Ola

Oh Hello,

 

Well this week wasn´t so much. The theme of the week is "working hard, to no avail". Because that´s what we did this week. We worked our butts off but for some reason, nothing was going right. First off, Elder França went to Recife to get his visa to Venezuela, leaving Elder Holmes and I here as a regular companionship for two days... or so we thought. Enter Elder Adams. His companion also went to Recife so he was with us instead. He has been in Brazil a year and a half and doesn´t know how to speak portuguese... or teach. Needless to say it was extremely frustrating and we were super pumped to get Filho (aka Elder França) back. Elder Adams is determined to learn Japanese, ,something he studies everyday during language study. Shockingly, speaking Japanese does nothing for you when you´re in Brazil and had that time been spent studying portuguese this past year and a half,  imagine where that kid would be. Yikes. Anyways, when Filho got back we ran up to him and hugeed him and started chanting. 

As for the work of the week goes, it was a week of challenges. We fasted this week, after França got back, that everything would go right with Jessica´s baptism and her family would come to watch so they would want to be baptized next week. Unfortunately neither of those things happened. Jessica had an emergency where she had to travel to Campo Limpo to stay with her aunt and help her. That´s what Jessica does. Always helping people, dang her. (Heavy Sarcasm implied). So it ended up being a little disappointing on that end.

 Two funny stories this week: First one. So on P day we went to go play basketball with the young men´s president and Victor Belo (Elder Belo´s little brother). It was super fun, Elder Holmes and I were kings of the court for like 8 games straight playing against Filho, Victor, and Carlos. The next game we played I caught a pass from Holmes and drove in hard to try to put a floater over the top of Victor and Carlos. Well I was in mid air when I noticed that Victor was not stopping fast enough. So I put it up and he TRUCKED me. I ended up spraining my ankle pretty bad and had to sit out for the rest of the day. But I imagine it was pretty funny. Sign that kid up for the Ravens! Don´t worry though, I soldiered through it because I didn´t want us to lose any days of work and aftfer about three days of excruciating pain it only hurts a little bit now and is relatively unnoticeable.

 

Second. We had a super week of lunches. Basically when the members give lunch everyday. It never happens. One of these was this inactive guy who gives us incredible lunches. So we were pumped,  and it was Franças first one back (score). He made us Cheeseburgers. And they were dang good! I felt like I was at Red Robin again! And homemade french fries. It was incredible. After 9 months without a hamburger it was really good. We dubbed it "Octaviano´s Burger Fest". It was epic. SHoulda ate more.

Anyways amigos that´s it for this week. I hope everyone has a great week. I was thinking about the inevitable influx of missionaries in our mission and how awesome it would be if Jamieson Green came here. Será?

Vós amo,

Elder Marley

Letter

Hey,
This week wasn´t too bad. Good to hear that Erica was funny on drugs. Sorry I wasn´t.

Anyways. This week was not too bad. We have this family in our ward that takes care of us like none other, Jilmar and Rose. Jilmar is the second counselor in the bishopric and Rose is in the Primary presidency and they both team up to be the missionary family. It really started when Elder Holmes and I became a companionship. They give us lunch basically every other day, instead of us having to go out to eat (waste of money here). So they always find ways to make us laugh. Their family is the family that Holmes and I traded American goods for Brazilian "equivalents" I hope that all of you are this family for the missionaries back home. Because it´s priceless. The funniest part of the week was definitely Elder França learning how to distinguish the difference between "man" and "men". It was hilarious. Because he says it and moves his head really elaborately (is that the word?) when he speaks english. When he finally got it down, he was so happy. I´ve literally never seen someone that happy before. It was so funny.
On another note we had another baptism this week, Ana Maria, that was a reference from Salt Lake. She was there in the beginnning of the year and visited all the church history sites, and talked a lot to the sisters there. So when she came back she was interested in the church but didn´t know how to get in contact with the missionaries. So she waited until one day one of the sisters from Salt Lake emailed her and passed her address to us here. When we got the call at like 830 at night, the initial reaction was oh we´ll just visit her tomorrow, it´s been a long day, blahblahblah. But when we were walking back we thought, maybe we´ll just pop in and introduce ourselves really quick. That turned out to be a great decision because when she got there she said she had been praying for us to show up that night because she was extremely depressed and needed help. We ended up teaching her about the Restoration and inviting her to baptism this sunday (this all happened two weeks ago). She ccepted and was baptized yesterday. I was thinking yesterday when we went by to talk more to her after her baptism about how strange it is that we walk by her apartment building every day, like every single day for seven months in this area and she was there the whole time, just waiting and praying for us to show up. And in her moment of greatest need, we received a prompting to stop by when in reality, we had no inention of doing so earlier. It´s really something. Because lately, I´ve been wondering if my prayers have been being heard. I´ve felt sometimes like they haven´t been and that it just won´t happen. I realize this is exactly how Ana Maria was feeling since she got back from Salt Lake, and God waited until her weakest moment to answer her prayers. It goes to show that sometimes, our answers are delayed so that we can strengthen our weaknesses and grow our faith before things get worked out. Sometimes it´s necessary for us to suffer. True, everyone has a breaking point, but what we THINK is our breaking point is often not. I don´t know, it was just a really cool experience and I´m glad we were able to help her not only find the true church but to find hope, and a way to hole onto true happiness forever, no matter happens. The atonement of Christ really is a miraculous force that has the power to save us not only from our sins but also from our burdens. As we can read in the scriptures that Christ not only suffered for the sins we commit but he also suffered every pain and temptation as well. If it had not been so, the atonement would have been incomplete and would not have total effect. It´s a really interesting concept to me, how perfect the whole plan is. Especially out here on the misison being able to see the Atonement take effect in the lives of others, as well as in my life, really reminded me as to why I came out here. I came out here to preach this gospel, yes, but ultimately to help other people, because that´s exactly what the gospel does. Anyways, that´s all this week. Have a great week everyone.

Elder Marley