I can't believe we're entering March! Isn't it funny how
time flies? Personally, I forgot that February only has 28 days (yeah, in my
planner, I listed the days until Feb 30th, oops) so I was pretty surprised to
find out that it's March already. March, in Brazil, means Carnival, and pretty
much the entire population of São Leopoldo went to either Rio de Janeiro or the
beach to celebrate. Don't google it because it's not very virtuous. Luckily,
I'm not on the beach (in Osório) anymore.
I studied in the Book of Mormon this week, along with my
patriarchal blessing (which is a great thing to read every now and then)
Enos 1:8 is interesting because Enos received remission of
sins through his faith. But what happens to repentance? If you read 2 Nephi 31
or 3 Nephi 27, you will learn that repentance comes through faith too.
Also, I liked Mosiah 1. Mormon says several times that King
Benjamin taught his children lots of stuff. Because 1) knowledge is important
(see D&C 130) and 2) a dad-son relationship is important and one way to
develop that is through teaching.
I thought a lot about families this week. We are teach
Eduardo and Jessica, who have a little boy named Adrias (1 year old). We did
something with them that I've never done before and never want to do again. On
Thursday, we taught Jessica, who is a member, that the only thing that was
holding her back from being an active, temple-recommend holding member, and the
only thing holding him back from being baptized was their marriage. Since he
wanted to get married, she was essentially the only thing holding them back
from eternal progression. Well, she got the message alright, because when we
passed by on Sunday, she was packing her bags. So Eduardo, Elder Wilker, and I
helped her move to her mom's house. Yeah, they separated. That's really, really
sad. But, it's also good, because now they'll be able to progress eternally. We
marked a baptism date with Eduardo.
This week I made two contacts that were cool. Firstly, I
made contact with a man who proclaimed himself to be a Mason. He said he's like
a grand master chief or something (sorry if I offend any masons, I don't know
anything about the hierarchy of the group). He is super smart. He shared a
bunch of stuff (about science and history) that he knows with us. He had
already heard some things about the church, and invited us to "pass by his
house, anytime, to converse about our religion and eat hot cheese with
forks." We never did pass by, but we found his house- it has a huge radio antenna
behind it...
I made another contact on the train this week with an Englishman
(from Liverpool). I thought I heard someone speaking English, so I followed my
ears until I found him. His guide didn't speak English very well, but it was
his second day in Brazil, so he didn't speak any Portuguese. At first, he
didn't believe I was American, because he said that I speak with a thick Brazilian
accent. (Oh no!) He had a bunch of questions about our mission here and stuff
(he's here with a church called "Igreja Quadrangular"). So that was
cool. Sadly, I had to get off the train before I could finish talking with him.
Lastly, on Domingo, Luis invited us to have dinner at his
house again. So we went. This time, the other duo went with us (Elder Rech and
Elder Blair). Luis even went to church this week (which is huge progress for
him and Ivete)! He bore his testimony during the meeting and everything. So
maybe we'll manage to reactivate him after all. But it will take a while to baptize
Ivete because they have to get married legally and marriage is complicated
here.
This week we're going to return to Porto Alegre for mission
conference, so I'll get to see some of my old companions again! I'm excited for
that.
Until next week!
Elder Jasperson
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| Party at Luis house with the other missionaries |
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