Diego's baptism

Crazy week. So let's see how much I remember; probably a lot, so sorry for the long email. (I say this every week) 

Tuesday:

Pretty normal day. We had a surprise devotional; it was long. That's because it wasn't really one devotional, but a string of devotionals from half the mission. It was one of those ones where everyone wants a turn to talk. We were talking about the conference talk of Elder Bednar. After that, we finally broke the no lesson curse! (Or so we thought) We finally got in contact with 3 of our best investigators, Denis, Ana, and Odair. We had lessons with all three, and they were so much fun. Our new strategy for when people aren't progressing is to switch to 15 minute lessons that happen every other day, and read the Book of Mormon with them. So far it's been working really well, especially with Ana.

Wednesday: 

Speaking of random unplanned events, the Zone leaders called us and let us know we would be doing an exchange starting today. This was a good surprise, 'cause it would be my first exchange and everyone says they are SUUUUUPER fun. Plus, I love my Zone Leaders right now. Elder Pompeu is this super energetic, super obedient Brazilian who loves everyone! And Elder Mons is the cousin of a missionary I knew in the MBM. Elder Mons and I hit it off just talking about the mission. We really bonded a lot over working hard in a difficult mission. He said the mission was getting "baptized" which is what happens when really suddenly a mission goes from having a low obedience standard to being super diligent. He was telling me in his old mission the Zone Leaders woke up at 6:00 am every day and stopped working at 10:15 pm, and that in one week they found 42 people... That's double what we found this month! And we are in Brazil! Elder Morrison and I ended up sticking together for our lesson, because the Zone Leaders had another meeting, but we read the Book of Mormon with Ana, then helped Diego prepare for his baptism. While we were in our lesson, the other elders bought us hot dogs. For those of you who don't know, Brazilian Hot Dogs are not my favorite thing in the world, haha. They have a brand of bread that's really soggy, plus they put on mashed potatoes, corn, this crunchy potato stuff called batata-palha. I tried to force it down, but ended up throwing it out the second they weren't looking. 

Thursday: Elder Mons and I opened our day on daily planning at 8:30, and before we knew it, it was 10 o'clock!  CRAZY! We had a day full of lessons planned but every single one fell through, so Elder Mons and I never actually ended up getting to teach together. But hey, at least I got to have the joy of a four elder companionship for a day. We played cards during our lunch hour, went and got subway together, and I finally had a little mental break which was nice, haha. More importantly, I filled out my first Baptismal form on the mission! 

Friday:

So no lunch for today 'cause when we tried to confirm with the member he blocked us haha, but that's fine 'cause I like cooking for myself anyways. After lunch, we had a devotional with Elder Bednar. I have to say, it was one of the highlights of my mission so far. It'd be impossible for me to say everything, but I learned soooo much, especially about how to seek personal revelation and teach by the Spirit. In the beginning, I got a shout out from Sister Bednar. She asked if I was Elder and Sister Bassett's son and talked about when they visited us when we lived in Brazil. They said it was so nice to see me all grown up, haha. Looks like my disguise is up. I have to say, I was kinda in shock when she said my name and asked if I was their son. I wasn't sure if I should unmute and say something or just give a thumbs up. I wasn't aware of what the zoom etiquette would be. But it worked out and I remembered why Elder Bednar is my favorite apostle. Of all the ones I've met, he seems the most real and the easiest to talk to. I love them so much. He encouraged us to never take notes on anything he says, whether in a devotional or general conference. Only to take notes on the words that aren't being said, the things the Spirit tells you. It was the most personal revelation I've ever gotten from a meeting. I had written down two questions from the heart that I wanted an answer to, and even though he never even remotely touched either topic, I had two amazing answers. Normally, I prefer to stay quiet during devotionals, but it's not every day you talk to an apostle, so that was the most engaged I've ever been in a devotional. Plus the new General Authority (Elder and Sister J. Costa) for Brazil was there, and I recognized that they were at our old apartment and sitting in my room, haha. 

