(Elder Mackrory)
Opa família e amigos!
This has easily been the fastest week here in Brasil. Also
easily the most productive. I'm excited to write about it.
We'll start as we usually do. My new area has fewer fuscas,
but it is not a huge deficit. This week, we saw 18, bringing us to 458. We had
an unfortunate event where I saw two fuscas at once, meaning we had to go from
443 to 445 and skip 444. That's life.
Pday last week was amazing. I enjoy pdays that are
tranquilo. It also allows me to get my email out early. Speaking of which, when
Elder Patterson (heyyy) read my email, he let me know that our local
supermarket sells donuts on a regular basis. So that's gonna be a frequent
purchase for me. I've already gotten them twice this week.
Tuesday was pretty cool. It's definitely different than what
I'm used to. We had to stay inside because of heavy rain and street flooding.
But we were still able to have many text and phone lessons!
Wednesday was similar weather wise, just lighter on the
rain. We were able to leave the house and meet with a bunch of people, one of
whom hadn't met with the missionaries since there were Sisters in the area (a
very long time ago). It is unfortunate that it rains so much here because it
means nobody wants to do anything. We didn't have anybody show up to the chapel
to play soccer (I thought Brazilians liked soccer more than they disliked
rain??).
Thursday was awesome. It was pouring rain early in the
afternoon when we were meeting up with a member, but thankfully, the rain
stopped just as we met up with her. We then went around the neighborhood and
taught lessons with her. In one day, we met our goal for lessons with a member.
Friday, our lunch appointment fell through. But thankfully,
our goated bishop picked it up and hosted us. For those of you who don't know,
carnival is right around the corner. We had to fill out a form making a plan
for how we are going to handle it. Carnival is almost two weeks long and is
crazy. It will certainly be physically and spiritually dangerous to be out in
the streets during the busy hours. We made plans with bishop, who's lived here
his whole life. We planned plans to return home early and to avoid plazas and
other public meeting places. Thankfully, he said our area is pretty chill since
everyone prefers to go to central Rio to have a ball.
Saturday was pretty cool. Generally, Saturday is the day we
focus on inviting the whole world to church. Elder Kjar and I visited all the
people whom we taught on Thursday and shared brief messages, and invited them
to church. Usually, we have 5 or so standard messages about simple things like
faith, prayer, reading the scriptures, the Life of Christ, service, etc. As we
approached one of these contacts, I couldn't decide what to teach. Then the
idea came to mind to instead do a game called “Gravata da Oração.” It's a
pretty cool game with a fun gospel application at the end. When we got to the
contact, Elder Kjar took the lead and started off with the message. And then he
said “our message today begins with a game.” Note that I had not shared my
thoughts with him about my idea. Then we played Gravata da Oração and taught
about prayer. They loved it. It's a cool little bit of inspiration.
Sunday was cool, too. Basically, every day is super cool. I
love training. Shout-out to Elder Schmuhl and Kjar for making training easy and
fun. Anyway, Sunday was cool. I spoke in church for about 10 minutes. Since
nobody knows me, I figured I could skip the “for those of you who don't me” and
go straight into introducing myself. By the way, that phrase is common here,
too. I told the ward a little about myself like that I sing and play the piano.
That I'm from New Mexico and have almost 6 months on the mission. Simple
things. And for whatever reason, I ended up saying that I enjoy Taylor Swift’s
music. Anyway, I spoke on the importance of the scriptures for guidance and
protection. I shared some cool things that I learned from reading the
scriptures in a different language. It was pretty cool. Our friend who was
there then asked for the scripture references during our phone call lesson that
night, so that's a big win. After church, I got fist bumps from the young women
who showed me their swiftie bracelets. We went to lunch, had churrasco (no big
deal), and prepared an a cappella musical number for next week in church
because the member loves barbershop quartets and heard that I like to sing. The
member also told us that carnival is crazy here, which completely uprooted our
plans for returning early so much that we might just need to not leave the
house for two weeks. We will see.
Funny story: Elder Kjar and I were just chatting about the
scriptures and he said, “Moses said that it is impossible to write all the ways
in which a man can sin, but the old Testament definitely tried.” Having just
finished reading Leviticus, that really resonated with me. I'll just say
Chapter 18 was not fun to read.
Well, that's all that went down this week. Other than that
It rained literally every day. Our road was a chocolate river many times.
SummaRio:
18 fuscas, 458 total
There's a donut place right around the corner from our
place.
Rained in on Tuesday
Wednesday we were able to meet with someone who hadn't met
with missionaries since 2021
Thursday we had 6 lessons with a member present 😎
Friday we made our carnival plan in order to be safe.
Saturday we played an inspired game with some people on the
street and invited the entire world to church.
Sunday I spoke in church and talked about the scriptures and
that I'm a swiftie. We had churrasco and sang barbershop quartet hymns.
It rained every sing day.
Tender Mercy: there have been so many it's impossible to
count. But on Thursday, our member friend took us to the house of an inactive
member family that we don't have records for. If it hadn't been for her, we
would not have ever been able to find them, nor the missionaries in the future.
We had an awesome message about the Book of Mormon and invited them to church.
Spiritual thought: As I mentioned above, we typically have 5
or so mini-lessons to give to people for first contact or otherwise. My
favorite one is prayer. We start and finish every contact with prayer, and so
teaching about prayer really resonates with people. It is also something that I
do so often. Prayer is literally a direct line to speak to the King of the
Universe. But He, benevolent and ever-loving, prefers to be known as our
Father. I testify that He loves you, wants to hear from you, and is eager to
help you. All you have to do is ask. Prayer will change the night to day, so
when life gets dark and dreary (or bright and cheery), don't forget to pray.
As fotos:
1. CHURRASCOOOOO
2. Cool street
3. Cool street pt2
4. Best mango of my life
5. Taking apart our working fan to see what went wrong with
our not working fan. The fix will likely require a soldering gun, so we're just
gonna buy another one. But it was fun to dismantle things.
6. Donuts!!!!
7. Lesson with goated member
8. Day with Goated member
9. Other lesson with goated member
10. We took apart our filter to figure out with the pressure
is near nothing. Turns out the filter is beyond spent. Again it was fun to
dismantle things.
11. Family night!!!! We helped with a 1500 piece puzzle. Fun
fact: in Portuguese, "puzzle" is "quebra-cabeça" or
"Head Breaker".
No comments:
Post a Comment