This week was super long, but it was great! It started with
the transfer. Elder Luz was transferred to Canoas, and now I'm with Elder
Soares. He's from Minas Gerais, although his family lives in Espírito Santo
now.
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| Goodbye Elder Luz |
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| Hello Elder Soares |
This week I liked reading in 2 Nephi. 2 Nep 8:16 stuck out
to me. I also studied something else - read the following scriptures to see what
they have in common -
All of them say the same thing. Until now, I've found
13 scriptures that have the same message. How many can y'all find?
The message is simple - if we keep the commandments, we'll prosper. I've seen this a ton of times here.
Here's an example -
Carlos and Katia are two of our investigators. We baptized
their kids last week (Andre Samuel and Vinicius). They had a really difficult
relationship and were thinking about separating. We thought that we'd teach
them about the law of chastity and help them separate so they could be baptized.
But guess what? As they've been going to church, reading the scriptures and
keeping the commandments, their lives have changed. Without us prompting, they
started to talk about getting married legally. Their lives literally changed
100 percent! It's really awesome to see the gospel change them. They now have
baptism and marriage dates marked for the 30th of January. (That might change
depending on when they can get the papers to marry).
Anyway, for the transfer, Elder Luz went to the bus station
with Elder Neff, and I stayed with his companion, Elder Shreeve, as we waited
for our new companions. During this time, I made breakfast cake which was super
delicious. But I learned that if you keep leftover breakfast cake in a box in
the fridge for a week it no longer will be super delicious. But I think Elder
Soares likes me just because I welcomed him to our area with breakfast cake.
Elder Shreeve has the same amount of time on the mission as me. But he went
through the MTC in Provo and his first area was in Colorado. But he made it
here so that's cool. I realized how incredibly blessed I am. I am speaking Portuguese
fluently without much problem at all, but he still has a lot of problems. I truly
was blessed to receive my visa on time so I could have all this time here in Brazil,
and more, the gift of tongues is really helping.
With the transfer, Elder de Oliveira moved into our zone, so
when we had district meetings on Wednesday, I was able to see him for a bit. He
was wearing my tie (probably because it's the only cool tie he has :P)
This week was our Ward Christmas party. And that was a
blast. We had a bunch of investigators there too! I sent some photos of the
party. It all was pretty good.
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| Ward Christmas Party (Festa da ala) |
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| Ward Christmas Party |
This week was super super great because we found Fransisco,
Cícera and their family. They are from Ceará, a state way up north. They have
super cool accents, and are really open. They already have baptism dates for
the week that comes :) It's super awesome to teach them. They made us tapioca
and tea when we went there yesterday to teach. Tapioca is pretty good, but the
tea (from fruit so it's okay to drink) was not. I don't like tea at all. They
brought us each a cup and I managed to somehow get it all down, but I was about
ready to throw up. They asked if I wanted more, and I told them they didn't
need to worry about it. But they brought another cup. I prayed like crazy that
I could drink it without throwing up in front of them, and managed to get it
down. Teaching after that was hard because I was feeling really nauseated, but
somehow I managed it. We left their house and I ran a little farther down the
path so I could spit the taste out of my mouth! I guess you can't like
everything, but Elder Soares sure got a hoot out of it!
On Sunday, I played the piano again in sacrament meeting,
and I guess I'm getting better, so that's nice. I'm glad that I can help out
the ward a little through music.
Lastly, we had a cool experience this week when we taught a
mom and her daughter who is part deaf. Because she has trouble hearing, she
goes to a school of deaf kids where they only speak sign language (called
libras, and is different than ASL). She can speak aloud too, unlike from most
of her classmates, with only a little difficulty. It was super cool because she
talks while she signs. We want to learn how to sign a baptism invitation to
invite her to be baptized! :)
Anyway, Christmas is basically here so MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Love you all! Thanks for your prayers and thoughts!
Elder Jasperson
PS - I forgot to tell y'all that I ate a new fruit. I've
been branching out a bit with my fruit milkshakes, and Elder Luz had told me
that Maracujá is really good with milk. So I bought one and froze it. I was
really surprised when I cut it open! I bet it would be even weirder if I hadn't
frozen it (see attached pictures). But Elder Luz was right! It was really good
with milk! Elder Soares helped me - the trick is you have to strain out the
seeds because they taste bad.
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| Maracuja |
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| Maracuja with seeds! |
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