Week 71 Ant juice, bricks are food? And 4 lives saved from death

 Mon, Jan 22 

you know its funny you'd think with how insanely long my emails are you'd think i feel really great about my journaling and records, but i don't at all, I've missed tons of stuff, stuff that will certainly or certainly has been forgotten, and certain stories that for unfortunate reasons cannot be recorded, big sad :(

this email was originally gonnna be called a week of miracles, which is certainly very fitting, but its pretty crazy how hard Satan works

Monday night! it certainly was a great night!

we had two great lessons, one was with Luis we talked about the word of wisdom and decided to bring him some cevada we had found at the store (basically just a not coffee substitute) and he said hed try it out and he seemed to really understand that coffee is not what he should be doing, the members lurdes and aparecido also participated in the lesson through call and bore their testimonies on the matter and the great blessings they have seen from doing so, and they have seen lots of miracles health wise,

afterwards we taught maria do socorro about tithing, and she was completely chilling with it, and honestly we didn't teach it she just told us everything she knew and beleives about tithing and why its important, she elect, even asked us to get her a tithing slip for her, without us even saying anything, we told her bishop would help her out after the baptism, we also called jean and monica two members weve never worked with and they gave some awesome testimonies about tithing with them, and maria do soccorro instantly invited them to her baptism, she's super duper excited

Tuesday!

one thing the scriptures say actually quite a lot is that god will put a stumbling block in the path of the wicked and they will stumble greatly, and i can share many many daily stories where i literally trip every single time i don't do gods will or think not to do so, any ways i made a goal to talk to 3 more people in the street every time we are traveling to places, and there was a group of old dudes on the other side of the street, and god was like "go talk to them" and i said no that would be awkward ( this is a very common experience) and then i literally tripped and it always makes me remember the stumbling block every time, and then we went and talked to these three old dudes and they totally were like of course you can talk with us, it was indeed initially asking them if they wanted to hear a message after crossing the street and interrupting their convo and whatever they were doing, but with a little bit of faith god shows us we are kinda dumb, they all 3 agreed to meet with us again,

oh yeah and that morning we had our interviews with president, it started off with a how are you what's new? and then i just got burned for not being diligent enough in showing how families are important in god plan, but he's correct so we gonna fix that and stop baptizing to salvation but baptize for exaltation, 

 

he then asked me how my personal progress is going, and i told him i learned a ton this transfer especially about goals and planning from zone conference the week before, and how i wish someone had told me that 16 months ago because i probably could have been a way better person by now, but that i wanna use them so well that i can truly reach my divine potential, and get as close as i can in the next 8 months, and he was pretty happy with that, he then asked me if I'm ready for the next step in my mission, and i said yes, then doubted myself and said I'm gonna try and do everything to be prepared for next transfer, because like for the last couple weeks i can kinda feel that whatever's coming is gonna be a new chapter of some kind, and he told me to be "word of the day intentional" overall good interview

after our lesson with the dudes in the park we went and did our check up calls with the elderes, were we made plans together of how they could still potencially baptise this week, ( spoiler i don't think they are doing these awesome plans lol) they were good check up calls 

this day with maria do socorro we talked about the prophet and the video she watched of his talk think celestial and she agrees he is the prophet from the spirit she felt, lurdes and cido the members also testified of the same

we then walked back to the church again to have our weekly meeting with kleberson we haven't had in 8 weeks, for him to show up late and be like " you guys don't have the keys? oh i dont either!" super funny hour and 15 minutes of my day,

we then went back to our house neighborhood and had a really great lesson with guilherme and his dad was there too, we talked about the tree of life and how the gospel is about families and through and only through the gospel we can return to god, and then invited him to get baptised, he was unsure but we invited him to pray about it, his dad was in tears, 

that night we taught maria do socorro about the law of chastity tithing the word of wisdom and the commandment to keep the sabbath day holy again, 

afterwards we taught Luis about temple work for the dead, and he had no questions or doubts or nothing , nor were there any like aha! i understand moments, kinda wack

Wednesday!

in the morning we taught Bruna about the gospel of Jesus Christ and she's got tons of stuff to learn so I'm excited for the next time we meet up

i found a pair of super cool sunglasses that don't fit my face so i told elder blanchard to buy them, and he has had no reason to regret doing so because they fit his face perfectly, 

we then went to maria do socorro and taught her about the law of chastity and it was pretty great, really difficult we explained it in probably the simplest way possible, after trying in a most detailed way "no sexual acts before marriage, and you have to be faithful to your spouse and not betray them" does that make sense?" "yes" are you willing to follow this commandment" "yes" what is the law of chastity?" "i don't know i still need to learn" and then the cycle repeated like another 6 times, its like this with actually every principle but im pretty sure she got it down, we then called the member marcos and he also helped us out a ton

