Sergio's Baptism

Sergio was baptized yesterday after church, it went great. Alex and his family is the opposite, was very sad for me on Tuesday when we went to go visit them and were told that their mom doesn´t want us teaching Alex anymore because she doesn´t want him confused or something. It left me very sad, but Favoretti said it isn´t Alex´s fault, he´ll get another chance down the road. We´ve taught a couple of different families who all need to be married which is annoying because despite living together for years and years and having kids together and raising them, they still aren´t married and some of them don´t want to get married.

Thursday morning I had my interview with Presidente Jones which was awesome. Said he loves my letters to him because they´re always positive. I said yeah, that days are hard, but there is a bit of good in every one and he said keep up that thinking, that missionaries at the beginning don´t generally have that attitude (particularly Americans) and thus struggle. The main struggle is walking, Elder Favoretti walks so fast that I have to run a little bit every day to catch up with him, my legs are always dead at the end of the day. Also, Presidente told me straight up that I have one of the best trainers in the mission, so learn well and feel fortunate and grateful. He also said that we´ll have received 75 new missionaries from July 1 to the end of the year, nearly half the mission (which would be 88). Also, based off his interview with Elder Favoretti, there is a decent shot I´ll be training immediately after right here in Feitoria. Gotta learn it all well enough to teach it all. Got 8 more weeks to prep. I also finally had my little interview (or part of it at least) with Sister Jones that I didn´t get to do the first day with lack of time, and that was fun too.

Zone Conference on Friday was good, Presidente taught about the Atonement, Sister Jones about charity, the assistants about always teaching people, making conversations, and about improving our baptism invites. The zone leaders then had us do practices of baptism invitations where we roleplayed as a real person in our mission that a dupla is teaching right now. It was really good. I also had divisão again in Sao Leopaldo on Thursday after my interview until zone conference on Friday. We did service Saturday and my back is a little sore. Lots of buckets of dirt that I moved to fill in cracks and holes, I think we like filled in his foundation under his house and stairs with dirt. Fasting on the mission is only hard because of thirst and your desire to drink. We did have fast and testimony meeting yesterday.

Every Sunday night, we visit this less active/not active family and just talk and eat with them, Irmã Roseli, her husband, and their 14 year old daughter Ana. I kind of had been growing a bit impatient that we kept visiting them because it seemed like nothing was happening although I always enjoyed spending time with them, super fun and nice. Anyways, Roseli has been having serious problems with health recently, like possibly has cancer and shared with us last night that she knows the church is true, that the Book of Mormon is true, but just doesn´t know why she doesn´t come to church (they did have issues with a person) and I´m fairly certain that they´re going start coming to sacrament meeting again. It made me realize that what is meant by teaching people is talking with people, being their friends, sharing your experiences, like the assistants were talking about.

Before I forget, last week I forgot to write about the elections for President here in Brazil.  It was wild stuff leading up to it, people driving around honking so much with flags, they litter the streets so much with all these little papers of the candidates, we had to go on the Sunday morning of General Conference for Elder Favoretti to register as nonvoting, went to a school by us and I got to go inside, first school in Brazil. We´ll have to this same thing in a couple of weeks for the runoff election of something. Also, you should look up what I think in English is called The Fourth Missionary, By Lawrence E. Corbridge, June 22, 2002. Haven´t read all of it yet because it is in Portuguese for me, but what I´ve read is really good, I think you´d like it.

Good luck from Brazil, have a great week. Y’all are in my prayers,

Love,

Elder Mangum