Marsh Mission Moments: Rat Attack

Mom and family,

This week was so rad--one of the best! We had transfers and luckily I’m still here in the Lagoa Ward. This is the best ward ever. Elder Aguiar also stayed, but we both got new companions and divided our proselyting areas. My new companion is Elder Dunford. He’s from Pennsylvania and spent the past 8 months as a secretary in the mission office. There are now 6 elders in our ward! It’s way fun. There’s so much work to be done here.

Because our old house wouldn’t fit all 6 elders, Elder Dunford and I moved to a new apartment. The apartment is way nice. The desks and beds that we got from the mission came from an area that was closed this past transfer, so everything is well used. We also got a surprise in the oven, which came with the furniture. The elders that were using the oven had a "pet" rat that was living in it. They had given him a name, “splinter", and were feeding him every night...weird. Splinter had traveled from their house to ours in the oven. We found out that we had a rat because he climbed up on elder Dunford’s white shirts and left little paw prints and poop on them. Finally, we bought a rat trap and set it last night. We woke up about 11:30 when the trap went up. It didn’t work though, and we saw the rat run into a package of plates and cups....gross. We both grabbed pans and emptied the package in the living room. We chased down the rat and killed him with a frying pan. That night was a little crazy. It’s a relief being rat free though.

Poor Splinter--they showed no mercy!

Also, we had an awesome baptism. Moises is the son of Jaqueline who was baptized about 6 months ago. We have been teaching him for so long, but he never wanted to accept a baptismal date. Elder Dunford and I went to teach him his first day here. Moises accepted to be baptized this past Saturday. I don’t know what changed, but he all of a sudden wanted to be baptized and accepted the Book of Mormon fully as the word of god. At his baptism he asked if he could bare his testimony (super rare). He said, "I had always gone to other churches but had felt something bothering me inside. When I came to the church of Jesus Christ, that feeling went away. I know that this is the truth. Amen." There was a strong spirit. I love being a missionary. Moises (future "Elder Viana") has already started to do visits with us now. He’s amazing.