we created a plan to find families, we thought were would we see families?, at a park with their children, so we went to find a family, and we didn't but we did find a woman named rosangela, and we talked a lot with her it was pretty cool, she gave us her number and told us we can call her when we are in the neighborhood, and if she's at home she'll let us come over and teach her, she like everyone else was fascinated with my comps asianess, Brazil and my comp are making me racist, Brazilians are so funny they just talk about how he's adorable and his eyes are pulled out, about how they love his movies (kdramas), they even tell him how much success hell have on his mission because the girls love koreans, how they think hes gonna be a doctor, random drunk people doing drunk people things and being unreasonably upset because hes really "smart", after hearing he's from USA Idaho, they ask if hes from north or south Korea, "oh thats good your not from north Korea" every single person in the street says " speak you Japnnese!" as they also do the same but way less often with me the "german" and i totally join in the fun, "im from the US, my comp is from Japan! he's literally as American as can be his mom was adopted as a baby and was raised in the us, random people come up to him speaking "japonese" 

we had maria do socorros baptism interview that day, and i knew it was gonnna go for a while, I'm pretty sure it lasted an hour if not an hour and a half, elder rosa our zone leader, came out looking soo drained haha, with the biggest smile on my face i asked him how it went, and if he heard about the path of the olive trees and being freed from the mouth of the serpent, he said yes, she passed the interview and can be baptized on Saturday,

after that we had our weekly meeting with kleberson but like only 2 percent of it

the craziest part of the day was actually not crazy at all until the next day, 

on Wednesday morning out of the absolute blue an inactive member we literally do not know invited us over for her birthday party to eat cake and hotdogs, saying shed also invite lurdes and aparecido the active members we do know, and we were like alright seems like a cool opportunity, and when kleberson was driving us back i said he could just drop us off at his house, and he said he was gonna take us to an all you can eat pizza place as an awesome surprise for me as he heard its my favorite food, and unfortunately i decided to choose the right and say we had a visit to do, lol so we show up at her house at 7pm as we were told to do, and our plan was to just stay half an hour share a message and go do other visits, but like we sat there for half an hour waiting for lurdes and cido to show up with the rest of the party, so our plan wasn't gonna work, and lurdes and cido probably showed up at like 7:45 maybe 8, and we ended up eating like 5 hotdogs and cake for the rest of the night, but we met a nice couple with a nice little 38 year age gap who just barely had a kid, and got their number, 

what was pretty crazy was that night had we not gone to her house from the completely out of the blue invite was that we would have been undoubted on a street going to luis's house to teach him were some guy just decided to out into the street and shoot whoever he saw and then kill himself, resulting in three dead that night, in the exact spot we would have been had we not been invited and had the members not shown up late, there's literally zero doubt about it that we would've been caught up in that action, pretty crazy how god works and protects his missionaries, the morse i look back the more certain i am its just another way Satan tried to stop Marias baptism

Thursday!

it started off with district counsel, and i did a pretty decent job, i talked about goals and planning because that truly is what my district needs, to teach of the importance of goals and show what happens without them, i gave elder Hansen a pen and paper and asked him to draw my car, of which he has never seen or heard about, i told him to draw my car, and what he drew was not my car obviously because he has no vision without a clear goal you cant achieve it, i then pulled out a rubix cube and asked who knows how to solve a rubix cube? three people raised their hands i then pulled out a 5x5 a 4x4 a triangle and handed it to those who only know the 3x3 and handed the 3x3 to elder cid who doesn't know how, and obviously despit knowing the goal of having it be all solved, they couldn't solve it, because they didn't know how, except elder Hansen who solved the triangle but didn't know how he solved it, which was perfect because sometimes we do accomplish our goals but not because we had a good plan but because of just luck among things, and the others couldn't solve it because they don't know how to do it, which is exactly the principle of planning if you don't finish you planning in the morning knowing exactly what to do your plan is going to fail, you have to know what to do to know what you are going to do exactly when and where, goals are the final desire and plans are our course of action that we have 100% control over to get to the goal, so the principle is we have to know what we will do, 

we had lunch and it was great, evandro told us some pretty cool stuff about praying always and the power from it, 

we also taught maria do socorro and her nephew about the ten commandments with kleberson through a call and she chose Elder Blanchard to baptize her which is awesome because it'll be his first baptism!

