Elder Bodily Outta Here!

Saying Goodbye to Elder Bodily

Tuesday: Started off by going hard for Elder Bodily's last day. We called all of the people we were teaching to mark with them as well as all of our interested people. Once we had taken care of that, we spent the time packing and cleaning up for Elder Feliciano to get here. It was a pretty quiet but busy day. And we ended it by making hot dogs, because Brother Horta had just given us a pack of like 30 haha. 

Wednesday: Big Day! First things first. I met my grandpa! That is to say, I met Elder Bodily's trainer, and we took a picture together to show 3 generations of missionaries. From there, I found Elder Feliciano. We all said hi to our friends and went home! Elder Feliciano served 8 months in his home in Mozambique, then went to the MTC, and now he's been here. He has 18 months on the mission, and I'm excited to see the new ideas he brings to this area! We had to hurry home, because I had some ribs in the oven. When we got back, he said he wasn't hungry right then. So I may or may not have impulsive eaten all of them. Then when he finished unpacking and asked where I put them, I felt really bad. But we didn't have much time to mope as we went to service after that. We signed the proper forms for him and got busy putting bags of potatoes together. We had English class after that and randomly got called in the middle of it. But when we tried to return the call, whoever it was had blocked us. 

Thursday: We woke up and realized that we didn't have the key to the chapel to meet Augosto. We called the Zone Leaders and Spanish Elders and finally were able to rush down to get the key and got there just in time for our lesson. Only for him to let us know he wouldn't be going to the chapel. Oh well. We still had a great lesson over the phone, and Elder Feliciano was excited to meet, Augosto. Later in the day, we had a member lesson set up with someone in the English group. And it was sooooo nice teaching in English. But it's much easier finding people to teach who are Portuguese speaking. I sometimes wish I could find in Portuguese and teach in English, haha. Anyways, after that we had some more English classes. We also had a lesson with Reginaldo and shared the rest of the restoration with him. It was great, and I loved seeing Elder Feliciano in action. He teaches very straight forward. By watching him, I've realized that because I was born in the church, I skip around the restoration a little bit, because I'm worried it will sound weird. Elder Feliciano is a convert at the age of 17, so he says everything with a confidence that comes from having heard this all as something new before. It was really cool. 

Friday: So I was studying a general conference talk from April 2005 by Thomas S Monson. I was thinking about how God allows us to have consequences for our actions as a part of the gift of agency. If the bad things people did didn't have consequence, our choices wouldn't matter. That's why He doesn't always directly interfere with the world, but He does inspire people through small and simple prompting of the Spirit. A spiritually in tune person acting on a small prompting can achieve great things to help others, but the problem is that a lot of times we don't recognize or act on the promptings. But imagine the good that could come from a world where everyone was worthy to receive and act with spiritual promptings! How would our lives change? We had district counsel today and started off with some get to know you questions. We were supposed to say a trait we admire in our companions. When it came to us, Elder Feliciano spaced on my name, haha. Hard question when you've only known someone for two days, haha. But district counsel went great, and afterwards we met a member and her son, Rosalyne and Ryan. They were really special; it was our first time meeting someone in a park! While we were getting to know Ryan, he pointed at a boy and said, "That's my friend," and so we asked his name. Ryan said, "I'll go ask him," and ran over and came back and told us. A little while later, the mother of the boy came up to us and said gruffly, "Why were you asking for my son's name?" Whoops! We worked it out, but I can only imagine her fear as two 19-year-olds in suits and ties talking to an old lady and a 6-year-old in a park learned her son's name. 

 

Saturday: So, they updated the rules for the mission so that we are finally able to wear floral ties which

The dreaded floral tie

means I finally put on my favorite tie. Every day I would get ready and go to pick a tie and start to grab that one, then stop myself and say quietly "not yet" haha. I've been studying the Old Testament a lot lately, and today I was thinking about why the Jews were so frustrated with the taxes of the Roman's. It seems such a normal thing to us. Well, in Deuteronomy, it makes the Jewish laws clear. They have very specific rules on tithing and helping the poor. It was seen as a duty to God and a sign of devotion. The Romans coming in and demanding taxes almost was a mockery of the Divine, almost like the Roman's were demanding devotion to them instead to God. It was an interesting study session. Elder Feliciano has been talking about how we need to start calling all the people that the missionaries stopped teaching in the past. I wasn't excited about it, but out of his first 4 calls, he had 3 responses and was able to set a lesson! It made me think about how important it is to be implementing a variety of strategies in sharing the gospel. On Saturdays, we have Walk in the Light devotionals with various people from around the world. This week was with Ty Detmer, a BYU quarterback and Heisman trophy winner. When he was sharing his conversion story, something struck me. He made the comment that if your testimony isn't growing, then it's regressing. That's why slothfulness is a sin, because God wants us to keep moving forward, and if we are not doing the simple things to grow our testimony then our progress will not only stop, but will begin to go backwards. After the devotional, I was talking with a guy we are teaching named Kleber, and he said he was planning on going to our church tomorrow. I had to explain to him that they were limiting the amount of people who could go, and he wouldn't be able to unless he attended with us next week. But we are also only allowed to bring one person per week which means we can't bring him and Francis or Augosto. It's definitely very frustrating that I have to tell more people on my mission that they can't go to church than I have invited to church. But we have to have patience with these things and trust that the Lord is providing the means for these people to receive the gospel. 

Sunday: We went to the chapel for a lesson with Artur only for him to have already gone home. So we ended up calling him and doing that instead. He is still doing great and asked about Francis which is an awesome sign that Francis will be accepted into the ward well after we leave. I've been studying a lot in Preach my Gospel, and I was thinking about someone we are teaching who wants to feel the Spirit that other people talk about, but doesn't really care about reading the Book of Mormon. I was directed to Moroni's promise, that if anyone reads and studies the Book of Mormon and prays about it with the intention that they will act on the answer they receive, they can receive an answer that it is true. I was thinking about why God would inspire that promise; what's in it for Him? Well, He's our Father and loves us for one. So this scripture is providing an incentive to pray, (receiving an answer), and that means He will be able to hear from us and have a personal relationship. But why does it take time? Why does it take continual study? Well, the whole reason He wants us to read the Book of Mormon is because it will show us how to live our lives in a way that will bring the most joy. That means studying and abiding by its precepts. He wants us to be able to learn the Book of Mormon's teachings so we can be happier and return to Him. It's a win win for Him. We are happier, and talk to Him more. One funny thing that happened this week is that I made pasta twice. The Portuguese word for pasta is macarrão; the word for monkey is macaco, and the word for car jack is also macaco depending on how you use it. Anyways, over the last couple days, I have repeatedly talked about cooking monkeys and car jacks. 

 

Monday: Today a girl Elder Feliciano was talking to was sharing things a Jehovah's Witness was telling her about our church, none of which are true: we don't believe in the Bible, talking about how we don't believe in the second coming, we don't worship Christ, to which Elder Feliciano responded with a picture of our name tag showing that it was The Church of Jesus Christ. It was a funny experience, but we are glad because she wasn't taking him seriously. It's weird how people actually say all this, when if you wanted to know the truth you could just ask literally any member.

Elder Feliciano didn't know how to use chopsticks, so I was showing him how using butterknives.

I went to get a haircut and the guy just started buzzing it off with no warning. It will grow back, right?