Week 46 more baking

July 31, 2023

 Tuesday we had district counsel, the catch was our bus came 15 minutes late, and in doing so I showed up 15 minutes late to my own district counsel. When the bus showed up in the neighborhood, we got off to walk to the church, and we see our zone leaders! Also 15 minutes late, well what an embarrassing show of leadership... the icing on the cake was walking into the church heading over to the classroom opening the door and seeing dum dum dum, our new mission president, who decided to make a surprise visit to my district counsel, 

And the fun didn't stop there because In my stress about the district counsel I had forgotten that we planned exchanges with the zone leaders, and I was leaving my area, and had forgotten to bring well everything I needed such as clothes and toiletries, 

The exchanges were awesome it was a great time with elder Maughan, turns out his grandparents live one street above my aunts house and therefore probably live in the same ward, other than that it was just a good time, good work too I learned a lot, we also got pizza at the end, and I slept in my proselytizing clothes lol

Wednesday a rather unproductive day unfortunately, and lunch was not in person so I don't remember anything more than that I bought a Laser that day just to mess with cats, worth it, oh yeah and we taught mateus about the restoration and it went really well, we then messed with his cat with a Laser. Also fried mandioca with salt is really tasty

I also found a place that sells some Rubio cubes, so I bought a 3x3 that isn't bad, and I bought another cube, that looks kinda triangle called the rice dumpling cube, and it's really really difficult, like it sucks, even with the instructions it's hard

Thursday we had finally burnt out from cooking, we had received so many lunches that were money, that we didn't wanna cook anymore, we were burnt out of recipes, and we'll we received money for lunch again, we went to the store and decided to just buy bologna cheese and bread. 

And I decided to make a cake too! I personally think it went well, not dry, not underbaked, but it was really dense, I make some gauche and decorated it with strawberry syrup and chocolates, it was a little ugly but it tasted great, I cooked it in a pot because we don't have any cake pans or anything 

I also bought a belt, it's a missionary belt except it was 5 dollars and really cheap, 

Unfortunately work on Thursday was also rather unproductive but we are still going!

Friday, we once again received money for lunch, I ate bologna and cheese again, I think if we receive money again imma have to stoop down to Ramen noodles, I've been on the mission 10 months and I haven't eaten Ramen noodles since the home mtc, but maybe I'll end up eating them again

However with my lunch time I made some scotch bars, and I will say like I've always said, it's not 3rd times the charm, it's 4th times the charm, these scotch bars were 10/10 absolutely amazing, astounding, perfect, the neighbors liked them too, we gave some scotch bars to our Family that we taught on Friday too, they also liked it, 

They are a really fun family to teach, they have lots of questions but they really need to start looking for themselves and start reading the Bom, and pray specifically about their doubts, it's two parents and two 30 year old daughters, and they are all on very different levels of understanding, for example we taught about the restauration on Friday, and went through the deep dive with every doubt they had, in general its only about Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon, which is all they need to pray about, so we invited them to pray about it specifically, because they told us they have only prayed about it in a way of just asking for more knowledge rather than asking specifically if the book of Mormon is true, the mom had an interesting doubt, of how she read I the Bible that no man can see God or his face, it's somewhere in exodus I don't remember, but we showed her that Moses spoke to God face to face, so clearly, that part of the Bible must be referring to something else, and we know it is, because of the Joseph Smith translations that showed the verse is actually missing quite a large chunk that says that no man in sin can see God without dying, 

But she told us she thinks Moses probably closed his eyes during the face to face conversation, 

However everything comes one doubt at a time, during my personal study on Saturday I made a document that has 21 biblical verses where somebody saw God, with their eyes, there is also a ton of examples in the book of Mormon and doctrine and covenants and the pearl of Great price, hope it helps her next time we teach them, there is also a verse in John that says that no man can see god unless they are of God, 

Fernanda the daughter, had the doubt about if we have spirits inside of us, 

Josepha again the mom, has the doubt about whether God really has a body of flesh and bone, and whether we will after the resurrection, 

Whats interesting is that, when one has a doubt the other three done have that doubt, 

Saturday, finally the 5th in-person lunch we have had this month. We really go to know the members, we talked a lot about video games, it was a very nice break, also the food was some dank chicken stroganoff

Saturday was good, because we got to know some inactive members really well and talk about videos games with them. We also gave them a blessing, and they said they wanted to make me brigadeiro, because I still haven't tried it here in Brazil, 

Sunday, no one went to church, however lunch was in person, we received a reference from a member! We had to walk an hour to get to lunch, but it was worth it, we got to help them have a family counsel, and helped them to be a little more active again, 

Almost all of Sunday was meetings and walking, but we marked some lessons for this next week so that's good, 

NOTE, also some guy is just going around our area lighting fields on fire, like lots of big fires around me, lots of ash falling from the sky, I think that's just Brazil though, they sure do like burning their trash

Send me emails and I'll respond next week!!!