If you were a fish, what would you do first?
That aside, it has been an amazing week! Almost 30 lessons, over 40 street contacts, a dozen, (and some change) new people being taught, over half a dozen lessons with members (bless Wiler's heart, the poor soul), and three baptisms! In short, the week was packed with miracles.
The biggest miracle was definitely getting the baptism to actually happen. This family, Mariele and her two twin nieces Elisa and Eloisa, had been receiving lessons from my comp for a while now and were so ready to get baptized and were so pumped for their baptism. Woohoo! The date was set for Sunday night at 8 pm, and had been for over a week, all's good, right? Well. First the baptismal font wasn't draining and so it was full of three week old water and the uggy buggies that were enjoying it. So, naturally, to make things happen, my companion and I spend an hour and a half Saturday morning taking bucket after bucket of water out of the font and dumping it out. After about a (probably) couple hundred buckets we were down to one last step which we could do later, all's Chill. Then we get a message that night that the guy came and fixed the font and it works fine now. 🥲 And thennnn, the stake Presidency scheduled a meeting at 8:30 pm Sunday night, which would take away our bishopric leaders, which we need. Like, why? But it all worked out, we started exactly at 8 and we finished in time, and I got to baptize the two twins, and confirm/give the gift of the Holy Ghost one of the twins- all in português! It was just wonderful to see and be a part of the family's start on the covenant path back to our Father in Heaven.
Speaking of Sunday, the ward here is absolutely amazing. The people are just so loving, and absolutely trying their best to make me feel at home here in Brasil. The first Sunday here was testimony meeting and, even though Elder Mckeon and I had only been here for less than a week we got up and bore our meager português testimonies, and the people were just so happy that we did. This Sunday, I was able to communicate much better and understand the talks more, but certainly not all, haha. The sisters here are some of the most welcoming people I've ever met, too. We typically go over to a member's house for lunch and the food they make is amazing. The only tough part is that they just keep saying "come mais Elder" which means "eat more Elder". And boy do I try, but they make it easy with all this good food. And it's definitely enough to get you through till the next day.
On the note of food, it absolutely rocks here in Brasil. Not just the food that's cooked, either, but the fruits here are something special. After a lesson one night with the family that got baptized, they let us pick a bag full of acerolas: little red berry-fruit thingies that are somewhat tart but haveba really good flavor, and make really good juice. So, naturally, we blended them up and had juice! The açai is also really good here. Often times its made into a frozen sorvete type stuff that you deck out with different fruits, sweet sauces, or other toppings- and it is just plain good. Another thing that Brasil does good is anything dealing with meat. This one member took us out to a steak house, and we just got this big platter with like 20 something steaks, I've never eaten so much steak in one sitting. I got about 3.5 but my comp got 5, phew. Today for P-day we did get McDonald's, and it didn't disappoint.
While food is good, back to the missionary work. We have this one family who is just absolutely amazing. They know so much about the Bible and the teachings of Jesus and so it's been great teaching them more and also learning things from them about português at the same time. They even came to church after just two lessons. The oldest daughter in the family is a lot more into the lessons and regularly reads the Book of Mormon and helps explain what we teach to her parents just after we explain things to her. There's another nice lady who moved here with her daughter and grandson from Venezuela, so she speaks more portanhol than português, but we still can understand and teach her. She's come to church the last few weeks and is really interested in what the church is about. And then of course we have a mission grandma who has fed us a couple times and is just the kindest old lady, and makes a pretty good vitamin smoothie that she shared with us.
As far as transportation goes, we've got the good old left and right Doc Marten. We avenge probably between 4-6 miles a day, which is a lot less than I expected tbh, but it does help that a lot of the place we go are somewhat "close". Speaking of Wiler, he's an 18 year old member here who's putting his own mission papers in soon, so he goes out with the missionaries often. So we took him out with us Saturday, they day we had seven lessons and probably walked 8-10+ miles, mostly in circles. We walked until our legs fell off, picked them up, and walked some more. That aside, whenever we have far to go, or it's getting close to 9:30 when we have to be back at our apartment, we do have Uber, but we still don't use it too often. I have seen a surprising amount of horse-drawn cart things, even on the highway, too! A lot of people have absolutely bumping speakers in their car, often worth more than the car I'd imagine. You definitely hear/feel it long before you see it. We did see one actual witch with a broom, but I don't thing the mission President would approve brooms for missionary travel.
As far as the nature goes, I will miss winter, but the rain takes care of that. We had a couple days last week where it probably rained enough to drown a baby giraffe laying down, but we still worked. Thank goodness for rain jackets, and plastic bags for my Book of Mormon. Weather aside, the nature here is pretty dang neat I'd say. I've seen quite a few parrots, other interesting birds, plenty of lizards, and my reflection at 6:30 AM haha.
Spiritual thought:
We met with this inactive member yesterday before the baptism who had a pretty sad view about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She felt that God asks her to do so much and felt that it's just too overbearing and if she wasn't perfect than she wasn't right for the church. It just made me feel sad hearing she felt that way. The whole point of being "yoked to Christ" through His gospel is that it makes your burden lighter. (Mathew 11:28-30). God literally wants us to experience joy in this life (2 Nephi 2:25) and to grow within the gospel, which does also mean experience difficult or bad things, or else we couldn't appreciate or find the wonderful or joyful times (2 Nephi 2:11). Christ suffered not only for our sins, but also for our pains and troubles to be able to "succor us according to our infirmities" (Alma 7:11-13). He knows everything we experience and knows how to help us, to lift our burden, and to take the sting from our trials and tribulations because He wants to. He loves us each individually. Because "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" (D&C 18:10). All God requires in turn for us to experience the fullness joy of the Gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ, is to love Him with all that we are, and to "deny yourself of all ungodliness" (Moroni 10:32). In turn, He promises that through the grace of Christ, we can be perfected, in time. I know this is true, because I have felt the love God has for me, and for the people I have taught and talked with here in Brasil. And I love yall too!
Much love (for you all and the Lord),
-Elder Hyatt
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