July 2, 2012

This week was a bit crazy, and it's assured that the upcoming few weeks will be even crazier. So to start out, I don't know if I told you or not yet, but in the area that we're in, there's another companionship living in our house. Elder Henrique and I take care of the area Ipiranga, and the other two take care of Ala 1. Buuuuut a few things happened and we had a bit of a change this week. The two elders that were in Ala 1 were Elder Soares and Elder Hartung. Elder Hartung is from Pittsburgh, for all you Steeler fans. Elder Soares has been having health problems lately, and ended up passing out one time during personal study. He's been constantly physically weak and unable to really work. So he talked to President Prieto, and after doing tons of exams in local hospitals, no one could figure out what he had. On Thursday this week, Elder Soares went home. And Elder Hartung went to Birigui. So now Elder Henrique and I are here taking care of Ala 1 and Ipiranga, which is a pretty big area. And we don't really know anything about Ala 1. So it should be fun! It's been a bit lonely in our house the past couple days, but we're getting used to it. We get the bigger room now, each of us have our own bathroom, and it's a lot cleaner around the house. It's kind of nice, but at the same time it's weird only having two missionaries in the house.

 The problems with Elder Soares took up a lot of time this week, so our week wasn't terribly productive. But we still had a couple of really good days with one of the youth in our ward who has been visiting people with us lately. On Saturday, he was with us after our studies until 9 at night, so we had a really productive day. We went to the store to buy our lunch, and this kid, his name is Natanael, told us that he felt that we should make a contact with a lady and her daughter who were in the store. So we waited a bit and continued shopping around, until we needed to go and pay. We got up to the front, and guess who was in the line ahead of us? The lady and her daughter! So Natanael got the courage up to make the contact himself, and ended up carrying some bags out to this lady's scooter and talking with her. We went outside after paying and met up with them, and started talking about who we are and what we do and all that jazz. Turns out this lady has been searching for a church for a while, but didn't know where to look. She is Catholic right now, but she hasn't gone to church in a long while. We combined to meet her at her house later that day and share a message with her and went home to eat. After we got done eating and visited someone, we went to the house of this lady, her name is Maria, and guess what? She wasn't there! She told us she would be at home at 3:00 in the afternoon, but when we got there, no one was there! So we went and made a few more visits, talked to a couple of Natanael's friends (one that we met is the first person in Brazil that I've met that plays League of Legends), and around 8:00 at night we went back to Maria's house. And she was there! But, she ended up going to a friend's house and drinking a bit. She was still coherent and able to understand everything, so we taught her the first lesson and invited her to church. Everything was good, but then guess who didn't come to church the next day! Maria! So we'll have to return to her house this week and talk to her a bit more. 

Moral of the story: All of the members of this church have the power and spirit to know who needs to hear the gospel. When you feel like you should share the gospel with someone, don't be afraid to get out there and do it! The Spirit will guide all of you as you ask for the guidance that you need, and you will be blessed for listening and following those promptings. 

I've got a couple of pictures here that we took this week. One of our investigators has like 10 of these little birds, and they're pretty friendly. She has one that will just come up to you and start climbing up you leg sometimes. It's pretty cool.

I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

-Elder Hopper #1