It was a pretty good week. There were definitely some highs and
some lows, but we´ll start at the beginning. On P-Day’s we don´t really do that
much, not much to do in Feitoria. We may go to a park or something today which
is like the one thing we can do. I just studied a lot last week, which made me
remember how much I enjoy learning. Tuesday we had another district meeting
where we ate breakfast as a zone, every companionship bringing a little
something. Some of the sisters made some cake with frosting, it was a good
little thing. We have the zone leaders in our district, Elder Walters from
McKinney Texas and Elder Nobre from Mozambique. They seem really cool and gave
a good training to our zone about being on the Lord's team bringing people to
Christ. We made a goal as a companionship to have three baptisms this month. We have
my first zone conference this upcoming week on Thursday I think.
I´m not sure if I´ve talked about them before, but we´ve got a
couple good progressing investigators. One is Daniel, who is 25, who is so into
what we´re teaching and to learning. His mom is Evangelist but is encouraging
of us because he´s never been baptized and also is okay with us teaching her
whole family. Another set is Alex, 10, and his sister, Angela, 15. We were
knocking doors and trying to visit the houses of contacts but things weren’t
working out, so we were a bit sad. But then
I saw this boy sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house and smiled and waved
to him. We made contact, taught a lesson
to him, his sister, and his sister´s boyfriend. Gabriel, Alex, and his sister
have baptismal dates for the 21 because conference was only broadcast at the
stake center which is not our building, so we have to take a bus and therein
much more difficult to bring people. But they´re all enthused for baptism, and
it warmed my soul to hear 10 year old Alex say "I want to be
baptized". In similar circumstances of knocking and contacting, we came
across Sergio, a man of 72 years old who is fairly receptive and came to
conference with us Sunday afternoon and has a baptismal date for this
upcoming Sunday after church.
However, the bad news: we go to Gabriel Saturday in between
sessions to bring him to conference to watch and then be baptized. He isn´t
home, so his family calls him and he comes back home and we talk and he makes
up the excuse that his mom doesn´t want him to be baptized again, that she
doesn´t feel he is ready, etc. We tried to talk with him like you’re 19 and
quell fears and whatnot but to no avail. His parents are also super tranquilo
and we´ve even taught his dad the Restoration. Another low was that I was
feeling under the weather Friday and Saturday and a little Thursday which made
my first splits on Friday a bit difficult, but Elder Silva (Fortaleza) and I
still worked hard and did well in their area with 4 lessons, 7 novos, and 5 datas.
And I woke up Sunday sweaty but
feeling perfectly normal, so I´m back to A-Okay.
General Conference in a different language is weird, especially when
since during the gaps you can hear a bit of the English. I was surprised by how
much I understood. I took notes Sunday during both sessions, writing in
English, but I understand a good chunk of everything being said. I really
enjoyed all the choir stuff in English, especially Saturday morning with some
of those more Primary hymns, really good. I think people are pretty happy about
2 hour church. I´m glad I´ll be able to say to my children, back in my day, we
had three hour church, we had Sunday school and Young Men´s/Young Women´s every
week. I think it is good to have more family learning.
You asked about buying food here. I usually just buy biscuits,
cookies, and stick them in the freezer. They don´t really have much variety,
decently similar to Oreos. The stores are a bit different and weird. Still
weird with the prices. The weirdest thing I´ve been fed was yesterday for
"dessert" and they called it dessert, we were fed by members straight
up boiled sweet potatoes that they cut off a piece right there in front of us
and gave it to us. This isn´t like a Brazilian thing, maybe a Rio Grande do Sul
thing, because Elder Favoretti eats boiled sweet potatoes for breakfast all the
time and we talked about it after. I
have the equivalent of frosted flakes for breakfast every morning, so I buy
that and milk too. Any of the desserts that are actually desserts are pretty good,
especially when it has some sort of chocolate in it, like once we had this warm
chocolate pudding, another this chocolate sorvete with, I don´t know how to
describe it, like if you put crushed up animal crackers in ice cream, really
good.
Love,
Elder Trevor Mangum
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