Week 88

 Mon, May 20 

Figured I might as well write a weekly email cause it's been a while since I've had time ,

Monday

We taught Reinaldo that night, it's a was a lesson that was a little different, to give him a more gospely type of hobby to try out, I know he loves guitar. So I asked him to pull out his guitar, and I showed him on the music app that there are lots of songs he can practice and learn on the guitar, I showed him by playing the songs on the guitar for him, it was pretty fun 

Tuesday

We woke up in the morning still sore from the 5 hours of truck loading from last Saturday, and then we saw a message from sister Harker asking for our zone to help load trucks that day to send to Rio Grande do sul

So at 8 am we showed up at the place with our whole zone to load trucks 🚚 

I've never in my whole life exercised my whole body like that day, we showed up at 8 am and we weren't done until 8 pm, and breaks were not involved, we loaded 5 trucks, and unloaded 5,

There was a point at probably 2pm where everything started to slow down, and no one had anything to do so we decided to let the guy know we were gonna leave because there was tons of people there still, and the guy was like  " you guys can't leave! Your the best guys here, your the only ones who know what there doing and do it well, everyone else here doesn't," so we decided to stay, and I spent more time inside a truck lifting weight like no ones business, than I spent outside of the truck that day, we loaded packs of water of various sizes 12 packs of 500ml, 6 packs of 1.5L , 5L bottles. 10L bottles, and 20L bottles, 

Bags of clothes of various weights from 1 pound to 50 pounds,

Sacks of animal food 40 pounds 

Super heavy sacks of food,

The truck is twice my height and 1 and a half of me in width, and like 40 feet in length, or in other words huge, and we loaded it from back to front floor to ceiling 

At around 5:30 basically everyone left and the only people left to help with almost a whole one of this giant trucks was my zone, we finished the truck at 8 pm and from 9am to 8pm was 100% soaked in sweat, the magnet of my name tag got sent to Rio grande do sul, 

But what's the moral of the story, despite having showed up to the project sore, after a bit I didn't even feel that tired, the savior when he passed through the atonement the most excruciating experience imaginable he focused on joy to get through it, I got to have a tiny bitty taste of that loading these trucks, I'd never done more with my body but it was so fun all at the same time, every 2 seconds grabbing and throwing something that weighs 40 pounds more or less and throwing it as far as I possibly can, it was a pretty fun service project, I'll throw in some pictures of it in the album, it's was nice knowing we made a real difference because that truck would not have been finished until 4am had our zone not been there 

A member from one of my first areas gave us a ride home which was nice it was fun to catch up with him and hear about my recent converts there, 

We got home and took some nice needed showers and stretched like crazy and slept so well 

Wednesday, we had an exchange with the elders of barão Geraldo, I was with elder abbate from Argentina, it was his 4th week in the mission, and I spoke with him in Spanish the whole night which was pretty fun, it feels like a different accent for português,  just change a couple words, what was stressful, was I had lots of planning and meetings to do for the zone, because the next day was zone conference, so I had to make sure the parody we wrote was ready, and that I could play it on the guitar, and I had to write the script for the skit we were gonna do, and I was dying, to add the stress I had to do this and some other meetings with missionaries without internet because we forgot to switch the sim card, 

Thursday

We had zone conference it was pretty good president Harker made and Gave us all a study journal, and we gave our presentation with our skit and music, someone took a short clip of the parody we wrote, I'll put it in the album as well 

After zone conference we taught Reinaldo again 

Friday! 

We taught Reinaldo about the plan of salvation a bit, and how keeping the commandments leads to happiness, but breaking them leads to unhappiness, and how not following the commandments, and believe that it leads to happiness, is truly the biggest lie Satan has ever made, It will never make you satisfied 

You actually become each time less happy, his whole goal is to make us as miserable as he his 

That night we did weekly planning, and taught Micheal with a service missionary helping us out so that was pretty fun, 

Saturday 

I think I started to get a little bit sick because one of the missionaries I live with got the flu, and I did an exchange with him on Saturday, we brought his guitar to teach Reinaldo, which was pretty fun, and we talked about how, other than just happiness, following the gospel and commandments leads to peace and feeling calm, for those of your who don't know. Reinaldo had really bad anxiety, and can barely leave the house, but we are showing him that the gospel is the answer, the same way it was for me with depression, and he's starting to see it too,

We went to the farthest away place, (and poorest) in our area. And worked there. It was pretty fun. I really enjoy working out there, 

Sunday was pretty cool, 

Whenever Reinaldo talks with us he always asks us about the historical time-line of the book of Mormon because he finds that more interesting, and the Sunday school professor, from the start said that she doesn't like to talk about that stuff because she doesn't find it that useful, but today she felt like she should, so she made these awesome time-line graphs, other miracle, when Reinaldo had to leave the house to go to church he was super anxious, but when he got there and for the rest of the day he was completely fine his anxiety just went away,

A funny thing about church, I was sitting in church listening to the announcements and he said we would have our first speaker maria, and our second speaker Elder Ourique, then I remembered a funny story to tell my comp, on Wednesday during the exchange, a member sent us a text asking if elder Ourique could give a talk in church, and given that I was I an exchange and not with him, I just said yes, but I forgot to advise him and I remembered when bishop announced it, so I leaned over and said "hey so I forgot to tell you that on Wednesday I said you could give a talk at church about service" he said he would kill me, and I replied "but think about it you've done no wrong! You have no sin in this! You didn't procrastinate or anything!, so god is obligated to help you! You have the spirit! Your talk is guaranteed to be good," 

He gave an amazing talk, every absolutely loved it, best talk I've heard in the last 6 months, 

After wards we basically went through the rest of our day, the highlight was our lesson with Reinaldo that night 

we got there and i felt like we should put him on date, i found a scripture in Moroni 7 and felt the spirit confirm that, then we invited him to be baptized, but i wasn't sure what date, so i looked at my calendar and the spirit said to do it for this Saturday, and he accepted the challenge, so please pray for Reinaldo to get baptized this Saturday, he's already had 7 and we are hoping this time it'll work we gave him a blessing that was great too.