Islands Disappear

 This picture came with the title ---Overcome by the Spirit.....apparently he was so overcome while saying his morning prayers, he was there for over an hour!  Glad his companions could see the humor in it and took several photos!

           Elder Massey and Elder Stone - his companion who was taking the above picture!

                 
                             

                                               Carnival - Maio style!!!

Greetings all!

This week has been a week of many ups and downs, but it's been a ton of fun. 

We found out on Monday that we WOULDN'T be going to our Zone Conference, which was last Thursday, which was a bit of a bummer, at least for me. The other Elders here talk about how much fun it is to go to Praia for a few days and EAT, but sadly, that didn't happen. 

This past week was Carnival, which was pretty interesting, but thankfully, Maio doesn't party too hard. It's really a lot like Invermere, BC here, so Carnival was about as big as the Canada Day parade out there, which kinda reminded me of my summers back home. Ever since then, the parallels between Invermere and here have been increasing in number every DAY. 

After Carnival, for about a solid day, the whole island seemed to disappear for like a solid day and a half, as the Catholics have a holiday on the day after Carnival where they eat this salted fish stuff (we didn't get to have any), so half the island was there, and the other half (a much bigger half) was inside and asleep, due to some lingering headaches from the day before...

Speaking of sleeping, I'm starting to believe it is the national pastime here. We've had appointments where we'll go by and someone else will answer the door, and will proceed to tell us that the person we are supposed to meet with is asleep. It even happened once a few weeks ago where we were teaching with a member, Gilson, and we went to a house of a guy he knew, who, was asleep, and Elder Stone asked him why the guy couldn't wake up, to which Gilson repsonded, incredulously, 'but he's SLEEPING!'. The people here are so funny sometimes.

I got to give my first talk in church this week, there were supposed to be two sisters speaking, but they didn't know how to give a talk, so our Branch President, Ta, asked if I could give one. So, that was fun! It didn't go as bad as I thought it would. I also played the piano again this week, which went MUCH better than last week. It was still interesting though, because the hymn we sang for sacrament is one the members like very much, and they also like to sing one part wrong I guess, so Elder Stone and I were doing our very best to get them to hit the right note. It was very entertaining for me. 

We haven't taught a whole lot this week, but we've found some really awesome people toward the end of this week. Within the span of a day, we had 3 different investigators all read in the Book of Mormon, something that hasn't happened with me so far, and it was so cool to see. They all knew exactly what was going on, and had some really awesome questions. It was so darn cool. 

We did have one really cool lesson last night, that I'd like to talk a little about. We found this guy named Chando a few weeks ago, he yelled at us as we walked by him and was like 'HEY! Why the heck do you guys never talk to me?', to which we apologized to, and marked a day with him. We had taught him about a week ago or so, and had marked a day to return once his wife came back from Praia. So, last night, we returned to teach Chando, and his wife, Milseilita (quite the name, I know), with Ta, and we went over the first lesson with her. It was a really simple lesson, and we didn't teach anything in an overly different way, but her desire to find the truth in her life was so incredibly strong. You could just feel the desire that was in the room, and it was so incredible. We bore simple testimonies, and testified to them of the importance of making sure they knew for themselves, and they just ate it all up, and the desire they had was just so incredibly strong in that room. They are seriously such cool people. They had made a bowl of popcorn before we came, and after we were done, they let us (well, more like MADE us) eat the bowl, to which I graciously accepted, and felt bad after. After we left, Ta told us that he's never felt so happy when teaching with missionaries before. It was awesome.

Well, I apologize for the large email! The Lord has definitely blessed our work here in so many ways, and we may not have the numbers, but the work is alive!

Love y'alls so much, and hopin' y'alls is keepin' on!

Rock on!

Elder Massey