Another week passes.
First of all, here in Brasil, they have ´´Valentine´s Day´´ on a different day of the year. The 12th of June I think.
So. I almost forgot it was Valentine´s Day except for it being on my American made calendar. Anyways.
This week was kind of ridiculous. We had more appointments fall through than I´ve ever had before. On Saturday we had 8 scheduled appointments, a majority of which were with people that are very dependable schedule-wise. All of them fell through. The people weren´t at home anywhere near the scheduled times we set up with them. We went back to several later in the day, and we still only found one of those eight people, and they were only able to briefly talk for about five minutes. <Sigh…>
On the bright side, the lady that lives in downtown Vitória that we started teaching last week wants to be baptized and we have it planned to happen on February 27. She is really neat. Few and far between are the people we visit who actually want to learn and actually ask sincere questions rather than just humor us.
I had another exchange this week. It was with Elder Brito, with whom we live. My companion went with his companion for the day on the east end of Vitória and I stayed with Elder Brito on the west end. Therefore, it was up to me to know where all of our appointments lived and how to get there and what we should teach them. All but two appointments fell through. So, we talked to a lot of people on the streets and in their homes searching for someone interested in learning more about the Gospel. We found one really neat woman who really was intrigued with the church and we had a very spiritual lesson. Sadly, when she told her husband about the lesson he apparently has something against religion and so we aren´t allowed to come back.
I gave quite a fright to someone in a hammock. I recognized the lady in the hammock as the mother of the person we were trying to teach. (The hammock was right in front of their home in a miniature park.) I didn´t realize that she was asleep though. I approached the hammock and said Good afternoon and she nearly fell out of the hammock! She scared me just as much as I scared her. From what I could discern she said more or less among other things: ´´What fright! O my heck! I could die of fright!´´ Her daughter wasn´t home. Elder Brito laughed and laughed after we left. It was pretty funny. I was paralyzed.
On one of our treks out to the corner of the area in the jungle to teach the family that lives there we saw… A TARATULA! Real life! Big and black and covered in little white hairs! Elder Hein almost stepped on it! I gasped and pointed and he stopped just in time. After we admired it in a mix of awe and terror, Elder Hein decided to roll a rock at it (we were 10ish feet away at this point). As soon as the rock touched it, it put its front two legs straight up in the hair, slapped the sidewalk with its fangs, and emitted a small puff of powder! It just stayed there with its front two legs vertical. We freaked out! Elder Rodrigues says that the powder makes you itch really bad and makes your skin swell up. Yikes. Welcome to Brasil.
Elder Hein and I took a ´´shortcut´´ that turned out to be much longer and sweatier a journey than our normal route to the place we were going. We ended up climbing a great big hill and descended on a dirt trail rather than taking the road around the hill. It was actually kind of fun. I felt like an explorer, except for the fact that I was in a white shirt and tie and really sweaty.
I am feeling much better about Portuguese. I am having extended conversations in Portuguese with the Brasilian missionaries we live with. And the whole day of that exchange we spoke Portuguese. I can easily survive, now I just have to find out how to thrive. The exchange was really good for both of us. We had another phenomenal lesson in the evening and despite the long hard day of searching for people to teach, we felt very satisfied and content—not to mention feeling the Spirit very strong with us during and after the lesson. We had asked him to pray about the message we left, and promised him that God would answer his prayer. In this visit, he told us that the morning after he prayed, someone called telling him he got the job he has been wanting and waiting for for a long time, and felt that was an answer. Neat!
Tomorrow is zone conference. Exciting. It will be my first ever. All the missionaries in the Vitória Zone and in the Cariacica Zone will be there.
Summer showed the first signs of weakness here. For two days the temperature was bearable, though still quite warm. Also, the wind blew and it was overcast. Yes, I still was sweating bad, but I didn´t feel hot. I felt at ease. Today is very hot again though.
Ok. Time to leave! Have lovely weeks everyone!
Elder JOSHUA BODILY
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