Week 41 - Lagoa Encantada‏

 Hello everyone!

This week was jammed packed with things to do! First thing was Monday night I got into my apartment and found the Area Book. I found numbers for the leadership in my ward and starting calling. After calling a bunch, the Elder's quorum president answered and told me how to get to the Bishop's house. We went there and met the Bishop.

Tuesday we woke up at 4 a.m. to head to President Bigelow's house to pick up the new missionaries we would be training.  We still arrived late lol. But we ate breakfast (which was waffles yay) and then we had a training meeting with President. After our training we were assigned to do contacts in a park near President's home while President went to get the new missionaries.   

We did contacts and went to Burger King for lunch. Afterwards, the Assistants to the President called me and told us to come back to the President’s house. We waited downstairs (it is a big apartment building), and then they told us to come up. We waited outside the door of President's house and then rushed in singing the Mission hymn. (The new missionaries didn’t know we were coming). After talking to everyone, President announced our new companions!

My new companion is Elder Gimenez from Foz Do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brasil. But his dad is Argentinian so he has spent some time in Buenos Aires too and knows Spanish as well. We then all went to eat açai next to President's house. It was so good, I love açai. Afterwards we returned to our new area!

I am in the area Lagoa Encantada, which is partly in Recife but for the most part is in Jaboatão. This week went well! The members are all super stoked to have elders in the ward again. So almost every day a member came out with us to show us around the area and show us where all the other members live.

Sunday we had church. We meet in what I would describe as a warehouse. I will have to send you photos next week to understand. The church bought land in this area to build a new chapel, but the ward doesn’t have enough numbers for the church to start building. So hopefully we can reactivate and baptize a ton here!!

Halloween means basically nothing here. But we did have a holiday yesterday called "Finados."  Basically this is when everyone goes to the cemetery to visit grave sites, clean the graves and put flowers down.  President authorized us to go to the cemetery and talk to people. It was actually way cooler than I thought it was going to be! We talked to a bunch of people about the Plan of Salvation, and it just made the Plan of Salvation feel so real and important.

Now we are going to be trying super hard to find a bunch of new investigators - since our teaching pool started at zero. But we are working super hard and the members are excited to help!

Hope you all have a great week!!

Elder Waters