Good News February 21, 2011
Greetings all.
So, yesterday we had the baptism of Micaela (the girl who lives in the jungle, where we saw the tarantula). It was pretty neat! She is the first person that I have seen baptized on the mission that we started teaching and also saw her baptized. She is quite the phenomenal thirteen-year-old. She reads the scriptures everyday and volnteers to pray at our visits. Also, she knows a lot and learns very quickly. She was super nervous right before the baptism, but she felt wonderful afterwards.
Also, Christiane, the woman who lives in the Centro or Downtown of Vitória has confirmed her baptism this coming Sunday. She has begun distributing invitations to friends and family, and she also attended the baptism of Micaela. She is determined in her decision. We have a rule in the Vitória Mission that each missionary can only actually baptize one person each. After that, a member of the ward into which the person is being baptized actually baptizes the person. Seeing that I haven´t baptized anyone yet, and Christiane wants one of us to do the baptism, and acknowledging the fact that Elder Hein has already baptized someone, I will be baptizing Christiane on Sunday. This is quite exciting. It has been very inspirational to see her growth and development in the Gospel. She told me today (we took the bus into the Centro this morning to have a lesson with her) that she will not be happy if I try to drown her. ;)
We had the Zone Conference on Tuesday. It went phenomenally well. It was very motivational, exciting, and thought-provoking. We practiced teaching, watched training videos, brainstormed, and received training from President and Sister Pickett. The lunch was fabulous as well.
We taught a woman who had a stroke, and half of her body does not function as well as the other. It also affected her vocal cords, so her voice was very different. Strangely, it actually helped me understand her better. Always good.
This week was a bit of a struggle. While we have a handful of people that we are working with, we still have lot of time that is spent simply searching searching searching for absolutely anyone to just hear us and what we have to share. Elder Rodrigues and I agreed that there is no other way to learn patience so thoroughly as missionary work. Patience to receive blessings, patience with the heat, patience with people breaking promises, patience with the companion you spend all of your time with, patience with laundry and dishes and sweeping and mopping the house as well as spending nine hours a day out teaching or trying to teach. It is a labor of love. Real labor. Real love. And also real labor. Did I already mention that?
One of the members showed us pictures of his mission which was in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. I would love to come back and travel here. Porto Alegre looks nothing like Vitória and actually gets cold! Meeting people from all over the country here makes knowing the geography important, so I´ve been studying a map of Brasil. It´s a super diverse place, and is only just smaller than the USA.
Portuguese sounds even more beautiful when you understand what people are saying, and you cease to hear just sounds.
The weather here continues to cool, ever so slowly and gradually--in fact so slowly it might be my imagination. Next week we have transfers, though. I could be leaving Vitória or getting a new companion. Which would leave me responsible for knowing the area. We´ll see what happens.
Hebrews 12:1-3 Run it out.
Uma ótima semana para todos vocês. (a great week for you all)
Elder JOSHUA BODILY
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