First and foremost, I'm here, but you can't tell because
these computers are evil. I can't send anything on this computer, so we have a
nifty little plan thought up. I'm currently writing on the stupid computer
where I can read, discard, save, and NOT SEND... But I'll save it as a
draft and send it on the other computer. Bwahahaha
Anyway, what I was planning on saying:
I always say I'm leaving! It just gets buried in the four
hundred different message threads that we have opened. I'll try to make it explicitly
clear this time then :P
And no, can't print, but I read them (and they are short),
so this time it's fine, no need to send them again. Thanks.
I'll be trying to write lot's of letters today... So yeah. Busy.
And now the normal weekly email (sorry for the mess
this week)
So... Where to start... Tuesday. I was a senior companion
for about three hours. The new elders from the CTM came into town, but I guess
they didn't have time to go to their areas yet, so they came to our house
(because it is big and it's close to Brasilia). There were six of them,
and there's six of us, so we each took one to do our appointments for the day.
That was weird. We went to one of our first investigators (that
we cut) just to invite him to church again and all that, then we taught a
lesson with a bible basher... Not fun. Because I can't follow bible bashes in Portuguese.
(Definition of bible bash: Two opposing sides arguing about religion
using different scriptures in the same bible to prove two different
points. They are always long, never come to a conclusion, and always result in
two or more grumpy people.) Anyway, my 'trainee' happened to be Brazilian, and
he really wanted to go into the bible bash... so I quickly-ish got us out and
we just made a couple contacts before it was time to return. Was weird for
sure, being the only one that knew really what was going on, but it was fine
too. I think it would have even easier with an American though so I could stop
him from saying stupid things easier...
Wednesday. I don't remember a single memorable moment. We
taught. And we contacted. And yeah. That's kinda the average day. No
great big stories to tell. Sorry. The end of the week was unique though.
Friday. We taught our investigator (important fact for a
later story) that I may or may not have talked about last week. Not
sure. Don't remember. But otherwise uneventful other than a crazy old
lady that is apparently a "less active" member of the church.
Yeah. She attends five different churches... And she is crazy. She says,
"Oh, I know how to speak English" randomly, so Elder George
says, "oh cool, we can talk in English right now if you want to
practice". After that, she talked to us for about ten minutes like such:
"lsaufghlvnushzldrutgvlxs,dhfgsjkdhfg dhfg kjhdfgkf sjdhfgksjhdf
gsdjhg kesjdhglaiudhfg jkldahfg xjhdfg laiudr gd " And we just responded
in Portuguese. Weird lady. Anyway, that was Friday.
Saturday. We met a really cool member that
was baptized 6 months ago. She is kinda like a super-member. She was
funny too. She invited us in for lunch and said, "So I know I can't have
you in here without my husband, so I already put the food
in my mother in laws house (who was not there at the time) and I'll
stand outside and talk to you that way" Funny. I guess that is
technically following the rules.
Sunday. In order to understand the story, you need some background info: Our sacrament meetings are always loud because everyone and their brother feels more like talking than listening (it's actually less than 20% of the people, but it's enough to be very annoying) I was rather afraid of bringing investigators to sacrament meeting because it was so irreverent. But oh well, what can you do?
Also, that investigator that we have been teaching is very strong
in her church (she is a missionary for her church...) but she is also a very
kind person. She decided to read "our book" before making a
judgment, and consented to come to church this week. This week was also fast
and testimony week, so you are now caught up.
So, she came. She went to the first two classes without
saying much to anyone. She went to sacrament meeting and listened to a few
testimonies, then asked if she could go up as well. I think Elder George almost
died. Then you could visibly tell that he was terrified as she went up. Was
kinda funny actually.
Well yeah, she got up there, explained that she was a
missionary for another church, that she has not gone to any other church in
quite some time, and that she could feel something 'here' that is different
than everywhere else. She thanked everyone for their testimonies, thanked us
for coming and teaching her, and said something along the lines of "I've
been looking for a long time. I think I might have just found it"
SO COOL. I'm glad she got up there. After that, we had testimony
after testimony that were just great, the spirit was very strong (I would know,
since I can't understand some of the Portuguese but I could still feel it). Oh,
and the room was silent. Hahahahahaha. Finally a reverent meeting, it's been
about 7 weeks too long since my last one.
So there is your requested story :P Hopefully we can pass by
her today and talk about yesterday some more. I think when you get a missionary
to see the truth, there has to be something inherently "right" about
your church.
Random information about Paranoa/Brasil you may not have
known.
Probably 50% of the population is "catholic". 25%
of the population is actually catholic (practicing and faithful). The
other 25% is everything else. This includes a few Baptists, Methodists,
universal, and I forget the other big churches. Plus about
50 (just in Paranoa) little evangelical churches. I've learned that the sorta-Catholics
only have a 'faith' that goes only as far as their words. The dedicated Catholics
are in fact very dedicated, but very often for no reason other than because
that's what they were taught. The evangelicals are bible bashers. They do their
best to follow the bible to the letter, but often interpret it in many many
different ways, and usually have no problem in telling everyone else that they
are wrong (remind me of the Pharisees in the bible...)
Why tell this? I just thought it was interesting how many different
churches there were. It goes back to what we usually end up teaching:
"Christ established ONE church. But due to men, many
others have come about. Some churches have been brought up by greed or power,
while many have been founded due to a real desire to follow the savior.
However, only one church is truly the church of Christ."
Also, I learned that my area is 20ish years old. Yeah.
Paranoá is 20 years old. That's so weird. It does not look that new, partly
because many houses look like they are ancient, but in reality they were just
thrown together in the first place.
I think that's all this week. Wow. This computer needs the
other computer's keyboard... yuck. Oh well, if you have questions send them my
way!
Tchau!
Elder Funnell
