Monday, March 27, 2017

March 27, 2017: Salvador!

HEY EVERYBODY!

So I hope you are all doing great! The transfer calls came in... and I am going to serve in Brotas, Salvador. My companion will be Elder Prado. It will be a really cool experience. The only bad part is that I have to pack everything up and hop on a bus tonight! So that will be crazy.

My Comp and I
But, this last week in Teotonio Vilela was a great one.

To start off the week we unfortunately didn´t do much on P-day. Our cell phone was broken, so we couldnt get in touch with the other Elders. We went to the center to try and find them.... But it didn´t work. So we just went home and chilled in the Vilela. The only problem is that there isn´t much to do there. That was basically it for our dear p-day. 

Gru
This week was great. We didn't get a baptism. But it was all good. It didn't really matter. When we taught Maria she told us she doesn't wanna be baptized and Elder Cuevas tried to get her to still accept. But I just bore my testimony and told her to not forget that God loves her. It seemed to help her out.

Family Night with Maria and some members.
I got a member to make me brownies and ice cream!!! This doesn't exist in Brasil!
The rest of the week was good though! We did a lot of finding. Here in Brasil you don´t have to knock on nearly as much doors as you would in like Holland. But we decided to start knocking. We found a lot of really cool people. The hard part about knocking doors is that everyone will let you in. They all are really open to hear "A Boa Palavra" as they call it. But it´s hard to find the elects of the Lord. It is like sifting for Gold. Luckily, we found some gold this week. The best guy that we found is named Igor. He´s 21 years old. When we knocked on his door he came out of the shower in just a towel. He opened up the door for us and then went to change clothes. Kinda weird. So we sat down for a bit. After 5 minutes he came out of his room with a Book of Mormon in his hands! He told us that he has been studying this book. He wanted to know how we were interpreting the book.  He told us that he had his own interpretations and that maybe we were interpreting it wrong. I told him that we will answer all his questions but first we have a message for him. So we shared the lesson and he had a lot of deep questions. At one part of the lesson, he asked us what we thought about the Gathering of Israel, and who is part of the twelve tribes. All in all, it went really well. He is a great guy. I think the weirdest part was when he told us about the dreams that he has had about how the Lord showed him the end of the world... He said that in 2020 a lot of crazy stuff is gonna go down. He said that Hillary will be the president. So if all that happens... I´m gonna freak out!  It´s weird because it is quite normal for Brazilians to get dreams with Christ in it. Some of the stuff that they dream goes hand in hand with the plan of salvation though. Really cool.



I also found a kid that is like Colton. He loves me. I think he´s 9. But he doesn't want me to leave. He cried and put a picture of me as his background photo on his phone. Then he wrote me a letter. haha It was really funny. So I took some pictures with him. It was interesting though. I got such a strong relationship with him because I was patient with him and showed love. I don´t know how to explain it, but here the parents just yell at their kids and hit them. 

This kid loves me. He put some gel in my hair.... it looked pretty cool. haha
So one funny story. We were doing home teaching visits with a member. He had to visit a lot of inactive people that he didn´t even know. We found one member who was playing soccer in the road. He is twelve years old. We talked to him and invited him to church. Then out of nowhere another tiny kid comes up to us. The first kid tells us "Oh, he is baptized too!" So we start talking to the two of them when another inactive 10 year old shows up. haha So we invited them to the activities and to church. Pretty nuts. 



Whelp I hope you are all excited for General Conference. It is such an amazing opportunity that we have to listen to teachings from God. I love you all!  Remember Him always!

LOVE,
Elder Davis