minha história Missionária: July 21, 2014

Alma 30, especially vs 19-21 teach us that we need to expel bad things from among us. This chapter shows us how the Nephites decided to be faithful by not letting temptation enter among them. We should do the same thing with our lives. The minute that a tempting urge enters, we need to chase it out!

This week was really different and fun for me. It started with the leaving of elder R. Santos. I helped him pack his bags and now he's in his house! That same day that I went with him to Porto Alegre, I picked up a new missionary to train. Elder Hortêncio is from Paraíba (Brazil). His city is pretty cool (beach and stuff) way up on the north part of the country. So he's dying from the cold.

Anyway, we had a nice meeting with all of the new missionaries that came in (11 sisters and 5 elders) and then everyone went to the bus station to go to their new areas. Well the other 8 elders easily managed to get to the bus station with their suitcases and caught their busses. Elder Hortêncio and I were doing great too, until we realized that there were 22 sister missionaries behind us struggling with their suitcases. So we passed our afternoon walking back and forth helping the sisters with the suitcases. Not that they wouldn't have managed on their own, but it was the right thing to do. Anyway, we finally managed to get a bit of rest on our 2 hour ride to Rio Pardo and then we had dinner with Brother Wilson. (Which I had arranged the day before, knowing that we'd be hungry)

I was starving and ate about 8 servings of rice and beans. Elder Hortêncio, however, doesn't eat very much. Brother Wilson kept telling him to eat more, but he didn't even manage to eat one serving! That was funny. I think he was amazed by how much I eat!

Along the lines of food, I found out this week that rice and maple aren't that bad together. We had some leftover rice, and there wasn't anything else in our house to eat with the rice. So I poured some maple syrup on top and it was pretty good. Then to help the flavor a bit, I put chocolate chips on top :)

rice, maple syrup, and chocolate chips!

This week we were blessed with the baptism of Adriana and Marlise. Adriana is Marlise's mother. They are relatives of the Branch President. Marlise is a great convert. She wants to serve a mission because she really felt a change when she prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true. Her mom is happy to be baptized as well. Along with a wonderful baptism, we had some great meetings on Sunday! We even managed to have 10 investigators at church! That was a miracle! But the branch working together made it happen!

One of the people who came to church was Gerlei. He came with his girlfriend, Lilian on his moto. They were really interested in the classes and he really paid attention in sacrament meeting. I noticed at one point that Lilian was trying to hold his hand, but he was paying so much attention to the words of the speaker that he didn't even notice! That was pretty funny! Anyway, I'm glad that the spirit works like that inside of people. We'd had a really super powerful lesson with them this week. After the lesson, Elder Hortêncio's eyes were about to fly out of the sockets. I said "what's the problem? Did you forget that the church is true?" I was joking, of course, but he sure didn't know what hit him! Being a missionary is awesome!

Anyway, it was a great week. Today, we went out exploring a little bit. We found the Rio (river) of Rio Pardo. By the side, we found this cool lighthouse thing and since we didn't see any “No Trespassing” signs, decided to check out the view. It was pretty cool. But the most fun part was when we found a random couch by the riverbank. We had some fun taking pictures there. I almost fell into the water when we were being "fishers of men." Then Elder Hortêncio would've been a real fisherman! It's a good thing that he's about as crazy as I am because it means we can have fun in the simple things!