Week 27

So this week has been pretty good. We´ve got 3 progressing investigators now. Two of them have baptismal dates now. One of those dates is the lady who came to church on her own last Sunday. She lives with her daughter who is also very interested in the church. We´re about 99% certain that both of them will be baptized. It´s kind of funny that my only other people I´ve seen accept the Gospel and be baptized were another single mom and her daughter. They came to church one day on their own as well. With the new mom and daughter here, we´ve been able to teach them with a member present each lesson, and it´s been incredibly helpful to have someone there who they know from church already and can relate to. It really makes a more comfortable atmosphere. It´s pretty tough for anyone to relate to two boys who only wear church clothes and don´t do anything fun. 

It´s very apparent that when someone comes to church on their own, they usually have interest in the church, and a potential desire to join. I also have a very strong belief that the majority of people who are interested in the church need to go to church before they´ll really know it´s true. We can teach them all we want about the Gospel, and they can know the Book of Mormon is true as well, but going to church is pretty important. Especially here. There are SO MANY churches here. There are about 5 other big ones that find most people a part of, but there are still a ton of other random churches that people start up to make a profit. Random thought: Almost all other churches here require some form of ``tithing´´ in order to be a member or to receive blessings from God, but you can still say they´re all non-prophet organizations. Anyway, when the people see that the church is run differently than all others here, it really helps.

There´s this other family we have been visiting. If you remember about 2 months ago, we went to a family´s home on fast Sunday while fasting, and they invited us to their churrasco, but we had to say no since we were still fasting. We´ve been going back during this last month, but it´s been hard to teach much there. The dad shows a lot of interest, but he can´t help but talk about all sorts of other things he knows about the Bible and how he understands religion and the gospel. We love this family though. They´re all really close, they always are together on the weekends, and there are 5 kids, which is a lot here in São Paulo. They all call us their American friends. They sometimes have a hard time remembering our names (mostly mine) so they´ve taken to calling me Pedro and Elder Davis Tiago (that´s Peter and James (don´t ask why James´ name was changed to Tiago). Anyway, they had a huge family reunion/churrasco at their house on Saturday and they made us stay. The food was so good. They had the usual meat-on-swords deal, salad, rice, normal stuff, but they also had pealed ginger to eat with the meat. That was a really good idea. There was also cheese on a stick that they grilled up. The mom made this really good garlic sauce and I asked for the recipe. She said she just puts a big garlic clove and a cup of milk in the blender and slowly adds oil as it´s blending. I´m gonna have to figure out the oil-to-milk ratio. 

I get excited when I think about being able to use Português back in the US, but I can´t really think of many opportunities other than a few different jobs. We don´t have a whole lot of Brasileiros in Washington either. 

There were a few other recipes I was hoping you guys could send me (on paper in a letter preferably). Our brownie recipe from scratch, the Kosorok cookie recipe, our lasagna, and ... that´s it for now I forgot the other if there was one. 

Alright, I need to reply to Kortney now. 

--
-Elder Candland