When the devotional was over, the Bednar's said goodbye and no one left. We were all wishing it would keep on going. I felt like the Nephites in 3 Nephi 17:5 (I think, read around and see which one) One of the answers I got though referred to our missionary purpose. I wanted to know how to find more joy in the mission, even when things weren't going very well. The answer I got was that if you want to find the joy, you need to find the why. If you just go on your mission to go on your mission, or because it's what everyone does, you are going to hate it. You are leaving your family for two years, sacrificing your life, your hobbies, your interests everything, for no reason. If you go just to go, then you might as well stay home. But if you're here, be here for the right reason. Because you love the Lord, because you want to improve. Don't baptize just to baptize, baptize to bring souls unto Christ and help people find more joy in their life. People aren't numbers. There were a lot of really good tips he gave us on how to teach and speak with power. Sadly, after that every single one of our lessons fell through again. hahah. So no application time. At least, not yet.

Saturday: 

I'm really out here breaking all sorts of records. 3 Days in a row of every lesson falling through. I really can't complain, because there are a ton of missions where you scrape by to get one or two lessons. But the funny thing of the day is that today was supposed to be Diego's baptism. The Bishop asked that we move it, because there was a meeting with Elder Bednar later, and he wanted time to spiritually prepare. Ok no problem, but we forgot to tell the Elders quorum president, and so he went to the chapel and was waiting for everyone to get there. We had a really great zone family night. Everyone bore their testimonies, and it was really spiritual. 

Sunday: 

This day is gonna be the longest, so hang in there, Grandma, almost done. To start off, I'm gonna tell you about my personal study, because it was another home run. I was studying 2 Nephi 25, which is the chapter after he's been quoting Isaiah nonstop for like 12 chapters. And as he was talking about the plainness in Isaiah's words, it clicked to me what it teaches. I've been studying looking to understand prophecies and words. But Isaiah shows something much more importante. It teaches us about the nature of God. It just hammers in nonstop the law of Justice in connection with the Law of Mercy. It shows the personality and desires of God in a pure, raw and unrefined way all in one. I can't put everything into words, but it was really cool. After that, it made me realize something else that testified to the validity of the Book of Mormon for me. The Book of Mormon is very clearly written by multiple authors. It's something super subtle, but you can clearly see it if you're paying attention. Plus the very way each book is written changes. Nephi, for example, is written as a narrative; Moroni is written as a commentary; Alma is written as a historical depiction of events. And the different authors have different personalities. Where it most came across to me was in Nephi. Nephi has a very consistent personality. He is a person who bases everything on patience waiting upon the Lord, trusting in him, yet at the same time is very impatient with his brothers. You might consider that a character flaw, but I think it's more like he understood so clearly and is super exasperated with everyone else for not understanding. With his brothers for never having an eternal perspective, with his people for not understanding Isaiah... He understands the gospel more clearly than everyone else, but it wasn't always like this. In 1st Nephi Chapter 2, we see him diverge from his brothers and ask for help understanding. Because of this, his heart is softened by the Lord. From this moment on, we see him begin to express these character traits. He understands better than everyone else, not because he's smarter, but because he made the decision early on in life to trust the Lord and was blessed by it. That's why moving on he always talks plainly, he doesn't enjoy using parables or comparison like his father, Lehi, or like Alma. He just tells it how it is, and I have a lot of respect for him for that reason. It also gave me an interesting thought about the Book of Mormon. In this chapter, he's talking about how Isaiah was written in the language of the Jews, for that reason he understands it, but his people don't. It wasn't written for them. He kind of praises the Jews for their ability to literally understand prophecy. It's the same thing with the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon was written by a people with a very different speech pattern than us. Nephi was able to understand Isaiah's words plainly, because he grew up with it. But you see later in life he kind of regrets not teaching more from the Bible, cause his people did not grow up with that advantage. So start while you're young folks! Just do it, study even when it doesn't make sense and the more you study the more you'll understand. As for me, I plan to read Isaiah 10 times or as many as it takes for it to be just as clear to me as it was to Nephi. BTW this entire time I was studying 8 verses haha. 8 Verses for an hour, just keep reading. Ok, now that that's done... Baptism. It was great but also a mess. It was set for 11, but we wanted to be plenty early, so we asked the Office Elders to order an Uber at 10. But when 10 rolled around they didn't order it. They also wouldn't respond to our texts. We finally got the uber at 10:20.  The Uber dropped us off at 11:06, but it was clearly not the chapel. The Uber made us get out anyways. We called the bishop in that ward, but he had no idea where we were and doesn't know how to use technology to send his location. Plus our location wasn't working right. Eventually we got there at 11:40 walking down the street until we found it. (Google maps said the closest church was in Campinas a couple hours away.) Once we got there, we had another problem. It turns out Diego is really tall, and the clothes the ward leaders had for him didn't fit. When we finally did find something we went to start the zoom, but zoom wasn't working! So I had to create another zoom account, create a meeting, send it to all the people, then start the service. But it doesn't end there, turns out no one in this ward knows the song, "When I am Baptized," which is like the one song everyone knows! So it was just Elder Morrison and I singing. But he had zoomed in a ton and didn't know where we were so we only found our spot when the song was over and sang like the last two lines. But after that it was smooth sailing. It was a really great baptism. He didn't have a preference for who baptized him, so we had Elder Morrison do it. Then we had the confirmation. And Fabio received the priesthood, then Diego. After that, we showed them how to bless the sacrament and took the sacrament, just the 8 of us. It was an extremely intimate and special moment. I'm so happy for them! Luckily, we were able to get a ride back home! But on our way back home a member called us upset that we weren't home. She was going to drop off lunch, and we weren't there. We tried to explain to her that we were supposed to have been home an hour ago, and that we texted her husband telling him we would be late, but she was still very unhappy with us.  

