Week 8

Olá minha família e meus amigos!

 

Week 8! Mais uma semana!

Companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

So i didn't have time to send an email yesterday as you will hear about later in this email, so i am sending one today...

 

I cannot believe my time is almost up! its sooo crazy to think about! it went by so so fast. i cannot call from the airport. The thing i will miss about the MTC so much is probably unlimited soda :) its way good.

 

Tuesday: so last week pday was fantastic like normal! i picked up my custom leather scripture case and it is sooo cool! i love it so much. the front has a picture of jesus, the back of moroni, and the side has my name and mission on it. i will take a picture and send it to you once i get out into the field. i also accidentally drank out of a drinking fountain in a local store without thinking, but then realized the water may not have been purified. i was thinking that i had a chance to get sick, but then thought, ``there is no better place to get sick than a building that has two bathrooms on every floor,´´ so i continued to drink a lot more :) i would much rather get the sickness out of the way here than in the field. sadly, there was no effect. i guess the store was nice enough to have purified water.

 

Wednesday i decided to get my haircut again! this time I buzzed it just to see what it would look like. ive never had it cut this short, but it doesnt look to shabby! now i only have to use a dime size dot of shampoo :) shampoo here is about 15 reais... Also, something really funny happened this night. Elder adams was in his room and right before going to bed he picked up his pillow and screamed super loud. we all looked to see what had happened and there was a piece of poop on his bed! it was hilarious. it took about 30 minutes to realize it was actually a Cliff bar, but it looked very very real.

 

On thursday we went to the federal police station to do some things with our visas! that was kind of fun to have a surprise trip outside the CTM. We did all these cool fingerprint scans and prints and attempted to talk to the people there. There was some lady who trapped my buddy and was talking to him for 20 minutes. none of us knew what she was saying because she had no teeth so he just nodded his head the whole time and luckily she never asked him a question!

 

Friday i got my second bloody nose! isnt that amazing?! im so happy that i have only had two here, and neither of them have been bad at all. i guessing burning my nostrils was a very good idea because it is working great :) i also started reading the Book of Mormon in portuguese. its hard because they use really formal words that we dont learn and they write differently, but after a while i started to figure some things out.

 

We had TRC this saturday again and it went good! our afternoon teacher (irmão victor) told us some very interesting stories of where he grew up! he told us about this thing that everyone would do at parties called `body suspension´. its where you put hooks through your skin and attach them to chains and people lift you off the ground and you just hang there. I have no idea why people would ever do this, but apparently its a common party activity here in Brasil.

 

Our church talk subject for this sunday was desserts! once again i was not called so i didnt have to give mine, but i fit it into my talk really well if i were to be chosen. One elder in our district (elder Kamalu) wrote a really nice note because i was having kind of an off day for some reason and it cheered me up and i felt alot better after. We have s0me great guys in our district :)

 

MONDAY WAS THE BEST!!! we got to go proselyting! we had an hour and a half, which is short, but soo much fun! It was such a spiritual experience. i was so nervous and had been praying to be calm while i talked, but i was still so so so nervous until i talked to the first person. as soon as i started talking, it just snapped and i was perfectly calm and my portuguese was flowing perfectly! it was way cool! me and elder rindlisbacher gave out 7 books of mormon! we were on fire and talking to everyone about it. One of the coolest ones was when a guy in a truck called us over and asked if we were missionaries. we said yes and i talked to him about our faith and the book of mormon. He was locked in the whole time! it was soo cool because he was super interested and i swear he didnt blink the whole time i was talking to him. as we talked more the driver began to look a little interested too, so my companion asked him if he wanted a book of mormon to and he was soooo excited and thanked us multiple times. SO COOL! and everyone who we placed a book of mormon with promised us that they would read the introduction and ask god if our message and what they read was true. we promised them they would get a response and i felt so powerful while talking! it was so cool :) ALSO, we talked to some guy who looked like morgan freeman. he was super cool and we gave him a book of mormon. afterwards a sister came up to me and told me that she saw me talking with this guy and gave him a book of mormon and after a while she looped back through the park and said that he was reading! i felt sooo good to hear that! she said that he looked like he was intensely pondering what he was reading! that was just the icing on the cake.

 

So p-day yesterday was very interesting... so we left early in the morning for the temple, but our dirver took a different route which was wayyyy slow. so we got to the são paulo temple later than usual, AND it was closed! i guess the driver forgot or something, so then he drove us all the way to the campinas temple! im super super glad i still got to go to the temple because its my last time for two years, but its kind of a bummer because by the time we got back we only had 1 hour for p-day. i think the president took a huge group photo out front of the temple, so you should get a picture of that i think. the one hour of p-day was crazy because i was doing so many things! i bought some soap, a shake, cookies, a scripture marking pen, candy for my travels next week, and withdrew some money at an ATM. i took out 100 reais so can you check my debit card record and make sure something crazy didnt happen? it should be around 60 US dollars. Our distirct sang at devotional last night and it was sooo good! everyone said that they loved it and it was awesome. ill see if i can record us singing it again so all of you can hear it. also at devotional the speaker asked a question to the audience and i gave a response, so i got to have an interpreter again :) coolest thing ever.

 

Pretty much this was an awesome week and the days are starting to go by sooo fast now! I'm so excited/nervous to leave in less than a week! i love what i am doing, and it was soo great to get a taste of real missionary work on monday. i know this is where i am supposed to bed and i love this gospel.

 

i love you all so much!

Com Amor,

Elder Derek Romney Lambert