27 Feb 2012 - Palmeiras Area (Mom)

[I had heard that the Fortaleza Mission was one of the baptizing-est missions in the Church.] Fortaleza is one the most baptizing-est missions in the the church, and sometimes the most. I have been in the most baptizing zone in the world. ;) I baptize, just don't tell you every week when I baptize. It's my little secret. :) It is definitely a lot easier here than many other missions. I haven't knocked doors for months on end. Here success comes from members and stuff like that. You don't have to knock doors to scrape for people. Missionaries do it, but they "waste" time that they could be using to do more productive things. Some of the best missionaries here have never knocked doors.They just know perfectly how to use the members and stuff. I don't know what I would do if I had to knock doors and stuff like they do in America. I spent the early part of my mission doing that.

Be grateful of your Elders Quorum and home teachers. :) Home teaching is non-existent here in Ceará. Sometimes they don't even have duplos set up. If they do, nobody does it. I guess it's because everyone thinks that is my job. The mission changes you a lot. I am kind of excited to go home and do home teaching :) It will bring back the good old days.

I learned a lot about teaching and helping people when Elder Bednar came. People just don't get home teaching, temple attendance etc. We can't just teach them what is important. We have to teach them to go and act and use faith. Nothing we will teach them will stick. If we teach them to go and try it out, go and pray, go and do their part then they will receive from God and that will stick forever. It is a more difficult way of teaching since you don't just throw information at them. He also said we cripple people, parents cripple their children by giving them all the answers. He talked to us about learning by faith aka by acting and doing.

I have learned a lot. Maybe too much for my little brain. But, for once in my life, I desire to study, to pray, to go to church, to get better etc. I don't just know, but I actually love it and I want to do it. I knew before the mission, but it was just a knowledge. I love you mom, I love the gospel, I am so very thankful for the gift of repentance and the chance to change.

27 Feb 2012 - Palmeiras Area (Dad)

Carnaval distractions are gone for now. Although Carnaval isn't much different than every weekend. I didn't see anyone flocking to church though, so maybe next week the will take up from their drunken stupor and realize their wrong doings. Phooey I keep on thinking of things to write in English and realize I don't know how to spell them or how to intelligently communicate them. I can hardly speak English with my companion and I'm always saying stuff wrong. Whenever I see an unfamiliar word, I try to pronounce it in Portuguese. I was reading Jesus the Christ in english and there was some random word and I just said it how a Brazilian would....oops.

We had a cool adventure Sunday morning. We have a sewage man hole in our "backyard" and then another hole inside of our house to check/clean the pipes I guess. It rained elephants and wildebeasts (instead of cats and dogs) Saturday night/Sunday morning. So unfortunately the sewage pipes overflowed and flooded our house. I woke up at 1:30 AM and it smelled terrible! Our house was smelling so I just ignored it. Then I pulled my blanket off the floor and a corner of it was wet. Then I got up and realized our whole house was flooded with half an inch of sewage water. Yay hepatitis! So I grabbed everyone's stuff off the ground and put it somewhere, took a few pictures and went to sleep. It wasn't brown, poopy sewage water because it was mixed with rain water and it was bubbling out of the man hole. So don't imagine some disgusting sludge :) We spent about 5 hours cleaning our house on Sunday too, and my old janitor body is hurting. My bags didn't get wet due to faulty Brazilian construction and unlevel floors. So who knows how this whole disease thing is going to go down. There are some unwashable things (aka scriptures, planner etc) that will be tainted forever.