Hey guys, this last week about took me out of the running
just from laughing and walking until we couldn't feel our toes. Those will be
fun stories to tell. But I do have some things to tell you: The photos I'll be sending you this week are
of fun things you shouldn't do as a missionary and then do it in Brasil.
I'm glad to tell you all that I'm still in Mafra and Rio
Negro (which the locals here sometimes call Rio Mafra) and enjoying my greatest
fear every day: heights and water. I joke about it but I can't help but feeling
that I will fall, and then pleasantly drown every afternoon when I cross the
bridges to get to our area of work. That said, we are working with an amazing
group of people. And the fact that we have to walk a minimum of 27 minutes to
get to the closest of them just makes the work that much rewarding. So the
stories, as I'm sure you’re all dying to hear:
First, after much debate and even more laughing, we have
come up with the Disney characters that [represent each] of the missionaries in
our apartment. I have claimed the name of Dr. Dilbert Doppler from Treasure
Planet; my companion, Elder Egan, is at the moment Flounder from the Little
Mermaid; Elder Chase is Aladin ... or Peter Pan, he still has to find a
beautiful girlfriend. And then there is Elder Matos ... what he is we still
have yet to decide, I'm leaning towards King Neptune, but I also have a little
bit of sway for the Beast. We'll let you know how that works out. The back
story on this is that one fine day, we all woke up, and my companion (cuidado o
gringo) woke up and started to do his morning workout, but you know that funny
pushup kids do when they stick their butts up in the air? Yep that's the one. I
then started to coach him a little, and Elder Chase helped him shortly after.
We then had a conversation of who we'd like to be in a Disney film, which then
turned into who would you be as a Disney character. So that's been the running
joke of the week.
I then have had the great experience of having a person
ready for baptism fall out of the sky ... we were teaching a family that ... well,
didn't seem like they were going to progress too much, then arrived Filipe.
He's a friend of the family and he isn't "married". YES!!! We went
back two days later, after teaching him only the first lesson and not even
presenting the Book of Mormon for him, and he already knew the message we left
was true, the Book of Mormon was true,
and he needed to follow up on the answer he got. The only thing that was
missing was he didn't get to church yesterday.
One more funny one,
then I have to get off. We were teaching a wonderful family of Nine. Yep, nine.
And our greatest challenge was to figure out how to get this couple married
when they accepted the baptism idea. Alright, the wife, Zenilda, accepted,
consequently her husband accepted, but then arose the problem, marriage. For
starters, Zenilda has a phobia of the
word. But we had a really funny experience this last lesson, Elder Matos was
with me on a split. Zenilda told Elder Matos and I that if she stopped smoking,
she'd marry and be baptized. ON THE SPOT, with no outside prompting by us,
Josmar, the husband, proposed and asked it like this: “Let's get married then?”
She flinched at the word, she repeated her earlier statement: “If I stop
smoking, I'll get married and baptized.” I quickly wrote it down on a sheet in
my planner and had her sign it. The rest of the time we ate little cake things
and drank this wonderful Brazilian tea.
Hope you have a great week, enjoy the exercise photos!!
Elder Joel A. Smith
