Our
week started out with a division with the Zone Leaders, I had the
opportunity to go out with Elder Willes, in which our primary purpose
was to do a baptismal interview for our investigator, Mariozinho, who we
had marked for baptism on the 26th. Elder Mason and I had struggled to
find him in the days past, and as such, I was kinda panicking to see if
we could find him or not. I was absolutely STOKED when, after teaching a
lesson, Elder Willes and I ran into him, and we were like, 'HEY, your
baptism is this week, you gotta do an interview, letsssss'a'goooo ' but
in traditional form, Mariozinho had something else he had to do at that
moment, but we marked to find him at 6pm, right before our Ward's
Christmas Party at 7. By the time 6pm came around, he was nowhere to be
found, and while we waited and waited, he never came, so we hoped to
see him at the Christmas party, and though we waited and waited, he
never showed. We concluded that, if he didn't show up, it likely meant
that he wasn't ready for his baptism at this point in time, so we kinda
put him off for now.
As for our Christmas
Party, I'd have to say it was probably my favorite part of the week. It
was kind of funny, because, in classic Cape Verdean fashion, it didn't
start til WAY later, and by the time we had showed up, Elder Mason and
Elder Rodrigues, who were on a division, had been singing hymns with
those who showed up on time for like at least an hour.
By the time we
got it started, not everything went as was planned, but it was nice.
There were some videos showed, some testimonies given, and some more
hymns sung, but the real highlight came after the spiritual part. Our
ward had organized what they called a 'troca de prenda', or gift
exchange, in which members of the Elders Quorum had to get presents for a
specific person in the Relief Society, and vice versa. I got the name
of a member in our ward who I think is like over 70, she's super old,
and suuuuper sweet, like she always shakes our hands for at least 20
seconds every time we see her. We didn't really have a whole lot to
give, so I gave her this dollar store item I had
gotten in a package of a pink bunny with a battery powered fan on its
head. Merry Christmas for her I guess :) hahaha. The fun part about it
though, was they did it like a chain, where one member would get up, and
describe who they had, and the congregation had to guess who it was,
and man, it was hilarious. Some of the descriptions they used were
classic. I especially loved it when they described the person as white,
and the person would get up to get it, and they were distinctively not
white :P or when a member would get their spouse, and would describe
the person as 'the girl I love the most in the whole world' or cute
stuff like that. It was hilarious. I got a present from our Relief
Society President, Samila, who is one of my favorite members here, and
she described me as having 'fine hair and being really good at Creole'
and everyone guessed that it was me. It was a pretty great present too,
being the only Christmas present I got before Christmas; I can now say I
get to join the illustrious club of those who say they only got socks
for Christmas, because that's what I got :)
Our
other highlight from the week was Christmas Eve, as that's the real
celebration that they had here in Cova Figueira. One of their traditions
is they always hold a 'ceia', or like big supper, but the only problem
is, is that their tradition is that they always have their ceias at like
midnight. We had been going around asking members what they had planned
for Christmas, and ALL of them went off about their ceias and all the
food they would have, and I think every one of them invited us to come.
It was much to our dismay, when they answered to us that it would be
happening at midnight :P thankfully though, because our members love us,
we had a couple of families that were very kind to accommodate to us, and
they had their ceias a little bit earlier, so that we could get home
when we needed too. Some of the food we ate included bacalhau, a
Portuguese dish that lots of Portuguese people eat, or so I'm told. We
also got lobster, and maybe a little bit of good pork too (shhhhh). It
was such a good dinner, and while it wasn't a whole lot like the regular
Christmas Eve's I'm used to, it was a really good one :)
On
Christmas, to be honest, not a whole lot happened. We were going
around expecting to find families together and celebrating and having
fun, but instead, everyone was just doing their usual stuff. We did get
to eat a reaaaaaaally good Christmas lunch at our other family's house,
where we got to eat more bacalhau, but this time it had black olives
with it. I like black olives a lot. We did get to go around a bit and
wish people merry Christmas, but a large part of our day went towards
figuring out problems with Skype, and getting to Skype our families,
which was the best Christmas present of all!!! It was definitely the
bomb.
With moving forward now, we're really
stoked to be having the baptism of our investigators Kahtia and Fabio
this week. We had the Primary Presentation in our ward yesterday, and
Fabio got up to give a talk, but when he was stumbling on what to say, a
couple of kids started to giggle at him, and he had a momentous struggle
which resulted in him crying and sitting down next to our bishop. Poor
kid didn't sing the rest of the presentation, but it was kinda cute how
he just had a little breakdown. He got over it pretty darn quick too,
which was good.
So, it's been a good week for
us, and I hope all y'all out there had an incredible Christmas. My only
major sadness from this week I guess was the fact I got a major Star
Wars spoiler fed to me by my dad, but even though it's caused for such
trauma on my life, somehow I'm working on forgiving him.
Love y'all!
Elder Massey
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