September 23, 2013

So I love to eat. And I'll begin with a food story.

We were lunching at the house of a member. And guess what? It was rice and beans like always with chicken. And I love that stuff!

So after eating two platefuls (which is a ton of rice, but it was delicious and as y'all know I eat a lot), I asked Elder de Oliveira to give me a little more rice. And while he served me, I got distracted and was talking with Elder Eliason. So when I turned back, I had a HUGE mound of rice on my plate. And since it's rude to put food back into the serving pot, I had to eat it. And I guarantee that it was funnier for the other Elders than for me. After lunch I could officially say "Sou gravido, irmã." Which means "I'm pregnant." (When I first arrived, they told me that that meant "I'm full," but I quickly learned that it didn't!!!!).

Anyway, I slugged around all day, and that night, Elder Eliason and I were treated to a special dinner with some English teachers. They wanted to practice their English. This is the first time we've had dinner at someone's house because usually we eat when we return home after 9. Anyway, I was telling the story of lunch from that day, and guess what? While I was distracted telling this story, how much food do you think Elder Eliason put on my plate? Yeah.

But I love to eat anyway. There's a million types of Jelly here, and I've been enjoying a different one each week. Last week was Fig, and this week was Banana. They are delicious too.

But let's talk about more important matters…..like salvation and stuff

Firstly, service. Elder de Oliveira and I had the excellent opportunity to serve Rafael this week by weeding his yard (or, to make better use of words, de-grassing his yard).

We also helped a family move this week. Their new house is a lot smaller, but WAY better. The old one was more hole than wall. This family was just baptized two weeks ago, and the Dad won a house in a government raffle sort of thing. What a blessing!

a bird on Elder de Oliveira. At one point, the bird was also on me, but we didn't get a photo

This morning I was studying about service. In Jacob 2:18-19 we learn that we should seek to be righteous before we seek to be rich. But more, we learn that after we have obtained a firm faith and hope in Christ, we can seek for riches. And I like this phrase: "e procurá-los-eis". This means "And you will search for them. I'm not quite sure what the wording is in English, sorry. Anyway, I like this because if we really have a firm faith and hope and testimony of this Gospel, we will dedicate all of our resources to help. For example, by seeking riches to use to help the poor (as verse 19 explains).

Of course I also studied Mosiah 2:17. Service will help us be saved. There are a lot of times in the D&C when the Lord promises to people who serve that their sins will be forgiven. This links to the scripture I shared last week Moroni 7. Because we learn in that chapter that we can't be saved without charity (which is the pure love of Christ). And so, through love and through service, we can do more than just save ourselves, we can also save (or at least help) others.

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This week we are planning on baptizing Seloni and her son Walison. Walison hasn't gone to church yet, but is committed to be baptized. Seloni has come to church for the past couple weeks. She is really faithful and has a real desire to be baptized. Walison is helping her (and him) stop drinking Coffee so they can live the Word of Wisdom. I'm excited to help them enter the true Church of God.

This week, I've also been reading through the stories of some of my ancestors. Before I left, Grandma Tueller gave me a packet with some stories of some of these ancestor's missions. I'm really enjoy reading about the faith and diligence of early missionaries of the church.

Lastly, in case anyone is wondering, it's raining again. And that's awesome because it means that it isn't super hot.

Love

Elder Jasperson

PS here's some Portuguese fun-

Push means pull

Baby means drink

Acho means I think

Coco-mellon means mushroom

Bomb means straw

Care means want

And lastly, Colorado is an adjective for fans of Inter, a soccer team here.

some clouds sitting on the mountains. The clouds (especially when it's raining -ps it's raining a lot again) sit really really low. I hope this picture explains better than I did