Elder Morrison, Diego, & Yours Truly

Elder Koford & Elder Lima, Me & Elder Morrison, Sisters Freitas & Lemes, Elder Silva and the other Elder Lima

Fábio joined the church recently and is a great support in the Jaguariuna ward.

Me, Diego (who got baptized), Bishop Salvador, Elder Morrison, Fábio

Diego, Alice and their daughter

Now, a sad note. When we got home, we received word that our bishop in our Cosmópolis ward passed away from Covid. (This is the ward we live in.) It's really crazy, because we were talking to him just a week and a half earlier. It's hard to know how to handle that. We had a slow quiet rest of the day, with all of our lessons falling through. 

But then Ana rescheduled to talk at 9:15. And I'm glad we did! It wasn't really a lesson, more of a conversation. We talked to her about the baptism, and she was super interested. She asked about temples and sealings. We asked her if she wanted to be sealed to her son. She said yes, but that she knows first there's a ton she has to do like being baptized. So we said, "Well, let's talk about baptism." And we set a goal with her to be baptized May 22! Afterwards, Elder Morrison was still pretty mad at me for making us doing a lesson so late in the day, but I have no regrets! When we finally finished it was way too late, like 9:45. So I journaled about the day and FINALLY went to eat dinner before bed. Before I could take a bite, the phone rang one more time. It was Anderson, he asked me if I had already eaten dinner. I said no, and he said ok I just wanted to see if you guys had eaten yet, we'll talk more tomorrow. After THAT, I finally got to eat. 

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?

Our last district picture before transfers in a couple of days.

Tuesday: 

I had an umbrella for the first part of the conversation,
but at some point, I realized it wasn't doing any good.
We were soaked through our clothes!

So the big thing that happened today was that Elder Bodily and I went to run to the store across the street and ran into a drunk guy named Dan. We talked to him for well over an hour in the pouring rain, haha. He had interesting stories mostly about poor choices he'd made in his life and the consequences. At the end, he was talking about how grateful he was for us and that we were doing God's work even though we didn't really do anything for him. It made me think about the General Conference talk about how there's so many people in the world talking, and a lot of their problems would be helped by someone listening. We finally said goodbye, and he said he was gonna go to sleep under his porch. 

