Week 3 in Brazil "Show me in the Bible"

September 16, 2013

Dear family,

This week was really fun.  My Portuguese abilities have increased dramatically.  I think the main reason is because we started making lots of street contacts.  That basically means that we stop people in the street and ask them if they are interested in hearing a message about Jesus Chris.  I have a couple kind of rehearsed approaches for people.  The main one is "oi! tudo bem? Eu sou Elder Marsh. Qual é seu nome? Somos missionarios da igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Ultimos Dias.  Nós compartilhamos uma mensagem sobre Jesus Cristo e oração.  Podemos pasar sua casa uma otra dia?"  After that I summon all my mental strength to try to understand them.  It’s usually best if they just say "Pode." That mean yes.  It's really fun though!  It helps me understand different accents of people.  Portuguese is much different than I was expecting it to be.  The way that people say my name here is Ma-this scrapy sound that you make with your throat-sh.  Lots of people can’t say the "rrrr" sound so they use that instead.  It's rad.

I'm learning a lot about the Bible and how to connect scriptures from the Bible to the Book of Mormon.  Everyone here believes in the Bible already and we hear the sentence "show me in the Bible" a lot.  It's awesome when we can share a scripture and then elaborate with the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon has so much power!  Seriously, all questions can be answered through the Book of Mormon. 

We are using the members a lot to find new people to teach.  Lessons are so much more affective when the people have a member friend there.  Yesterday we went with a couple in the ward and taught the wife’s sister's family.  It was way good.  The member told them how much the gospel had blessed her family and how she wants her sister to have to same thing in her life.  There were about six women in the room and every one of them was crying.  It was a really spiritual experience for everyone there. 

We have an investigator named Marcelo.  He is the perfect example of how members are a huge influence on the people around them!  He was going through some rough times and realized that he needed to change some things in his life.  He noticed that one of his co-workers was always happy and didn’t drink coffee.  I don’t know how he made that connection, but he asked the co-worker a few questions and found out he is a member of the church.  Now Marcelo doesn’t drink coffee or alcohol, and only smokes 2 cigarettes a day.  He goes to church every week and should be baptized within the month.

I asked my companion to teach me how to make some Brazilian dishes.  this morning he taught me how to make jello...Not what I had in mind since Brazilian jello is the exact same as American jello haha. 

Another cool thing about Brazil is that you can always know the score to soccer games anywhere you.  Well here in Belo Horizonte the teams are Cruzeiro and Atletico.  Whenever one of those teams scores a goal people throw these giant fire crackers in the street that sound like gun shots, so even during lessons and church you know the score.

I love all of you,

Elder Marsh