 |
| Filling the baptismal font via bucket brigade |
 |
| Shopping for a pipoqueira (popcorn popper) |
 |
| Gilmar and family |
 |
| Kalebe |
 |
| Restaurant "Love at First Bite" |
 |
| Nelson and Elder Shirley |
 |
| Vera at her baptism
Monday,
February 17, 2014
After a very
emotional week, we are just trying to “go to work”. But we have to say how grateful and how proud
we are of family for the way they
handled funeral arrangements and all the details that go with it. We really appreciated the way we were
included in all of the happenings and updated all along the way. The funeral sounded just beautiful. From everyones reports, music, talks,
flowers, etc. were beautiful! It was hard to be so far away, but it sure
helped knowing everything was being taken care of in such a beautiful way. We are sure Grandma was pleased! It makes us more anxious than ever to spread
the message of the gospel.
We have made
lots of visits the past few days. We
have been following President Castro’s suggestion that we focus a little more
on the Uniao branch. We have been
focusing on the Marina branch the last couple of months. Now we begin to make more visits in Uniao. However, we still plan to maintain some
contact with the good people in Marina as well.
Here are a few highlights.
We enjoyed
noite familiar (FHE) with Gilmar, Luanna and Kalebe. We prepared a lesson about being a child of
God and were planning to focus on Kalebe as he is almost 4. We had prepared
games, music, had coloring pages, etc.
It was a hot, hot day. When we
arrived, we found Kalebe and friends in the swimming pool. A friend of Luanna and Gilmar’s was in the
kitchen frying up salgados. We could see
that no one would want to come in and sit in a hot house and listen to our
lesson. So we changed our plan. Gilmar and Luanna were actually quite
emotional as a friend of theirs….a mother with kids….had just passed away. We could relate to their tender
feelings. So we focused on the Plan of
Salvation. We kept the lesson short and
showed a video about “Moments that Matter Most”. Gilmar said that he would like to do the
closing prayer. He gave a very emotional
prayer. We ate with them. We also
showed them the crazy videos our family made for us at
Thanksgiving! They loved it! Now they are wanting to come visit us in
Idaho someday. They insisted on taking
us home. It was a good visit after all.
There was a
baptism in the Uniao branch. Elder dos
Santos and Elder Ritz were the missionaries.
When we arrived, they were still trying to fill the font. The youth and their leaders were there making
pizzas for a fund raiser. The water
pressure was not high enough in the building to allow them to use it in the
kitchen as well as in the font. The
Elders found a faucet that they could fill buckets from without affecting water
pressure in the kitchen. So we had a
kind of bucket brigade. It was a sweet
baptism of a mother of three young kids.
She was very emotional and clung to us like we were old friends. A ferocious rain storm came up and Sister
Biddulph and Sister Rodrigues arrived drenched.
No umbrella. But they stepped
right up and helped this sister get dressed for her baptism and did her
hair. Things turned out great!
We made a
new friend in Nelson this week. He lives
in the Uniao branch and has been inactive for about 10 years. He has quite a nice home surrounded by lots
of trees and tropical plants. He showed
up by himself to church last Sunday. His
first wife passed away a little more than 10 years ago. He found someone else, but they have never
married. They have been together for
almost 10 years. She gets a pension from
a previous divorce as long as she doesn’t re-marry. Nelson works with metal and makes all kinds
of interesting things from pans to plaques.
Not long ago he had a dream which made him feel a need to reconnect with
the church. However, his “wife” is Catholic. He has kids living close who are not
members. He says his “wife” is like a
“wild horse” and he doesn’t think she will accept the gospel message from
anyone but him. He wants to work on
softening her heart himself. He is a
very nice, on-the-ball guy. He insisted
on giving us a gift of one of his plaques.
It is a key holder with a metal impression of a horse and rider. He would not let us pay for it. We hope to see a lot more of him!
English
class was fun, as usual. We really enjoy
it. Arielle arrived on her
motorcycle. There are lots and lots of
motos down here. She arrived dripping
wet as we had another rainstorm. Lucas
was not there. He was not feeling
well. We had a total of about 9 in
attendance.
We visit
regularly with a couple of ladies who own a tiny, little store down the street
called “Casa Hoffman”. One is a German
and one is an Italian. We have developed
a nice friendship with them. They call
us their amigos! We bought a pipoqueira
from them. It’s like a “whirly” popcorn
popper for on top of the stove. It works
great and we have made a lot of kettle corn to take to District Meetings, FHE,
and on other visits. Pipoca has become
our specialty! It’s been fun!
Sister
Biddulph and Sister Rodrigues organized and headed up a branch “multirao”
(don’t know an English equivalent), at the request of President Samuel. Branch members and us met at the church and were
assigned less-active members to go out and visit that evening. The Sisters had addresses, maps, and a
message for us to take. They were so
organized! They are impressive! Meni and Paulo (really good ward members)
dropped us off in the area we were to go and then we walked. We visited Glassi, who used to be in the
Relief Society presidency. She became
inactive after she got a lot of hassle about church attendance from her
husband. Our visit “foi bom”, was really
good. She was very welcoming. We caught Lepido pouring cement at his
home. So it was a short visit. Then we set out to find Ana Maria, Ana Paula,
and Bruna. We found the area but had to
stop and ask directions. We were sent
down the back side of a hill with hardly a trail and lots of shale rock, trees,
and brush. We weren’t sure that we
could do it without rolling down the hill.
It was the scariest path we have been on yet. But we found a lovely family with lots of
curious kids and a very humble abode. Ana
Paula and Bruna have been baptized, but don’t attend church. We had a nice visit with them. Afterwards, they directed us on an “easier”
path….a sort of rock stairway that went straight up the hill. We were left just a little weak-kneed
afterwards. They will need some follow
up visits. We hope there is an easier
path around on the other side.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrambling
As you may
have noticed, the weather has changed.
We have had quite a few rainstorms and temperatures are down. It has been so pleasant! It seems strange to think that we are starting
into fall! Daylight Savings time just
changed here over the weekend. We
probably have a little more heat ahead, but we sure see a cooling trend.
On Sunday,
we attended sacrament meeting at both Uniao and Marina. In each branch, they had speakers fall
through. So Elder Shirley got to speak
in each of the two sacrament meetings, with no advance warning. But he did great!
We have a
FHE scheduled tonight with the Rodrigus family,
Daniel, Cristiane, and kids.
Daniel is not a member of the church.
Cristiane is the daughter of Jussara and Adao Garcia….the family we had
Christmas and New Years dinner with.
They are a good family. They live
in a bairro far out. Only an occasional
bus goes out there. Their kids are very friendly. Jean,
a boy of about 10, like to hassle Elder Shirley. He occasionally sits with us at church. Cristiane is always so sad when the subject of
eternal families comes up. Daniel has a
few issues to clear up before he can be baptized. He wants to wait for baptism until he can
fully live all commandments. We plan to take a lesson, a treat and maybe play our Brazilian cup
game…Escravos de Jo. The kids really
liked that at Christmas. We will try to
take a bus out and call a taxi to get back.
It looks
like a busy week ahead as well! We wish
you all a good week as well!
Eu te amo!
|
No comments:
Post a Comment