that afternoon we spoke with elder Hansen the zl then went to a park with the intention of calling rosangela to hopefully visit her at her house, and funny thing she was there sitting at the park, god jjust put her in our path, 

we had a great lesson about the tree of life and the gospel of christ and invited her to be baptised, and she told us no, but gave no reason as to why, but we agreed to meet again and talk about the restauration of the gospel and church of jesus christ, 

that night we went lucas's house and bro was like 1 second let me just lock up the dog and we then waited 30 minutes in front of his front door, he came back out super excited to let us in, and we had to be like sorry we have another visit now it was really awkward, we marked to come back the next day though, 

that night we went to a farther away neighborhood and there was a house id felt to knock a good couple weeks ago but some smart kids who know about stranger danger had slammed the door on me and im pretty proud of them, but this time a woman came out named joelma and we taught her and marked to com back the next day, 

afterwards we hear a "FALA! Japonese!" and this dude calls us over to talk about my comps asianess, he then tells us that we are welcome to walk anywhere in the neighborhood, because his gang will let us, (its a genuinly real big one) and he tells us hes really happy we will all be in heaven together and i told him i hope so, and he said i dont need to hope so because we "know so" he told us he wishes he was the bandit on the cross next to jesus so he could ask him to bring him to heaven with hiim, and he told us anyone who enters in with love like jesus is welcome, and he then said if you guys want to get anywhere just use this "number code" then goes you know why? because think of the ABCs and i was like no i figured it out no need to explain, we then walked away, and i explained what happened to my comp, but hey at least we have permission, and some codes im never gonna say outloud to get "anywhere" 

Friday!

it started off pretty crazy in the morning i had prayed that god would put the people who are ready in our path so we can find them and to give us courage to talk to them, we tried a visit and it didnt work out, we then decided its time to find then and i saw two women conversing in their garage, and instantly remembered my prayer from the morning and decided to be couragious enough to talk to them, they really loved our message and one even shed tears during our testemonies, and wants to learn more about life after death and thus the prayers were answered 

afterwards we went and taught bruna and eric about how jesus established his church in jerusalem and kleberson the member also bore his testimony through a call they have two adorable giant dogs that i should be scared off because they are terrifying but im the animal wisperer so we chiling 

thereafter we went to teach maria do socorro, but when we showed up at her house we just heard her yelling at a neighbors dog, and crying, witch is not normal, when she let us in she didnt let us in excited or happy as can be as she allways does, but was clearly distressed, and she told us shes fine, and then after said only god knows, then told us she doesnt wanna talk to anybody at all today and she just wants to be alone all day, and thats she just wants god to take her off the earth, and that is not the socorro who tells me her stories with the biggest smile, after some talking too and explaining how we are representatives of jesus christ and have the same power he does, she agreed to receive a blessing of comfort, and elder blanchard gave her one afterwards she was completely normal again, and luckily feeling much much better, the spirit was very powerful during the blessing, and she was super happy to talk to teresinha the member through phone call and talk about her baptism tomorow, 

minutes after leaving i responded to a call from my old comp Elder Garces dias, and reinformed him that no they nor their investigator nor recent converts or members can drink green tea, and that was funny, because bro had forgotten because brazilians call herbal tea thats fine also green tea in portuguese, 

after lunch i called the elders of colonia in my district to help them start out their weekly planning well, and they only have crazy problems that could have been prevented with their people, i hope i helped,

after that we had our weekly planning and it was like 3 and a half basically 4 hours long, but also amazing like perfect, some funny moments like we decided that elder blanchard had to bring his guitar around tomorow while working to use it during the baptism service, and he was like but we cant go home that night to put it in the house to not need to drag it around all day, and we looked at our plan for the next day and it happened to have a finding plan we made 2 weeks ago of play guitar and sing hymns in the park, so we laughed thats its divine design and he has no choice now, 

after we went and visited lucas and diego they are awesome and their dog is now my best friend, we talked about christs church and lucas is super interested, but bros dog went sprinting into the street and almost got hit, then worse ran into one of the biggest freeways in our mission, and luckily did not get hit and got back, diego also gave us a reference, 

that night we went back to visit socorro, and we started walking up her street a little uphill to her house and she was kindof just pacing around in the dead end tiny street by her house, and when we went up to her it was like she didnt see or even hear us, when she asked if she was doing well, she with no life in her body told us she was fine, and she 100% was not fine, she then started walking zig zags up the street to her house, where a car then backing up in reverse started going straight for her and was not gonna stop, running in between her and the car i yelled for the car to stop and it did, and soccorro without even blinking or noticing kept zig zagging up the street, and me completely baffled that she almost got hit by a car did not get a half second of rest when another car backing out is going straight for her again this time seemingly even less away than the last! i run in between her and the car again! and yell for the dude to stop, and she zig zaged her way up again, and then the dude in the car is mad at me for not getting out of the way of his car!!!! like what!!! like if these cars went another 2 feet they wouldve hit us both! 

