"Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized?"

Monday, Sept. 23, 2013

It's so incredible to be out and working with real people.  In the CTM (Brazil MTC) it feels weird to practice and to speak the language, but once you are actually out it's so nice and a lot easier actually. The language just comes, it's incredible how fast you learn and how quickly you understand.   I remember the first day in the CTM and trying to apply my Spanish and now I don't really remember Spanish and the little bit that I do remember sounds weird because Portuguese is just that little bit different to make Spanish sound incorrect.  The work is going so fast.  This week we will baptize a family of four.  Here it's the first lesson that you commit to baptism.  The other day we got a referral and saw the person on the street.  We walked up to them and I was smiling the kind of smile you get when you know something is about to happen and you just can't stop smiling.  We stopped them and less than five min later they were committed to baptism.  A few seconds ago they were a different person and now they have a date.  It's just weird and cool to be standing in front of someone saying "Will you follow the example of Jesus and be baptized on this date three weeks from now?"  because as a missionary you know exactly what they will have to do and the changes they have to make and it's a great feeling to have them say yes and you walk away and mark them in your planner as a new investigator. 

About my talk this week: I didn't really have time to prepare one so I was working on it at random times and we had to get up at 5:30 yesterday for ward counsel.  So tired yesterday, but we got to sacrament and learned that we only had 5-7 minutes instead of 10 each.  So the other elder and I cut some parts, and then he got up and talked for 20 minutes and they moved my talk to the next week! So everything went great!  Here they do have Halloween, it's called Dia das Bruxas, it means day of the witches.  It's not as big a deal here as it is in the US.  This week we have our baptism of the family of four and its likely that I will do at least one of them! Last p-day after lunch we decided to go to cidade das abelhas, but it was closed, it's a 45 minute bus ride there and we had planned on being there for a while so we decided to hike through the jungle for 12 km to a waterfall and then we hiked out and went and taught a lesson with the bishop.  It was a long day, but fun.

Dad-I wish now that I had asked you more about your mission (Gary served in Las Vegas). Whenever it's hot here, I always think it was probably hotter there. Remember those belts that we bought thinking that they might not be big enough?  Now it may not be small enough, I am on the last belt hole :) The BYU game is sad (reference to BYU's loss to University of Utah), especially since they beat UT (University of Texas).  Happy birthday Meg!!  Have a great week!

Elder Anderson