Dustbowl Dance

So basically like I said last week, my area is one of the poorer areas here in Praia, and while a large part of Praia is covered in cobblestone or pavement, I'm pretty sure like 90% of my area is just straight dirt. Every single day when we get back, my shoes are straight covered in dirt, and my pants usually have dirt all over them too. Any event we have with other missionaries in the Zone I usually have someone point at my shirt or the back of my pants and show me somewhere where I've been covered in dirt; I doesn't help that I really don't care how dirty I get :P I think it's fun. Every night too, one of my feet will be covered in dirt too because of miscellaneous wholes that exist in my shoes :P 

It's been another really fun week, with lots going on. On Tuesday, I was positively scared to death about giving a training at a District Meeting 3 times the size of my last district :P I have chosen to give a training on how to help our investigators do better at keeping the Sabbath Day holy, talking about various blessings, reasons, and ways they could do so; thankfuly, I have the easiest district in the world to impress, because when I followed up with the sisters that night, they were all beyond too nice to tell me they liked my training. I learned I don't have to stress it too much, because sisters are far less judgemental towards trainings than elders are :P so that was defs rad.

So basically like I said last week, my area is one of the poorer areas here in Praia, and while a large part of Praia is covered in cobblestone or pavement, I'm pretty sure like 90% of my area is just straight dirt. Every single day when we get back, my shoes are straight covered in dirt, and my pants usually have dirt all over them too. Any event we have with other missionaries in the Zone I usually have someone point at my shirt or the back of my pants and show me somewhere where I've been covered in dirt; I doesn't help that I really don't care how dirty I get :P I think it's fun. Every night too, one of my feet will be covered in dirt too because of miscellaneous holes that exist in my shoes :P 

It's been another really fun week, with lots going on. On Tuesday, I was positively scared to death about giving a training at a District Meeting 3 times the size of my last district :P I have chosen to give a training on how to help our investigators do better at keeping the Sabbath Day holy, talking about various blessings, reasons, and ways they could do so; thankfuly, I have the easiest district in the world to impress, because when I followed up with the sisters that night, they were all beyond too nice to tell me they liked my training. I learned I don't have to stress it too much, because sisters are far less judgemental towards trainings than elders are :P so that was defs rad.

We had a worldwide missionary training this past week on Wednesday, which was super cool; the sister they had leading the music on the broadcast was far too animated for me though :P Elder Bullock happened to be in Praia for a divison with the Assistants, so I got to hang out with him for a bit during the broadcast. The whole theme was that as missionaries, we 'Teach Repentance and Baptize Converts'. we got to hear from people like Elder Anderson and Elder Bednar, and some Seventies as well. I guess it just showed me hw much the leaders of our church really care for us as missionaries, to give us a training like they did. It was definitely boss. 

Our work this week went really well. When I showed up here, a lot of people we were teaching were women who were living with a man, and we had not yet to teach the man, and it didn't appear like much progression was happening. This past week, we were able to work with a bunch of new investigators, and find a lots of progression with a few. We've started to work with a family, consisting of a mom, and her 5 kids, ranging in age frem 20 to 8 years old, and are all very eager to hear, to listen, and to be baptized. We've marked them to be baptized on he 13th of February, if they come to church this week. We're really excited about them. We've also found a few other people who seem genuinely interested, and who have solid member help. It's so refreshing to have so many new people and and help and just EVERYTHING. It's positively great. 

Saturday was kinda a whack day for us, but it ended up being really good. Saturday's are the day where the whole Zone has their baptisms , so we try to get an investigator to come every week. Elder Amado had agreed with the other sisters in our branch to baptize their investigator, so we were there pretty early, when some sisters in my district came up to me and told me they had one of their baptisms for the next week show up saying he wanted to get baptized, so I had to do a rush interview for them, as which was a definite miracle that we were there so early! Then that night, I had to do some interviews for the Assistants, which I wasn't happy about doing, since the church is about a 15 or 20 minute walk from our area, so we lost a LOT of working time. I very quickly realized that I was being dumb for having such a bad attitude, because the family I was interviewing was positively the most converted family before baptism I had ever seen. Each time I got to do an interview I really felt the Spirit telling me how much these people had been prepared by the Lord, and I saw how the Assistants weren't just getting 4 baptisms for next week, but baptizing 4 converts. It was really so cool. Idecided to celebrate by getting shwarma, which was right next to the church. I love shwarma. 

So, it's been a busy one, but it's also been a ton of fun. Life has gotten hard because the grocery store below our house has put up a Star Wars poster next to our door. Please pray for me.

Love y'all! 

Elder Massey