I was not transferred
this week, and I will stay (at least) six more weeks in the area Jardim
Massangana with Elder Roque. I was
pretty relieved by this because I didn’t want to leave quite yet.
This week was the
holiday festa de São João. This holiday celebrates
the birth of John the Baptist. It is
primarily a Catholic holiday according to the people here. I have never heard of this holiday. However, pretty much everyone in Pernambuco
celebrates festa de São João. My
companion said it is not a super big holiday in the South, where his family
lives.
The holiday included
lots of bonfires in the streets, every food you can imagine made with corn, and
tons of rain. There was so much rain that we came out of a lesson and the
streets were completely flooded. A member walked by and told us to take a
different route because he said it would be much better and dryer. It wasn’t. Haha. We got super wet. We walked to a point where there was a spot
that appeared super shallow, and there was no other way..so I went for it. To
my utter surprise, the water came up past my knee, so I started to stumble. My
other leg joined and I almost fell all the way but was able to save myself (and
my bag and my camera - phew). I got out and was just laughing. At that point it
didn’t even matter anymore and we just walked straight through all the river
streets singing called to serve. That turned
out to be a way fun night.
Thursday I had a super
good interview with the President of the mission. It went super well and he
helped me come up with a better plan to study the scriptures. Later we knocked
tons of doors and didn’t have too much success, so we became a little
discouraged. However, later that night
we went to the house of a new investigator and she was home with her husband
and baby. We talked about God being our Heavenly Father and they were very
interested to listen. So that was definitely a blessing at the end of a hard
day. Elder Roque and I are really trying to focus on bettering our contacting
and becoming more bold.
Sunday I found a mix
for Gingerbread pancakes. They were actually way better than I thought they
would be and it felt like Christmas. Then a member in the ward made super great
lasagna (it is way different than what you think). Grace came to church again! She expressed to
us that her daughter and granddaughter are really upset with her decisions to
join the church, but she said she knows and feels that it is true and that she
wants to be baptized. Later we found out that Elder Katchner got transferred
and so we are only down to 2 Americans in the house.
Love you all!
Elder Waters
