It's More then a Drizzle down here

Opá Família!

Okay wow, this week was all over the place. I would be sending pictures of my first four baptisms today but, SUPRISE! Nobody showed up for the baptism, so it was me, Elder Atkin, the ward, and a font full of water, with no family to be baptized. That was the worst feeling I´ve had in my life, bar none. Talk about devastating. We hope to figure their issue out and help them maybe this weekend or next, depending on what the problem is. Other than that, the week was relatively good. I still only get about 1 and a half hours of sleep per night, and that makes things really rough after a few hours of walking, but I´m still alive! Blessing.

 We have been working really hard to find people this week and we find them, but people are too nice for their own good and say yes to our faces then don´t show up at the door the next day or on sunday. It´s quite rough because it´s so important that people keep their commitments! Hopefully things shape up a little better this week.

 Unfortunately I only have one funny story this week and it´s mostly sad. We contacted with some folks in the park and we went over to talk to a group of kids (it was about 9:20 on a Wednesday... sketchy) anyways, they were like 14 years old max. They were heckling us and being really obnoxious and rude because kids are kids everywhere in the world it turns out, so Elder Atkin decided it would be fun to talk to them. After a little bit of talking and enduring some rude remarks we came to find out that one of the girls was the mother of two. And that her boyfriend was wait for it... twelve years old. Yikes. We didn´t have anything to say to that so we left them with a law of chastity pamphlet and went home. It was more surreal than funny. Oh and fun fact of the week, I identified what favela water smells like! About 500 dead camels. I can hear Cassidy laughing about that but it´s true! Oh man it reaks. Also, I thought I knew what rain was living in Oregon, but man was I wrong. The rain here is unreal!! Seriously! Anyways. Basically what I learned this week is that, the will of the Lord isn´t always what we want, but if we submit to His will we are promised blessings in return. I will continue to work my hardest until my body either sleeps, or falls down again, haha. I hope I have some baptism pictures for you all next monday! I really love the work here, there´s a lot to do, and knowing that Christ would do the same thing if He were here, keeps me going everyday. I love this gospel and I´m so glad I decided to remain faithful when the choice was placed before me. I love you all and thank everyone so much for the love!

 

Eu amo Vocês,

Elder Marley

 

P.S. We got to see Elder Holland speak on saturday at our mission conference and he spoke about the will of the Lord and the importance of remaining faithful, aka, exactly what I have been thinking this week! It was incredible!

1st Letter from the Mission Field!!!!

Oh do I have a lot to pack into this email. haha. First off everything here is even better than I expected, except we haven´t really had any success yet. The weather is pretty hot usually in the mid 80´s during the day and super humid, we walk about 12 miles a day and the days go super fast. Everywhere smells bad here but it´s always a different kind of bad smell and it just makes it feel authentic. My trainer´s name is Elder Atkin, he´s from Chico California and is 27 years old. I´m super grateful to be serving with him because he´s super good with the language, doesn´t hardly speak English to me, and is the district leader so we work probably the hardest out of anyone in our zone. He has a year left in his mission and is still loving it.

 The food here is perfectly fine, I haven´t gotten sick once, and memebers feed us lunch here because they only eat one meal a day here. I´m losing weight pretty quick, it´s funny. Anyway I have a few funny stories. First, we went to the ward mission leader´s house for a meeting and while we were talking to him his son walks in and starts watching a movie, I look up like 15 minutes later because I heard a ton of " f" words in english... this 9 year old was watching Paranormal Activity 3! hahahahah. I was like, oh my gosh, that´s one way you can tell nobody in the house speaks english, they let a  9 year old watch rated R movies with no idea that they are rated R. haha. It was hilarious. We HAD like 5 investigators we found and taught a few times this week but they all fell through yesterday and weren´t there when we went to pick them up for church, talk about heart breaking. This is eternal salvation we´re talking about! People just don´t understand. It was a little discouraging but we just have to rememeber that people will always have their agency to accept or reject the gospel and we´re doing all we can do.

 Oh this place is called Monumento and it´s where Brazil declared its independence from Portugal! Pretty cool! Except now it´s all industrial and reminds me a lot of what Detroit Michigan probably looks like. It´s pretty darn sketchy. I love the ward here, they´re super friendly and all the kids call me Elder Marley e Eu. Marley and Me haha. It´s pretty funny. Oh and I met my first Brazilian Rastas yesterday and they were yelling at us because Americans are racists and they were mad because the pictures in opur pamphlets had ´White Jesus´´ hahahaha. So funny. Then the guy who was totally stoked, figured out my last name was Marley and literally laughed for 15 minutes non stop while we taught hi wife. hahahaha. It was SO WEIRD! Anyways there´s a couple funny stories. I really like the area, it´s quite impoverished and people, like whole families live in a place the size of Sammi´s room, two beds, a kitchen, and a television. Seriously, and there homes are just dug into the side of an alley way. It´s pretty intense. But the people that live here are generally really nice. Except the guy that was screaming at us about being fake and hating all the other christians. That was the night of the big gang shootout. The cops killed like 8 people. CRAZY! 

It´s been a great week and the work here is tremendous, this mission is the busiest mission in the world (288 baptisms last month) and it looks like it´s gonna keep going. We get to meet Elder Holland this week so I´ll definitely write about that soon! Love you and tell everyone I Love them too and hope maybe someday I can get a letter like I used to when I got my last one a month ago. haha. Love you,

Love

Elder Marley