June 5, 2017 letter - Jequie

hello fam and friends and loved ones.

another interesting week here in jequie. full of mosquitos, stray dogs, cats, horses and an uncountable number of chickens. also the number of frogs i have found in our house is up at 6! one really interesting thing i have seen here in jequie is the huge number of horses just walking around straight chillin like a normal human being without an owner or anything. it makes me think of harry potter when he gives dobby the sock and dobby yells "dobby is a free elf" idk why tho cuz dobby is an elf and not a horse hahah.

this week we had a really good lunch everyday for the first time here in this area! but it was also the exact same lunch of rice and beans and salad cooked pretty much the exact same way at 5 different houses lol. at this point i still love rice and beans and i am starting to taste the huge difference in the way some people make beans (fun fact that no one cares about). 

tuesday we taught a really good lesson with marinalva about the restoration but it was really hard to do because her family is so nuts. she is sisters with sandro our recent convert! we were teaching her about Joseph smith while here siblings were beating each other up with sticks and running around, or playing laman and lemuel as i thought of it. At the end of the lesson she asked to change her baptismal date to this saturday which was super awesome and cool for us. its so cool to see young people have so much desire in regards to church. 

Wednesday after district meeting and working in our own area we went to help the sisters with a few lessons. We tried teaching this investigator about the restoration and apostasy but he and his sister just wanted to argue about the catholic church not changing lots of doctrine (they did) and why when we feel the spirit during church we dont scream twirl in circles and fall to the ground dramatically like people do in other churches here. nevertheless it was an interesting afternoon. 

Thursday we had an awesome lesson with some less actives and their nonmember cousin who accepted a baptismal date! she was the one who showed more interest the other times we have visited them so it was super awesome for us!! i have really enjoyed trying to teach and reactivate them because they
truly have the knowledge but they also live a little far away and they are busy. also its fun to visit them because they just have chickens running wild in their house and it can be pretty entertaining during the lessons having chickens going inbetween everyones legs lol. later in the day marinalva was super excited when we taught her about all the powerful blessings of following the commandments and on friday she
rocked the preinterview we did before her interview. the gospel is so simple yet so perfect. 

friday was pretty chill we decided we need to renew our group so we tried to start doing more contacts especially with men and families and in parts of area that we dont go to very much. and then i bought myself a milkshake, chocolate of course(TREAT YOSELF) happy birthday to me. the sisters made this card for me.

Marinalva's Baptism

saturday was super hectic trying to get ready for the baptism. we had to do an interview for the other elders and fill up the font before lunch. someone (me) may or may not have fallen in the font while trying to clean it, then it may or may not have rained as soon as that person got dry. but the baptism went really well lolol. the power of having investigators in the baptismal meetings is super strong. it has helped in almost everysingle one of our baptism for them to see the baptism and feel the spirit in that incredible moment. then sunday it rained and one of the members flaked on our division we were gonna do so we were late to church trying to find our investigators.

spiritual thought: elder washington gave a super awesome message at lunch yesterday. all throughout the BOM the lamanites and nephites were always fighting. they always had different motives, the lamanites want revenge and blood while the nephites want to protect their families and their God. In alma 43 the nephites are afraid of the lamanites but capitan moroni reminds thme to fight for "their liberty
and their freedom from bondage" after this they were strenghtened by the lord and pushed back the attack of the lamanites. i hope that we can all have more confidence and faith in everything that we do this week because the lord is on our side! fight for what is right! also our mission just started reading the book of mormon and im gonna try really hard to do it all in portuguese! wish me luck!

i love you all.
sammy