Well, 15th transfer has come and gone! We finished it with a bang.
One
of the first things we did this week was get together with Jay, who
hadn't come to church the past Sunday, even though his baptism was
marked for the following Saturday. When we sat down with him, he told us
he was super excited for his baptism. We retaught him Dia do Senhor,( English = Sabbath Day)
and told him soccer definitely can't take precedence over church. We
cleared that up with him, and deemed him ready for Saturday. We got him
interviewed, set up with an interview, and got Obona to baptize him. We
had gone over with Obona how to baptize, and he took it really
seriously. He spent a whole night reading over and over the baptismal
prayer, and when we showed up to pick him and Jay up to go, he called me
into his house and was like, 'I just wanna make sure I've got this
right!', and proceeded to recite the prayer. It was so awesome. The
baptism was awesome, fewer things are more rewarding than watching
someone make a covenant with the Lord, but even more so when the person
doing the baptizing has also made incredible changes that you've helped
with. Jay got up after, and bore a powerful testimony, saying 'I know
that this church is the only true church on the Earth'. I loved it :)
I've gotten to see a couple white blank pages over these past few weeks,
and it's been so amazing.
This week we kept working with
one of our newer investigators, Neto. We'd had a couple pretty powerful
lessons with him, so naturally it was heartbreaking this week when we
came across him really drunk, two days in a row this week. Each time he
saw us, you could see the pain he felt, because he knew he could do
better. He told Elder Bowman and I to not waste our time with him, he
was pretty down. We told him we weren't gunna give up on him, and when
we came back the next day, we found him early (so he couldn't get drunk)
and had another really solid lesson with him (well, sorta, but I'll
explain that in a sec), and since that day, everyone we come across has
told us they're impressed with Neto. We haven't been able to run into
him again, but he seems like he's coming around.
That day
as actually funny, because I was on a division with our zone leader,
Elder Bisk, who I more or less view as my child, seeing as how I trained
the same time he came in. We woke up and he wasn't feeling so hot, but
he got it under control enough that we could go out and teach. We taught
Neto, but every time I passed the lesson over for him to teach, he
would say like 2 things, and give it back, noticeably in pain. We got out
of that lesson pretty quick, and booked it to another Elder's house for
him to lay down for a sec. It became likely my least productive
division on my mission, as I sat in my air conditioned house while Elder
Bisk recuperated on the bed. It was still fun though :)
One
funny part this week was yesterday, both Elder Bowman and I made kids
cry by mistake. First off, we taught a lady, who had twin 6 month old
babies, who cried the entire lesson, and usually when that happens, the
mom understandably checks out, but she kept with it. I felt for her :P
it was a lot of crying. Elder Bowman does this thing though, where when
he shakes a little kid's hand, he squeezes it, so later in the day, a
little kid answered the door, and when Elder Bowman shook his hand, he
gave it juuuuust a little too much of a second squeeze, and the little
guy started to cry. His mom promptly told him to calm down, and that
'tio' (they like to call us 'uncle' here) was just playing around. Then
later, we were visiting with Zezinho, and his adorable kid, Gabi, was
pulling on my tie, and jumping all over me, and at one point, climbed up
the back of my chair. I bumped him with my back, and he fell and
started to cry. That was when I realized we were bad people :P hahahah.
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