we got a lot of the house cleaned up, which was really nice. Elder Andrade was pretty sick and he wanted to take a nap so i cleaned the house and got organized while he slept. my first week with Elder Andrade has been hard adjusting. he is from Cape Verde, islands part of the continent Africa.
Tuesday
During personal study i read ´´Canaries with Gray on Their wings´´ by Thomas S. Monson in the June, 2010 Liahona. It was really good. i suggest everyone read it because it is uplifting. We had lunch way out in Roberto Luiz Santos´s house. Its a looonng walk. he is a single man, who lives in a tiny humble home. Pres. Bangerter called and got our location to pick us up and spend the day with us. Pres. B drove us to the church and had interviews with us. The interview/conversation with pres. was great.. i cried when i told him how overwhelmed and alone i have been feeling. he began to talk about his mission and he cried when he told me about his experience serving in an island in Portugal, feeling alone, difficulties, etc. i said sometimes my emotions make me feel like i want to go home, but i know that wont solve anything. if i were to come home early it wouldn't benefit anything. what keeps me going is the thought of returning after 2 years of fighting battles and returning home spiritually stronger and happier. after interviews he drove us to two of our investigators houses and helped us a lot. he preached incredibly powerful and helped a lot. it was really nice to talk to him and explain what i have been experiencing, my difficulties, my happiness's, my disappointments. He brought me lots of peace. After meeting with us individually he met with us together and gave us some quick helpful advice and then we went out to visit some of our investigators. First was Cristina. President B. alone taught the Word of wisdom extremely powerfully and addressed her problems, made goals, and had her pray. She gave a great prayer and after she handed over her smoking stuff. Next we drove back to the church for Pres. B to meet with the Bishop. We found Carlos (15 yr old youth) and told him we need to talk to his mom and dad tonight. After Pres. B was finished with Bishop we drove to Carlos´s house, following Carlos on his bike. There we found his mom, his grandmother, his siblings, and another friend of his mom. Unfortunately Carlos´ dad was sleeping, but president bangerter still taught and preached very powerfully the first lesson the Carlos´s family. at Carlos´s house we met his family and gained his family´s trust and set a date to get the signature from carlos´s parents to be baptized. his baptism is going to be this coming Saturday, October 29! President is a great man. a very proactive, lets-solve-this-problem kind of guy. after our meeting with carlos´s family it was already a little past 10 pm. we drove back to Nelson Costa and looked for a place to buy gum,candies,mints for cristina to help her stop smoking. every place was closed, so we drove way out close to the centro to find a place that was open. he found a drugstore/pharmacy, ran in bought various goodies for us to drop off at cristina´s house the next day, then he walked the a pizza place next door and bought us pizza and 2 liters of Guaraná ! what a nice guy! He drove us home and went we arrived a drunk man riding a bike ran into our car. it was kind of funny. Both president bangerter and elder andrade haven't been feeling good and needed priesthood blessings. Pres. gave Elder andrade a blessing then turned around and asked me to give him a blessing. I GAVE MY 1st PRIESTHOOD BLESSING IN MY LIFE TO MY VERY OWN MISSION PRESIDENT! It was such a privilege.
Wednesday
we had district meeting in the church in the centro. president arrived and gave us some training which was great. In the evening we stopped at cristina´s house to see how she was doing and we were surprised to open the door to a birthday party with a few friends of cristinas. we made some really cool contacts today and met some people that i am excited to teach.
friday
Lunch fell through, Cristina wasn't home, and we were disappointed when we stopped at Cristina´s house. She took a while to answer the door which is unusual because her house is super tiny. I walked in and found one of Cristina´s friends that was at the birthday party with only tiny underwear on. As he scrambled to put clothes on he hurriedly sat down on the bed, broke it, and fell to the ground. and pretty much lets just say that we arrived at cristinas house and found a practically naked old dude in her room, scrambling to get dressed, BROKE THE BED in his attempt, and his excuse for not having any clothes on was ´´its really hot today´´ i was thinking, ´´hmmmm, its hot everyday here, nice excuse buddy´´ so now I think she has another problem other than smoking and we need to re-teach the lessons on the commandments. She told us she smoked today After we went to Carlos´s house and talked to his family, this time his dad was there. His dad liked us a lot and bought cake and Guaraná for us. we got his signature so now carlos is all set to be baptized Oct. 29th.
Saturday
we had a big activity were lots of missionaries and youth met at the church in the centro and we split up and did divisions with youth. we made tons of contacts and new investigators, then returned to the church in the centro for lunch. other elders from a different area like almost 2 hours away baptized in our building´s baptismal font because their´s had problems. like no water or something. my companion and i went to the church and cleaned the bathrooms, the font and the room at 3 pm. the other elders were supposed to arrive around 3:30pm but they were super late and didn't arrive until 7 ish. we didn't stay for the baptism because we had lots of people to invited to church the next day.
Sunday
We thought for sure we would have lots of investigators in church because we invited lots and lots and some really sounded like they would come. Other than Carlos, none of our investigators showed up, even the ones that confidently said they would. Today was Mateus´ brother´s mission farewell talk. we had a meeting with the ward council. when i was getting ready for bed just about to turn out the lights i saw a good sized gecko quickly crawl along the wall at the head of my bed. i didn't know where it went and as i was trying to fall asleep i was hoping it wouldn't crawl into my bed. haha
Today Monday
Today i got some really nice supportive emails from my family. i want to especially thank my grandma Susan for her email. THANK YOU GRANDMA SUE! also today, my younger sister, Roz, emailed me an awesome analogy that i want to share. she quoted Edene Christensen: ´´the difference of contributing, and committing. are you contributing on your mission, or are you committed. think of the difference between a chicken and a pig. A chicken just gives eggs, while a pig gives its whole life. what do you want to be mckay? Choose now. and keep it in you mind always. chicken or pig?´´
i want to be a pig! and give it my all. i want to give my life for 2 years to serve here. i wont give just a few eggs now and then, like a chicken, but i want to focus all my efforts, energy,etc in the service of the master chef (God).
Today we went to the centro with the sister missionaries to look at supplies to buy for our house. then we went to places around the city to take photos. funny story: as we were walking we came across the same man that we found in Cristina´s house who was without clothes and broke the bed. We said hi to him and invited him to Carlos´ baptism. it was a little awkward, but all is well.
A little about my area. there are people who make sacrifices. our ward boundaries are humungus and not everyone has cars and sometimes it can be a really long walk for some people. lots of people have bikes tho. for us to walk to the church from our house is about 20-25 minutes. my area has well over 1,000 people that were baptized and our ward frequency is only roughly a little over 100. our goal is 150. there is a lot of work to do here. Lots of inactives, and lots of investigators. Sometimes its overwhelming, thinking of all the work to do, but we are taking it one bite at a time.
my new companion Elder Andrade
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