WEEK 16: October 14, 2019

Beautiful Vacaria

Well another week down and i’m inching close to 4 months here in brasil!

This week was extremely hot, i wore that dorky cowboy hat every day and i am extremely grateful for it haha.  We had 1 day this week that was under 100 degrees (with 70% humidity) which has led to a strong Acai addiction which isn’t the worst thing in the world, I guess.

Acai with mango, banana, granola and caramel sauce on top

This week started off a little bit odd... we were clapping doors trying to find new people, when we hit this one house that had these people leaving, and we decided to talk to them!  We talked to a lady that was probably around 70, and drunk as heck, and she started talking to us and said something along the lines of “you guys are pastors... if you have the power of god, fix my phone!” she then shoved her old Samsung in the hands of my companion, and told him to bless it and make it work... Elder Merino clicked the home button and the phone powered up!  The lady was really amazed, and insisted we enter her house and bless her house, her TV , her car and all of her kids! (we just said a prayer everything would stay chill. haha)  We were invited to return next week so we will see if this goes anywhere!

On Thursday, we got really tired of knocking doors and i decided to try something different, we started teaching people in restaurants, stores, or wherever people were sitting!  This was a lot better because people can’t ignore the fact that we are there and can’t hide from us!  We taught more lessons this week and walked less.

And had one of our new investigators make me a knife for all the red meat i eat haha. I'd call that a win haha!

A highlight from this week was that one of our eternal investigators came to church this week, bore her testimony that this church is true, and told us she wants to be baptized!  (Mom: Her name is Stefani is about 19 years old and went to a mission-wide young adult activity in Floripa that had a huge impact on her.)  This will be the first real baptism in this area for around 8 months!

Just hanging on here in Vacaria trying not to melt!  ‘Til next week!
-Elder hammond

From our conversation:

• He made American hamburgers today for Pday. Unfortunately, he put lettuce on them so it’s very likely that he will get a bug from that either permanently or temporarily.  Fortunately, they were delicious and his companion was also a big fan.  I don’t think I realized what a big deal food was to Andrew until his mission and how much he cooks and all the pictures he takes of food.

• They bought a large container of frozen Acai to eat at their apartment.  He was pretty excited about it.

• They leave for another city tonight around 6:30 for Zone conference tomorrow.  He was very excited about that.  I am most worried about him carrying bed bugs to the apartments they will be staying in!  After zone conference he is doing exchanges with the Zone leader in the Zone leader’s area for a day.  I think that will be very good for him.
• One of the days this week, the branch president asked them to help with a Primary activity.  After the activity, he asked Andrew to please translate a video game for him. (eye-roll emoji)