Ain't No Rest for the Wicked!

 

 

 

Okay, so I'm going to be pretty liberal with my interpretation of the song today, and am by no way suggesting any wickedness or anything of such sort. Por favor tenha pacienca comigo :)

As Matt Shultz once sang, " there ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees; I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed, ain't nothin' in this world's for free! "

I kinda felt that way this week juuuuust a bit (minus the wicked part) in that I kinda realized nothing in our area is going to come to us for free. As I mentioned last week, the mission changed our daily focus from 10 contacts and 3 lessons to 15 contacts and 5 lessons every day, which I knew would NOT be easy, especially in our area. Kinda like Cage the Elephant tries to tell us, I knew nothing would be coming to us for free, SO, this week we cracked DOWN and got to work.

Since our area consists of 3 main zones, Lapinha (like half of Cova Figueira), Maria de Cruz / Domingo Lobo, and Tinteira, what we've begun doing, in order to find 5 lessons every day, is work in at least 2 of those 3 zones every single day, and to be able to contact 15 people every day, is talking to literally everyone. It's actually been quite fun :)

One suggestion our Zone Leaders had for us was to use these 15 contacts as an opportunity to find 2 or 3 of our 5 lessons every day, so with that, we've taught a lot of lessons in a lot of strange places this week :) to name a few off... we taught one sitting on rocks underneath a tree, taught one on the side of the main road in Tinteira, various doorsteps, while people cut up raw pork meat, in a house where a dog wanted to kill us, on the side of the road to an Adventist who wanted to fight about why we don't use Saturday, in a house where everyone was asleep cuz they were sick except for the mom who got up to talk to us, to some girls doing homework off the side of the road, baaasically anyone sitting down in a public place this week in our area has been taught by the Elders. In working on our contacting, something I've got Elder Mason doing is asking just about anybody if they're willing to sit with us for 5 or 10 minutes, and just about every time he does the contact and asks, I feel sorta hesitant about it, but 9 times out of 10, they're willing to accept and listen to us. It's actually pretty darn fun, and becomes almost like a game most days.

In teaching so many spontaneous lessons, we were able to find a TON of new investigators this week, just left, right, and centre, of people who were like, ' yeah, come back any time Elders! ', and were even able to commit a few to baptismal dates. We've started to work with two different couples, one in Lapinha and one in Tinteira, who seem to be really cool. The couple in Lapinha has come to church both this week and last week, which has been straight up sent from Heaven. Patrik, the guy, showed up to church in a button up shirt and stingy, stylish suit, and sunglasses, and rolled in all like

 ' look at how cool I look ' but very quickly realized that our church isn't so much of a fashion parade here :) hahaha. It was boss!

Unfortunately, some people still are a bit hesitant about the 'dressing up for church' thing, since we had a LOT of less active young men tell us they couldn't come to church because they ' don't have shoes ' or because they 'have to wash clothes '. We tried telling them that they don't need to worry about the shoes they wear, cuz I'm like 97% sure the Savior didn't show up to church in Eccos, buuuuut people here are a little more hesitant to believe that. We even had an investigator tell us he would not come to church because the iron in his house was locked up and couldn't iron his clothes. The fact whether he was baptized on the 31st of this month depended on whether or not he came to church today, and while he's totally down to get baptized on the 31st, he can't now because he was too stubborn to show up in regular clothes. Expect an update next week on how I wear my sandals to church this week to show it really doesn't matter :P hahaha.

As for the reference to the 'wicked' in my title, unfortunately there are a few that don't rest. We came into our house Saturday night to find someone had cut open the netting on our window, and had entered, but we couldn't find ANYTHING missing, only stuff moved around and such. However, upon closer inspection on Sunday, I found that I am no longer in possession of my wallet :/ fortunately, my wallet had nothing of any real value, other than cards, drivers license, etc. , buuut it's just a hassle. But, life is as such when there ain't no rest for the wicked. Just meant we got to ride in the back of a police car here while they drove us up to our house to check it out. Tried making a joke to the cops about how funny it was that Elders were in the back of their car, but they either didn't hear me, or didn't think it funny. I thought it was funny though :) haha

Anyways, as such, I've been without rest this week. It would be fair to say this has been one of the hardest working weeks on my mission, aaaaaaand I gotta do it all over again now. Looking forward to continuing no rest :)

Love y'all!

Elder Massey

Catch up Elder Mason!  You can do it!

Sunday dinner?  or proof that they are eating more than rice and beans....

Keeping fit...Cape Verde style!