After that, we had a lesson with a guy named Willie; it was probably my most personal lesson ever. I talked about my personal conversion story, and we really connected over his desire to feel what everyone else talks about feeling. 

Wednesday: 

Started off by dropping the car off to the sisters. I only keep mentioning it, because I like starting the day off with a walk. We had a normal day and ended by dropping off a Book of Mormon and cookies for Willie. He lives in the same apartment as the Haitian Creole Elders, so they let us in and then he talked for a bit. They are really great missionaries and are basically single handedly building a Haitian creole branch here.

I love these missionaries! The Haitian Creole Elders are doing amazing things.

Thursday:

Today was a GREAT day. We had a chapel tour with Augosto which was amazing for a few reasons. First off, this was our first time ever actually seeing him, because we only do voice calls. Second off, it was my first time ever having an in-person lesson. Lastly, because at the end, we set a goal for his baptismal date. His testimony is growing so much, and he always talks about how he knows he's on the right path! We celebrated by getting Popeye's, which I only point out 'cause it was my second time ever! It killed our grocery budget, but it was worth it. 

We were doing some calls to people who had lost contact with the missionaries and found a guy named Campos. We had talked with him about 2 months ago. He had wanted to meet us again, but we forgot to mark him as interested, and so we never got back in contact! I'm super embarrassed about that. 

That night, we had a lesson with Francis and met his daughter Ana. She's great; I can't wait to get to know the whole family. 

Friday:

There was a training planned before district council, but it got cancelled, so we got to just sit and talk for an hour about our areas and what's going well. We planned our district p-day until our meeting started. 

It was a slow day with no lessons, so we delivered cookies to a bunch of people we were teaching and feijoada to the missionaries in our district. When we got home, Keke called us out of no where and we had a fun lesson with him. We will see where that leads. I'm hopeful.

Yup. I'll miss him.

Saturday:

We went to go get Elder Bodily's mask from the Spanish Elders, and when we got home Marillia, another woman we are talking to, asked if we could talk. We had a lesson with her, and it was a lot of fun. At the end of the day, we got transfer texts aaaaaand Elder Bodily is out of here! My next companion will be Elder Feliciano from Mozambique! We were high energy, so we walked to the store and bought some magnum bars and KitKats and called it a day! 

Sunday:

We got to go to church in person, and they bumped the number of people allowed in a room up to 50! So we were able to meet more people in the ward a little bit and say Hi to the Hortas. When we got home, we had a lesson with a lady named Mary. Right as it started, a member in the ward texted, "I'll be at your house in 15 minutes to bring you dinner!" But because the call was on Elder Bodily's phone we couldn't answer haha. So he had to wait a little bit, but we were so grateful!

Monday: 

District P day!!!! It was great, we planned to go on a hike at 9. Elder Bodily and I got to the trailhead and there were no other cars, so we called the group to see how close everyone was. The Salem Elders were at the store buying a pumpkin; the sisters were just leaving; the Haitian Creole Elders were still in the shower, haha. Anyways, after the hike, we skipped rocks, went to a park, and carved pumpkins. We ended the day with a basketball game where a random guy who was getting off work asked to join in and smoked us all, haha. At least he was on my team. 

We headed home and had a lesson with Campos. It went really well. He's a great guy! We had a random text from some unsaved number who somehow knew our names and like cussed us out for being missionaries. That was weird and not fun, but I'm kinda sad that for some reason he has had such a negative experience with religion that he takes time out of his day to seek us out and send that. 

3 Nephi 12:11 And blessed are ye when men shall ^arevile you and persecute, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake;

12 For ^aye shall have great joy and be exceedingly glad, for great shall be your ^breward in heaven; for so ^cpersecuted they the prophets who were before you.

13 Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the ^asalt of the earth; but if the salt shall lose its savor wherewith shall the earth be salted? The salt shall be thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the light of this people. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

15 Behold, do men light a ^acandle and put it under a bushel? Nay, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house;

16 Therefore let your ^alight so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and ^bglorify your Father who is in heaven.

Have a great week. Here are some more silly pictures for your enjoyment.