Agua Verde Semana 27

Easter was fantastic! The church is getting a bit hipster with all of their new videos and such... But even so, we used several this week to teach about the atonement of Jesus Christ.

This week I tried to make bread and failed miserably. My cooking skills are getting a bit rusty... here in Agua Verde, we rarely have to cook our own food, so I´m losing the knack... The other day I tried to make soup, but it was not nearly as successful as the Salmon Chowder that Josh and I nailed in wyview... If anyone has bread recipes (especially very simple ones that don´t require a rolling pin), I am accepting entries :)

Policia Federal keeps getting easier and easier. This time, we sailed through in less than 2 hours with only one person processing our papers! Just when you get the hang of things, its time time to leave the office :) I think that in one more transfer I´ll be returning to the field! I hope that President lets me train again

I love my Saviour and what he did, does, and will do to help us as we live our lives with our hearts centered on Him.

Love,

Elder House

The picture is my "genealogy" I trained Elder V. Silva, who trained so and so... and so on

don´t worry that´s the most GH thing I´ve ever done on the mission!

"GH" means "Gloria dos Homens," or Glory of Men... in other words, things that seem prideful :)

Agua Verde Semana 26

Great week!

Mission tour with Elder Ribeiro. He challenged us in the office to be more productive than the missionaries in the field. That´s a tall order, but if he says we have to do it, looks like it´ll be done! In his training he talked about how after the natural man leaves a person, the devil trys 7 times harder with different sins to get the person to fall. He used Luke 11 to explain 

Luke 11 :24 When the ^aunclean spirit is gone out of a man, ^bhe walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, ^che saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.

 25 ^aAnd when he cometh, he findeth it swept and ^bgarnished.

 26 Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the laststate of that man is worse than the first. 

He then talked about how we can´t let the gaps open in our testimonies that will let these temptations take us down.

We also had a huge easter feast. No lamb like they had at home, but it was awesome. It was enough "to put roofing on the stomach" like they´d say here.

Our teaching pool is growing again! We are using everything that chapter 9 of Preach My Gospel says to find more people to teach. Referrals from the members are the best! They call someone to listen to a message in their house, or we find someone who will receive us and invite them over to the house of a member! If we had a Ward Mission Leader it would help out a lot. It´s been several months that we are without an official one.

This coming week we are gonna do work!

Love,

Elder House

Agua Verde Semana 25

25 weeks is a lot of time... But the area is good! It took a while, but finaly Água Verde has become my favorite area (the goal is that every area I go through becomes my favorite area, and this one took a little while)

Today I ate a big American style hamburger and went to Coldstone! That´s right, COLDSTONE in Brasil! I´m the lucky bum who is serving in one of the two cities in Brasil (São Paulo and Curitiba) where they have a Coldstone. So that was the highlight of the day.

The rest of the time, i´ve been scrubbing who knows how many years of grime off of the upper shelving in our kitchen. Elder Ribeiro of the 70 will be visiting our house on Friday. Our Preparation Day is Saturday, so we´ve been doing a super deep clean to have a shot at having a presentable house at the end of the week.

We out on the hunt for new people to teach. It is amazing to see how the Lord prepares people for  you, when you are willing to look for them. I´ve never seen so many people accepting us into their houses while knocking (clapping) doors (gates). I am in the middle of Curitiba for Pete´s sake and these supposedly "fechado" Curitibanos are receiving us with smiles. I don´t know if it has something to do with being Easter season, or the recent report that passed on the statewide news program about the Mormon Missionaries, or that I am spending an extra minute ironing my shirts and slacks to be presentable, but we are receiving very few rejections. So we have a lot to be thankful for!

The rain is back. Which is good because nobody goes to work if it´s raining... nobody but the missionaries that is :)

Love,

Elder House

Agua Verde Semana 24

Well we had baptism and general conference on saturday, so preparation day went out the window... President had mercy and gave us time today to clean house and write email.

We had the unforgettable baptisms of Leandro and Alieete. Brother Fabiano Testa of our ward performed the baptisms (because we needed someone really tall and strong to baptize Leandro). And it was good we asked him, cause Leandro has fear of water! We had to repeat the baptism 7 times until finally it worked out without a leg shooting up, or hair sticking out, or his hands slipping, or something of the sort. After the fifth try, the bishop threw off his suit coat and I grabbed a white jumpsuit for him, which he quickly dressed and entered the water as well to help out. On the 7th try it went smoothly. Leandro was little bit "com vergonha" so we made a few Naaman jokes and he was okay.

General Conference was fantastic as usual and on saturday I´ll write a few of my thoughts about what I learned.

On Tuesday we´ll have another mini-transfer with 6 gringas arriving from the MTC in São Paulo. They had been serving in other missions in the US but returned to MTC for 2 weeks for a intense Portuguese refresher. So we´ll going crazy preparing everything for yet another transfer and 6 more people that I´ll have to take the Federal Police station in two weeks. But someone´s got to do it right?

Hope that all is well at home and that everyone watched conference.

Love,

Elder House