June 16, 2014

Alma 9:28 everyone will have a reward.

Matthew 10:41-42  it's pretty easy to have a reward. Just one cup of water merits some sort of bonus.

So... Alma 9:13 if we keep the commandments we'll have a good reward.

Anyway here's some good moments from last week:

We were teaching the 3rd lesson to one man named Itamar. He opened up the pamphlet that we gave him and asked "is this picture of the people that go to your church?" "Yes" I responded. And then he pointed to one of the woman "I know her!" he exclaimed. "She lives down the street!" Well, there aren't any members that live in his street, and since it's the general pamphlet that every missionary in the world uses, the odds of him knowing that woman are 0. It was so funny I almost started laughing. His wife told him he was crazy, that she'd never seen the woman in the picture. But Itamar was convinced that he knows that woman.

After teaching the lesson at Itamar's, we had a really long walk to a different Buro. Well, we found a line of train tracks and realized that we might be able to cut the path by walking the tracks. Did I mention that I was on division with a young man during all of this? So he and I walked and walked about a mile on the train tracks, playing jokes and trying to scare the other that the train was passing. The train never did pass. But we did get a little lost. Luckily, we found a road that passed nearby- about 15m away... 15m above us! But in the end, everything worked out great! The young man (named João) took a picture on his phone so he could show his friends how awesome missionaries are.

One member of the branch has been bugging me about maple flavoring (since it doesn't exist in Brazil and I'd mentioned that I have some). So I decided to give him my last bottle. And he was so happy that he made us a bunch of pancakes. I don't know where he learned all this stuff since he didn't ever serve a mission or anything, but he makes a mean pancake dinner. He told me he'll give me a tie in return for the maple, but I think the pancakes were recompense enough!

We were returning to the city center one night and walked past the hospital. Some guy there called us over and asked us to go up to one of the rooms to see his cousin. His cousin drank so much that he can't go to the bathroom anymore and instead bathroom stuff is coming out his nose. We talked with the guy and left a short message with him. But it was pretty awkward because only two people could visit at a time, so we just went up there all alone and said "hey guy, your cousin asked us to pray with you" and he just kind of stared at us since it hurts him to talk, I think. So then we read some of Mosiah 14 and prayed and just kind of left. Yeah, pretty awkward. (NOTE DON'T READ THAT IF YOU GET QUEASY EASILY). Well I guess I should have put that note before the story... sorry guys.

Anyway, this week was pretty wild too! I felt inspired after an awesome pancake dinner, so I decided to make waffles for us. Waffles and waffle irons aren't really a thing here, but we have this little sandwich griller and I decided that it'd work out okay. So I woke up a little earlier to mix up a nice waffle batter. And then I put it into our sandwich grill. Well the first ones turned out pretty good after I cleaned up all the mess. Because I put in way, way, way too much batter and so it overflowed a ton. After cleaning up, however, I opened the sandwich maker to see two beautiful golden waffles. But sadly, I forgot to grease the thing, and the waffles wouldn't come out. So I made the rest of the waffles like pancakes, which turned out okay too.

We had the privilege this week to baptize Albersom. He's a 14 year old young man who's fairly shy. His mom lives with her 5 children and works alone to support the family. The whole family wants to go to church, but it doesn't always work out for them because one of the children is special and he is hard to manage.

Well preparing for Alberson's baptism on Sunday, we filled up the font. The controls for the font are in a different room that we keep locked. So after getting the water going, we shut and locked the door. I put the key in my pocket and forgot. So Elder R Santos came running to find me about 3 hours later because the font was overflowing and they couldn't find the key to get into the room to stop the water! Oops! So I passed sacrament meeting with two buckets taking the water from the font and dumping it outside!

During the world cup, we have to stay inside. So we were pretty board on Thursday. We found some Ping-Pong balls in the house and a basket and we started up a little game trying to throw the balls in the basket. And then we had the great idea to set up a little course with our fans to make it harder to make a basket! It was pretty fun. And crazy. Since when the balls hit the fan blades they went flying!

So in the end, have a great week! It's almost been a year that I'm here in Brazil and it passes quickly!

Elder Jasperson