Bonsucesso Semana 9

Rain fallin

Bye bye pollen

Church packed

Talks by Holland

The lovely rain has returned to this lovely little town and has turned the favela to mud. Luckily, unlike the other areas, this one is about 75% paved. Last night i woke up in a thunderstorm and all of our windows were open... somehow my body reacted before my mind and I had my feet on the ground before I woke up and could understand why I had leaped off the bunk bed. Luckily nothing got too wet. Even now it´s doing that little NW drizzle business that will probably last the whole week Woohoo tracting with an umbrella. The upside? It is pulling all of the pollen out of the air and the allergies are gone! Those awesome mid-first-vision-sneeze-attacks will be a thing of the past...

`Eu vi um pilar de luz, acima de minha... ACHOOOOO... descupla... minha cabeça, mais brilhante que o sol`          Yup, where I come from, rain is a good thang

We finally are getting people to church! Our little branch had a walloping attendance of 84 yesterday, and we got lots of people to church to visit. Everyone is accepting chapel tours and it is helping bastante to get people to an activity or a church service.

Today we got our eyebrows singed a little bit listening to a few talks by Elder Holland. It´s good practice for my companion, and its rather motivating for the two of us.

A nifty little activity that our branch did to help the missionary work was a `bate porta` where a bunch of members went out armed with pass along cards offering the Finding Faith in Christ DVD and passed all of the references to us. When I first heard what they were gonna do, I thought `o goodness, that´s about the most JW thing in the world that I could imagine us doing.` We ended up being on divisão (I don´t know all the mission lingo in English... maybe it is exchanges?) in another city and I was a little bit nervous how it would go... Turns out that there is something to that whole thing about the Bishops and Branch Presidents having the keys to the missionary work! It was exactly what we needed to find two or three great families to start teaching. I´m still not convinced that the activity in and of itself was the key, but it was the combined effort of our branch to bring more happiness to their neighbors.

I know the Savior lives. I know that He loves us. I know that this is His work. I know that we can help His work if we ask Him how He wants it to be done.

Love,

Elder House