New Foods

Pampulha Zone

More mission friends

We had a fun week.  Zone conference was on Thursday and that was awesome.  Our mission president is such an awesome person.  He’s got an amazing spirit and is super inspired about the missionary work in our mission. President Fortunato talked a lot about "teaching people, not lessons" which means getting genuinely concerned about the people we are talking to and not just about the numbers at the end of the day.  That may sound easy but it can be really difficult.  When we teach the same lesson at least three times a day, we just get into a rhythm of teaching the exact same thing and not thinking about what the people actually need and teaching them how the gospel can bless them personally.  What he taught us to do is ask "inspired questions" that will help us understand the investigator and help them understand more about the gospel.   He shared a few experiences where he asked just the right question and it made all the difference in the progression of the investigator.  I think that he may have Jedi powers.  Here’s one of his stories:

The whole zone

Practicing with Elder Clark and Elder Jacob our AP.

He was invited to teach an investigator who had been going to church for about 6 months straight but didn’t want to get baptized because he was also going to another church that he liked.  When president got to the investigator’s house, the man was just talking and talking about how many blessings he had been receiving from going to church and doing the right thing and blah blah blah...President butted in and just asked him "what blessings?" The man stopped and thought a second and said, "Well I’ve been waiting for a long time to get the deed to this house switched to my name and it finally switched to my name!”  President asked, "Why is it important that the house is in your name?” The man replied, "Well because the house is officially mine because my name’s on the papers." President then took off his name tag and held it up to the man and said, "This is the Church of Jesus Christ and it has his name on it." The man got baptized that weekend.

There’s a traditional food here called feijoada.  I’m not really sure how to spell it but it’s super yummy.  A lot of restaurants serve is for special occasions, so I always eat it when I get the chance,  but this week I found out what feijoada actually is.  What they do is they take black beans and throw those into a cauldron and then take bacon, sausage, ear of pig, nose of pig, and foot of pig and cook it altogether  to make this black "witches brew".  I had no idea what I was eating until a member told me on Friday.  Now I know and I’m a little freaked out, but hey its way good.  I also got to try cow tail this week.  I wasn’t super fond of that.  It’s like a super red meat with a lot of fat and bone joint jelly that they expect you to eat.

Feijoada

I love you all,

Elder Marsh