10/21/09 email

Hey everyone,
The last two weeks have been great. We met this girl named Aline last Sunday and she wanted to be baptized so we had to teach her everything in just one week. It was a wild week of running around but it was worth it. She was baptized on Sunday after the regular church meetings. There were so many people there and so it was really awesome and it was also kind of funny. Aline is really shy and so after the baptism everyone was talking to her and saying congratulations which made her open up a bit. We met her through her friend Jessica that we are teaching but Jessica is still on the teeter totter and is still thinking about this whole church thing. I guess when you are younger and life is full of worldly things it'll be hard to make a leap if you would be the only one in your family joining. But we marked a date for her that will be the 30th of October.
I don’t know if I already told you about Mari but she stopped smoking and drinking café and she will be baptized this Saturday. Mari was a very difficult investigator. She used to go to this other church that filled her head with a bunch of jibberish and so many things that would happen she would think its because the Lord didn’t like her or that it was some weird karma. But we have been working with her a lot. She has 2 daughters, 1 is a troublemaker and left a grandson for Mari and the other Hadhija (hajija) is 7. They were both adopted and now only Haji and Du-du(the grandson) stay with her. Her husband is a mess and doesn’t live with them but she is raising the kids the best she can and shes doing a pretty good job. The missionaries have been teaching her for like 7 or 8 months and now we are finally taking the dunk. She wants me to baptize her and Haji but Haji wont turn 8 until march of next year. So we will see what happens.
This past Sunday a girlfriend of a member came up to us and was like. Elders, I have to talk to you, I am moving to Maringa but I want to know things before I get there. We didn’t know she wasn’t a member so we were kind of confused in this moment. And then she said that she wants us to teach her so she can get baptized before she leaves. But the bad thing is, she doesn’t know when she will be leaving. Could be this week and maybe it will be next week. So we are in another rush like last week, just running around trying to teach everything before this Saturday.
Yesterday was a really good day. We taught 6 lessons not even trying. We only had 3 marked but the other 3 were basically handed to us. One was during our time for contacts(where we try to find people to teach. We are supposed to do 15 each day but we have been slacking the last 2 weeks and so we were trying to get them done) but Elder B Fernandes did a contact with this old lady and then we ended up helping her with her bag all the way to her house where we taught her, her daughter and 4 of her great grand daughters the 1st lesson. It was pretty cool. The family was a missionary’s dream. The kids were paying attention and everyone was saying the right things as well. We will just have to wait and see what happens with them. Then we went to use the bathroom in a member’s house and their dad was there. He isn’t a member! So we shared a message with them. Then we had a meeting with Bishop in the chapel where every Tuesday they play soccer. While in the meeting Bishop received a message from Marcelo (he is preparing to go on a mission.) And he said that he had a couple of friends who wanted to come play soccer. So bishop asked us if we could teach them. So we stayed there and taught 6 guys about the words of wisdom (How to stay healthy and show gratitude to the body God gave us.) It was cool.
So Monday it was my companion´s(Elder B Fernandes) birthday and Sidney, Glaci, Erika and Barbara threw a little party for him with cake and stuff. They even got him a present. It was really cool of them. These 2 families are the best here. Leandro was a missionary here a while back and he returned to work and stuff. Him and Erika used to live behind the house of Sidney and Glaci. They have this book called The Best Leader ever Known and it teaches how to run your business better and become a better leader using the attributes of Christ as a guide. So Sidney and his daughter Barbara are doing a speed reading course. Its 4 months long and the books for this class says that by the end of this course you will be able to read 2000 words in one minute and will understand everything that you have read. Its crazy, but this would be a really cool ability to have for school.
So the language is going pretty good. I understand pretty much everything in Portuguese, now I just need to get the talking part down. They have so many rules its crazy. I don’t know how to talk like I do now because I just talk and don’t think about it lol.
Well don’t have much else cool or interesting news. We will be having the mission Olympics on the 4th of November and also Curitiba conference the 2nd of November. The Olympics will be really fun, when I get more information I will pass it on to you all. If you all have time you should go watch the movie The Other Side of Heaven. Its really good. It was produced by the same people who made Schindler´s List and Jurassic Park. It’s a movie about a missionary like me but he went to the Tongan Islands. I would tell you more but I don’t want to ruin the movie for you all :)
Have a great week.
Justin