Dear
family and friends,
A pretty chill week, to give a summary. We got some stuff done.
I´ll get started.
I thought I was back up and healthy, in a general sense, I was.
But, I kept a cough with me all week. I´d wake up at like 3am just to cough and
cough. I´d go to the other room to spare my companion from my hacking. I´d sit
there for a half hour coughing and then it´d pass and I´d go back to bed... an
annoyance, but it basically only got in the way of sleep. It´s practically gone
now.
João Lima was confirmed by a member yesterday, everything ran
smooth, he´s doing well. Not a single problem. Truly a blessing being able to
work with him.
I had a division this week after a district meeting with our
district leader, Elder Fortes. He´s a cool guy, his parents are from Cabo Verde
but he grew up in the US. He´s a good missionary, we got a lot of stuff done.
We actually were able to teach a handful of people but unfortunately none of
them progressed later in the week.
Even so, we had some good experiences. Elder Fortes chatted with a
couple on the bus ride home who had already investigated the church, were
nearly baptized a few years ago, but werent because they went to France. They
live in the other mission of portugal but we jotted down the info and we
already sent it to the other mission.
Do you guys remember Bruno from a few weeks back? Well, summarizing the
backstory, we found Bruno, a 28yo from cabo verde in his apt building and we
chatted with him and we taught him for a bit. He came to church and really
enjoyed it. A couple weeks back while we were teaching him, he told us a bit
about why he liked having us over saying "I took a hard test a while back
(He´s studying electrical engineering) and i was really nervous. Before taking
the test I prayed and told God that if he helped me on the test I´d finally go
out and look for a church to join. I passed and shortly after, you guys showed
up." He accepts the things that we teach very well. Unfortunately, he has
a "wife", but they aren´t legally married. We had a really good
lesson with Bruno this last week about real intent and we helped him work up a
courage to get things moving faster.
We used the BoM to help him understand. We read in Alma 34.32 that
this time is a time for men to prepare to meet god and execute their labors. In
33 we continue to read that we shouldn´t procrastinate our repentance and that
this time "is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not
improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein
there can be no labor performed." We gave the typical and obvious
explanation... "Bruno, you never know when our time here on earth runs
out. We need to repent (aka keep the commandments, aka get married in your
situation) asap so that way we´re ready should that unfortunate day come sooner
than we´d like." Bruno nodded, "well, yeah, but cmon guys let´s at
least hope that I won´t die tomorrow".
...But I don´t like that explanation that much. It´s like we show
up giving death threats to people like "hey, you might die tomorrow, so
dude you gotta git stuff done now". I mean, it´s true, but there´s gotta
be better.
In the english BoM we read that we should "improve our
time" during our lives, otherwise darkness that impedes labors will
come... ok. Wait, improve our time? Huh? But in portuguese we read "se não
fizermos melhor uso de nosso tempo..." translating to "if we don´t make
better use of our time". I don´t know if my explanation makes sense, I
don´t know if what I translated gives a different ring to the sentence (let´s
say that I´m tone deaf to english after being isolated from it for so long),
but to me it does. It´s understood here that our time here on earth is to be
used to prepare ourselves to meet god and eternity (repent and such), and that
we should make good use of our time, aka, we should use our time wisely
too, otherwise we´ll be backed in to a corner later.
We explained this to Bruno and he understood not only by that
"death threat" but he also more importantly understood that he needed
to get going with marraige plans, because God doesn´t just want to see if we choose
the right eventually, he wants to see that we choose the right and that we
don´t sit on the fence all worried about it.
Funny thing is, I never understood Alma 32.34 in that way. I had
never thought of that part like that, but in the exact moment that we read the
verses with him those thoughts came straight into my head very clearly.
I forgot to tell a really cool experience from last week.
Rewinding a bit, a year and a half ago I was serving with Elder
Marques in Póvoa. We were at the train station and we met this guy named
Walker. He pretended to be a non member who wanted to be baptized, but we
called him out and we got to know him during our train ride home. He served a
mission one or two years earlier in Portugal. His dad is american, and his
mother from Cabo Verde. He lived in the states for a while and in Portugal, so
he´s the two at the same time. Elder Marques and Walker spent the whole ride
chatting about their missions and the old mission presidents. I just listened.
Walker confessed that he´s inactive, that he doesn´t like going to church
anymore due to the gossip and such... ok. Well, I thought he was a decent guy,
we even thought about visiting him (we kept his number) but we just never got
around to it.
Last week, as we were leaving a lesson, I saw this guy jogging
(not sport jogging, rush jogging) in the other direction. I looked at him and
thought "nahw, that can´t be walker... here?" He passed and said
"hey Elders!" but kept jogging... I was even more confused because I
really doubted the chances of us meeting a second time in a different part of
the country... But I couldn´t resist. I called out as he was about to round the
corner to leave our sight "hey Walker!" and he stopped and came up to
us. "Remember me?" He looked at me and said, "hey wait,
yeah!"
From there we chatted and we found out that he now lives in our
area. He´s still inactive but he´s super open to us. We already ate dinner at
his house this last week and when he gets a day off on monday it´s likely that
we´ll spend a pday with him too. He´s not sketchy, don´t worry, he´s just got
to swallow a bit of his pride and get back to church. We hope to be his first
friends there, and don´t worry, we´ll still be stern with him when necessary.
We met his girlfriend and we see potential in her. He asked us to give her a
blessing.
But what are the odds? I wasn´t even "supposed" to serve
in this area, but I had an emergency transfer" here... hmm. No other
missionary in this whole mission (from what I know) would have recognized him,
not one ever met him.
On saturday we were doing some "telemarketing" as Elder
Vigne calls it with our area book. We called a brazilian guy named Lucas and we
managed to meet up with him. He was really chill. He was baptized in another
church, but he didn´t like it because he was basically "pushed" to be
baptized. However, we gave him a brief explanation about the apostasy and
restoration. We explained that we prepare people to be baptized and that we
don´t puch, in fact, we have interviews before each baptism to make sure that
the person really wants to and is ready. He raised his eyebrows a bit. He was
down to come to church but we don´t know what happened still, unfortunately he
didn´t make it. We´ll hunt him down this week.
But yeah, that´s the week. It rained a ton. I coughed a ton. We
had some good experiences.
Take
care everybody,
Elder
Ward
Sorry,
no photos... but I hope that you enjoyed the news anyways.
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