Opa família,
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| Location of Limeira, São Paulo, Brazil |
Nossa, que bom que hoje é P-day.
[Wow, I'm glad today is P-day] This last week was tough. Toughest on the mission so far I think. So let me explain. Right now I'm in a city called
Limeira, serving in the Nova Itália
[new Italy] area (in the
Nova Itália Ward) in the Rio Claro zone. I am finishing the training (the last 6 weeks) of a verdinho
[new missionary]. Yeah, pretty crazy right? His name is Elder Mora, as far as he knows he's the only missionary from Ecuador serving in Brasil (he asked the lady in Ecuador who works for the Church doing visas). He's pretty cool - he's actually teaching me a lot more than I'm teaching him.
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| AJ and Elder Mora (from Ecuador) |
We just had our weekly planning this morning, and after companionship inventory I feel whipped! But I'm going to pick myself up and just do my best this week. I'm hoping I can rest a little today, get rid of some stress. I'm not used to being in charge of everything. On top of that, when I got here our grupo de ensino
[teaching pool] was down to a couple people, so we're working to find a bunch of new people to teach.
I went through the area book and we visited some people with whom other missionaries had only made contact and suggested that future missionaries pass by there. We spent a lot of time chasing down people who ended up not having interest. We finally found some people yesterday in a completely different area, I think we'll work more there. Haha, 'I think'. I don't really know what I'm doing! I need to confide more in the Spirit to give us direction, but I'm not sure how to do that yet. Being the perfectionist that I am, I like to have the week like perfectly planned out, but that's pretty much impossible to do. So yeah, I'm tired to say the least. I think this is all in response to my prayers for more faith in Christ. Just that, how I'll get that faith, I don't know yet.
What else??? uh, so we're working with a lady called B, she is about 70 years old and can't read, but she is really smart and funny. She accepts our teachings without hesitation - when we went by on Wednesday last week we taught about the Word of Wisdom, and after learning about how coffee is something we don't do she took her Tupperware thing of it and dumped it in the trash. So, she's pretty cool - she's really worried about losing her Catholic friends when she becomes a member of the Church. We're trying to help resolve this and fazer amizade
[befriend] other members of the church.
We also have another person we're teaching, A, who's dating a member of the church. He's kind of losing interest...we're not sure. He told us that he wants specific answers to questions like why is he here, what God wants of him (he had a lot of organ complications as a baby but miraculously survived, and he attributes it to God preserving him for some sort of purpose). We've taught the Plan of Salvation, but he's looking for an answer that only God can give him. So we are searching for God's will on that - whether we encourage baptism and promise that he will find his answers by being baptized and continuing in the Church, or if God is willing to give an answer now and we need to help him find it so that he can be baptized.
I love you!!! Thank you for your prayers!! Keep praying!! A LOT!!!
Elder Bradford
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| We had lunch at a church member's house Sunday and it also happened to be the birthday of the mom of the member, so there was a cake and a festinha.[little party] Foi da hora [it was legit] |
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| We live behind an Italian bakery and confectionery. And it does smell good, especially when we leave for lunch and they're baking sweet bread... ahhhh |
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| Our study desks |
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| So we get home Saturday night I think, its pouring rain and we get to the door, I hurry and unlock it and it kind of opens funny - well, it fell off. So we took a picture of it. Fortunately, we have another door from the kitchen that serves as our front door now. |
