lived in Washington for so long, but this was pretty outrageous. There were 2 to 3 inches of water in the sides of the street. The best part was, it was super windy too, and all of the stores and lunchenettes shut ther doors before we could find a place to hide, so we stood under a small over hang for about 20 minutes in the most crazy rain I´ve seen in a long time. We actually just started laughing because it was so ridiculous. We decided after that, since we were soaked, that we had a wild card for any investigator we wanted to visit.

As for being the new ward mission president, here´s my advice. Read through Preach My Gospel to get a feel of what the modern missionary should be like, adn especially read the chapter about working with ``Ward Leaders´´ to get a feel of the missionarie´s responsibility in the ward and the relationship with the leaders. As for things that are nice to have from the leader, we have an awesome leader in our ward right now. He helped arrange the baptism, he´s arranged splits for us to contanct inactive members, he´s always thinking of things that he and we can do to gain trust of the ward. Something we need here is more work witht he members. Working with the members is really important. They show other people that members are normal people. And to hear a testimony from someone else that used to be the same religion as you or had similar experiences before is really, really helpful. Also, try to meet with the Elders, even just for 15-20 minutes each week to help them with anything.

Have another good week. talk to you guys next Monday.

Elder Candland