That red lip classic thing that you like

 (Elder Mackrory)

Fala pessoal!

Essa semana fui abençoado pra ver 16 fuscas! Eu até sonhei que vi uma outra metade de um fusca, mas isso não conta. O total está 1351,5.

Last pday we had a great time at a place called Uruguayans. I had gone before, but it was a holiday, and so basically no stores were open. This time, however, I found so many goodies, including a super cheap, but good quality Brasil soccer jersey, a lego Ferrari F40 (so freaking beautiful), and another big Jesus statue.

On Tuesday we had district council and I kinda made a Oreo and lemon cheesecake with Oreo bits on top. It wasn’t the most solid cheesecake, but it was good. Then we went to lunch and I learned a bunch of army slang. My comp had a bad headache, so I got some good study, online work, and housecleaning done.

On Wednesday we had lunch with a family who just had their son come home from the mission, and so there was a nice spirit there. It didn’t make me trunky because I was more focused on the cute baby that kept looking at me. that night we went to seminary, and two of our friends were there. Super awesome lesson.

On Thursday we had lunch in the favela, and did some unfruitful visits until it was time to go to seminary. Seminary was cancelled at the last moment, and so my comp and I were there with the seminary teacher. We had arranged to have another friend of ours, Jorge, come to be taught. Since seminary was cancelled and the member we invited to participate in the lesson also cancelled, we invited the seminary teacher to participate, and it ended up being exactly what Jorge needed. We were able to mark his baptism date for next Sunday. He also is super interested in family history and temple work now, so that’s a plus.

On Friday we actually went to lunch in the same place as Thursday, this time with slightly less guns. We had most of our appointments fall through, and so we ended up doing a lot of online work. At night I was catching up with Elder Patterson who was doing a division with the other companionship in our ward. We may have gone to bed a little late. Good talk though my guy.

On Saturday I was a little tired for reasons unknown. But we still were able to reinforce our church invites and invite lots of people. We had the returning missionary’s homecoming churrasco, which was really good. It left me very motivated and searching to love more fully the people that I serve.

Sunday was good, and we had two of our friends show up, Jessica and Miguel. They both loved it and are planning on coming back next week. The sacrament meeting was super edifying and once again no one said anything weird at the pulpit. Miracles are real. After lunch we had lunch with one of my favorite families, and we laughed about common grammar mistakes, since the mother is a Portuguese professor. She made a really good dessert with brownies and ice cream, but no one wanted seconds (what?) and she didn’t want any leftovers, so I did what any reasonable Elder would do in this situation and had three servings of dessert.

Tender Mercy: Elder da Silva without hesitation volunteered to clean the casserole dish that I used for my not-cheesecake. I was impressed with his example of searching for opportunities to serve, and have tried to emulate it throughout the semana, and have seen more of the pure love of Christ as I did so.

Spiritual thought: I did a study this week about study. Sounds weird, but it was really cool. In school I learned about three types of questions as we analyze texts. Level one questions have to do with the text itself, Level 2 questions have to do with how this text relates to others, and Level 3 questions relate to how the text relates to the historical, social or political context of the text. I decided to apply this questioning system to my scripture study. To get the most out of a certain chapter, I must READ (level 1) to understand the story and the words written. The Holy Spirit can then bring peace to my soul and use the knowledge of the stories to help us in difficult situations, bringing the stories to remembrance. I must also STUDY (level 2) to see how the teachings in the chapter are also supported by other scripture stories and passages. The Holy Spirit can then bring peace to my soul and testify of the truthfulness of such teachings. I must also PONDER (level 3) to see how such teachings can be applied in my life. The Holy Spirit can then bring peace to my soul, testify of the truthfulness of such teachings, and bring personal revelation to make me a better person.