Week 20

Alrighty, this week has been pretty awesome I think. It hasn´t been super successful when it comes to progressing investigators, but since we just had the ward split, we´ve been sort of opening the area a little. We lost a few areas we already had some potential investigators, and got some brand new area where I´ve never even been before. The Stake President and his family are in our ward now, and it turns out I taught his sister the lessons in my last area. She had a date for baptism too, but she couldn´t make it to church because she cares for a really old lady on Sundays. Anyway, we´ve been doing lots of tracting this week again. We got 12 new investigators though. 

We found a big family of 7, who already have faith, but not a church. They really really liked talking with us Americans, so they invited us to come back any time. That night we found them, the dad said ``Alright, so I´m gonna make you guys an offer. We´re going to be having a churrasco tonight for my son´s birthday; if you guys stay, we´ll be having more people over, and you can teach all of us about your church.´´ WHAT!?!? YES! Wait! Dang it, we already have an appointment, not to mention we´re fasting... That was so hard to turn down. I wanted to stay there so bad, but we had to say, ``Sorry, we can´t stay. We´re actually fasting, and we have another appointment at 7:30. 

We´ve found a few other people as well, but one of the old investigators from the Area Book actually turned out really well. We finally got him at home and went in to talk with him. He´s already had all of the lessons. The record says he´d had a problem with drugs and that´s been the biggest reason why he wasn´t baptized we think. When we saw him, he looked really clean, so we´re really hoping he´s cleaned up and we can get him set for a date. When we got there, we weren´t sure what we should teach about, so we just asked a bunch of questions and talked a little while. Then we just started talking about Jesus Christ´s Gospel of faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. We gave him a pamphlet and marked a place for him to read in the Book of Mormon. He was kind of looking through the pamphlet as we were both testifying of the blessings that come from the gospel, and we noticed he kind of stopped on the baptism page for about 20 seconds or so. Anyway, when we go back, we´re gonna set a date for him, we´re pretty sure.

I was thinking about some other kinds of things I´d like from the US. Tootsie rolls for sure, especially because they travel better than cookies. Fruit Leather too. Another Elder here had some, and now I really want it. I also haven´t been doing super good at taking my vitamins each morning. I think some simple gummie vitamins would be better.

Today, we hiked Jaraguá Peak. It was pretty sweet. It looks comparable to Mount Si, but it turned out to be a pretty fast hike. I took a few pictures and stuff I´ll send in another email. It was our entire zone. 

I´ve been reading the John Bytheway book. It´s pretty good, and I´m really looking forward to the President Monson book.

I got the package with the candy and mixes, the stocking/watch/guitar book, the two books/camera/ties/socks, and the ward letters. I think that´s only 4 actually. 

I never read the Hunger Games, but I´ve actually heard a lot of good stuff about them and figure I will after the mission.

Alright, that´s it. I´ll send some pictures now.

-Elder Candland

The first is like the wake up in the jungle not knowing where you are or what happened picture.

We found this shrine thing on the trail. We called it the recharge station.

Most of our zone.

Elder Davis and I again.

That´s Elder Tippets.

Part one of the São Paulo panorama.

Part 2, it continues where part one left off. Almost.

A favela.

The city center.

This dog basically followed us from the bottom, to the top, and all the way back down like our guide. We named him Thor, then we realized it was a girl, and named her Thora.

Me and Thora.

The zone at the very top.

There are monkies in the jungle. They´re just like squirrels for Brazil apparently. Only the Americans were super excited about them. This video is like a first-person monkey feeding game.