we then following socorro into her house, begin to talk and shes much worse than she was in the morning like shes like not even responsive, she then just begins crying saying shes not well and everything is cloudy, and she just wants god to take her off the earth, and how her head is just filled with terribable thoughts and swear words and she just wants to use them all, after we decided she must need another blessing of comfort and we offer a blessing and she couldnt even remember that we had came over in the morning or that we had given a blessing, 

i then gave her a blessing and it was once again very powerful

 she then is much better, normal actually like completely fine, because the power of god is powerful and real  we then get it out of her that something happened, and she had let some woman down the street borrow something, and when she went to get it back she wouldnt give it back, and then said some things to her, and let me tell you they were pretty horrible things like they were no beuno, she asked for permssion 5 times before repeating what was said, and then socorro said she yelled back, and was very upset from their on after we then were able to share a message with her about the last few principles she needed, and then we called lurdes and cido and they talked with her, and that all by it self made socorro feel way better

and then the power went out, and we lived by candle light, and she lowkey has a lot of candles, when we left, we could see it was literally just her street that didnt have power, and she sent us away with candles just in case, but like we could see it was just her house, and then walking home, as we neared we could see that also the power was off in the area just by our house, and everything in between our streets was chilling, like what? we are laughinig about the fact that just ours and marias street were powerless, and when we walked into our house, i tried the light and said "yep no power" and then 1 second after walking in the door the power came back on for everyone satan tries but god prevails, 

saturday! the baptism day!

In the morning I forced I mean made a deal with my comp for him to play guitar and we would sing the when I am baptised song for the baptism, and that morning we had an incredibly awkward lesson with a family they just were so quiet and reserved 🙃 

After we had a lesson with maria do socorro this time she was normal, she offered us juice and I said sure, (Its like koolaid) she brings over a bottle of it and tells us to pour a cup, so I do and when i open the bottle it's like got tons of ants inside it, so naturally I poured myself and my comp a cup and handed it to him, he looked at the cup and then at me and gave me the biggest frown, I drank my ant juice then I told her there was ants in the juice, she said oh yeah that happens all the time but my mom always said it's good for your eyesight, I said its a good protein too! Then I thought I'd be funny and I told her I ate dirt as a kid. But I got one upped when she said she eats bricks and clay and roofing! She said the smell of bricks being baked was just too delicious she cant help herself sometimes so she eats them...

We then went to the church to prepare for the baptism I filled the font and for the first time in my mission that hot water worked💪

She ended up getting baptised but came very shocked from having come up from the water I thinks it's probably been a long long many years since she's ever been fully imearsed In water .We sang our song and it went well

Afterwards we got a ride home and put 

Elder blachards guitar in the back and went over so many speed bumps at big speeds idk how it didn't break 

We taught luis that night about the restauration and I personally learned a lot while teaching 

Sunday, 

It basically started with church, we had our classes first before sacrament meeting and I went up to second counselor of the bishopric and reminded him that maria do socorro would need to be confirmed and receive the holy ghost. And he was its all prepared, and oh yeah can you sing a special musical number for sacrament meeting? And then his wife cut in and said that on Tuesday night she heard me singing the spirit of God (we share a wall in our houses) and that it was so good she texted him that moment when he was at work that I had to sing at sacrament meeting, and then he forgot to ask me, but his wife insured him that he needed to ask me 2 minutes before sacrament meeting if I could, I'll take it as a compliment

It went pretty fine the first two verses, verse 3 I was like I got to switch it up a tiny bit or something, and I thought maybe being quieter would be good but it wasn't it just sounded weak, then I thought maybe since I'm singing so low what if jump up an octave, so I did when the line switched and that was a worse decision than the last because I sounded like a squeaky toy, but I couldn't immediately go back down because then it would be even weirder so I held my squeaky toy voice for the rest of the line and came back down, I decided the 4th verse didn't need Any creativity, my legs were shaking like oil on a frying pan, but Elder Blanchard told me that palloma (the one who told her husband I had to sing) was smiling the whole time and I can say she literally never smiles so I'm glad somebody liked it 

After church we went to lunch and we waited a while with kleberson and herminio and his kids for lunch to be ready, and I joked for a while with kleberson that us volleyball is better than Brasil's and we watched elder blanchards soccer highlights on youtube, then we watched me and my friend as 13 year olds rip duct tape off our faces, and im glad the Brazilians don't speak English, it was a great lunch and kleberson had been hyping them up for how much I eat so I couldn't let them down and I ate like 7 plates, they wanted me to EAT I pushed human limits that day

That afternoon we went and taught Juliana and it was a good lesson about baptism and she said she was still interested in talking with us. 

We thereafter had a lesson with Lucas and his friends and family the family who's broken car we pushed up the hill, we taught about the restauration and they seemed to really understand it and were excited to pray about it, they talked a lot about our Americaness and japoneseness a lot!

And thus was my week 

Feel free to send me email!