Eventful Week

Eventful week.

We had transfers a week early because lots of missionaries finished up there two years of service and went home.  I stayed here in the Vale do Jatobá but I got a new companion named Elder Lopes da Silva.  His name barely fits on the name tag ha.  Cool thing dad, he’s from Curitiba! I like him a lot and I think we´ll work well together. 

Grecia was really firm all week, but then Friday morning at 6:45 am we got a message that she didn’t want to get baptized because she was having doubts.  That was probably the worst text message of my life!  We got dressed really fast and went to a pay phone to try to talk with her.  Quick side note...here in Brazil, they don’t have like cell phone plans, so you pay by the minute and it’s super expensive.  We get a 100 minutes every 21st of the month.  Usually we run out about two weeks before that so we use pay phones A LOT.  We could not get a hold of her after like five dropped calls so we just got on the bus and headed to her house.  Grecia was sleeping so we waited at the gate and talked with her sister.  She started asking us about living in the dessert with lots of wives...problem targeted ha.  After Grecia got up we talked with the family and resolved most of the concerns and Grecia was reanimated and ready to go for baptism again.

The baptism was really cool.  Her boyfriend’s dad baptized her and her boyfriend’s mom gave a short talk.   Small problem...I forgot to turn off the water to the baptismal font. Yikes.  There was like an inch of water in the bathrooms and it was starting into the hallways!  That was a mess.  It took a while to clean up afterwards.  I will absolutely never forget about that again. 

Also, along the same lines, we didn’t close our window yesterday because it was hot and sunny when we left the house.  It poured for like 45 minutes.  When we got home,  Elder Lopes´s bed was soaking wet and there was a ton of water on the floor throughout the apartment.  The good thing about Brazil is that every building and house just has tile on the floor.  I haven’t seen carpet in almost three months now.  That minimizes water damage I think. 

Church was really good too.  Lots of less active members were there and brought friends or spouses with them.  It’s cool to see people get excited about the gospel all over again!

I love you,

Elder Marsh