Baptisms, Barbeques, and Contacts

This week has been crazy. We had some interesting discussions about numbers on the mission and felt a lot of pressure to get our required numbers. It has been a little frustrating, but the week has been good. We had two baptisms yesterday. Leonardo´s mother, and Antonio. It was super awesome to be at the church yesterday. Seeing Antonio in his white jumpsuit was really special. We have been working with him for a while and it was awesome seeing him take this huge step in his life. He talked about serving a mission all morning.

Afterwards, we had lunch at a member family´s home and I experienced my first churrasco. Brazilian barbeque. Beef, pork, chicken, sausage. It was all there, and so was I. The perfect combination. It was really good. I wanted to eat all day.

We went to an inactive member´s house this week. All the houses in brazil are walled off at the street with a door or a gate. The family has an intercom on the street and they can unlock the door from inside their house. We buzzed them on the intercom and a man answered. We told him we were the Elders and he went and got his son. We then told his son that we were Elders and he immediately told us to come in. We were just turning toward the door when he says 'oh, and Elder. Be careful of the dogs...' Bzzzt. click. The door unlocked as we pondered what that statement really meant. Elder Davis opened the door and three dogs come pouring out barking their heads off. One of them, the smallest, goes straight for me and jumps onto my leg and bites me on the thigh! I was not happy. I managed restrain myself and did not to kick the dog accross the street. We then went in and talked to Hebert. He's been inactive for a few years and he wants to relearn everthing and come back to church. Maybe even serve a mission. He is really awesome.

My companion traded backpacks with of our zone leaders who is going home. They made the swap during our meeting last week with our zone. We got home and finished out our day. On the way home we realized that our house keys were still in his old backpack. Ugh... There was no way to get the keys that night so we climbed over our gate and under the barbed wire above it to get to our apartment. I then went to the window and started shimmying the shutters. I knew the shutters dont have a very good latch. After a few minutes I was almost ready to give up. Then divine intervention occured and the shutters popped open. I then boosted Elder Davis up so he could reach through a small hole in our window and unlock the window. We had to climb through the window for the next two days until we got our keys back. I felt like we were robbing the place everytime I climbed through.

We have been having some problems with our toilet. It was filling up with water and it took a couple flushes to get everything down. Toilet paper would just float around on the top of the water and not go down. We were worried that there was a clog somewhere. We made a homemade plunger and tried to free things up. Nothing worked. We finally figured out what the problem was. We had bought one of those clean your toilet with every flush type things and it was making the water really bubbly. The water was turning into bubbles, that why is was going so high, then it was too light to push anything down. It was pretty funny when we figured it out. So much for trying to have a clean toilet right?

We contacted a lady last night who was pushing a stroller up a hill. I offered to push for her and we talked to her until we got to the top of the street and the hill. We then parted ways. There was a group of men standing in front of a nearby store and we could tell they were talking about us. This happens fairly often, because two americans together in Brazil is kind of an unusual occurance. We walked passed them and as we did they asked, 'who are you?' They had been so impressed with us helping that lady. They asked us all kinds of questions and we talked with them for a while. We gave out a Book of Mormon and had a wonderful talk with them. They are from another church that is really big in Brazil, and usually their members kind of ignore us. They brought out two hamburgers and some juice out of the store and gave them to us. It was such and awesome, respect building conversation. We are definitely going back there to say hi. Maybe even do some grocery shopping. The people here are amazing.

Yesterday was when we had the baptisms, the barbeque, and the super contact with 6 or 7 people. So, yesterday was pretty much the best day ever. Portuguese is coming together more and more every day and I am understanding people a lot better so I am getting more and more excited about the work. Life is good. I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Até mais!

Elder Siemers

Brazil is good.

Things are going well in Brazil. We had a mission tour this last week. Elder Godoy of the 70 gave us some training. He talked about traps missonaries fall into with teaching. It was good. We had to go into Ribeirao Preto, so we took the 4 hour bus ride the night before and stayed with the office Elders. The next day the bus home wasnt until 630 so we got home really late. We have a few more people interested in baptism. Leonardo´s mom is really interested. She loves the change that has happened to him over the last few weeks. She was at family home evening the other day and came to church yesterday. We have another investigator named Gustavo. We teach him quite a bit and this last time his uncle came in while we were teaching the plan of salvation. His grandma comes and goes during our lessons and she was there also. His uncle asked how he could get to the celestial kingdom so Elder Davis told him we could tell him 5 things that will get him there and asked if we could come back and teach him the 5 things. (Faith, repentence, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) So we came back and set a baptism date. The grandma might be interested also. At the end of the lesson we they fed us dessert and while we were eating a teenager walks in with a Book of Mormon in his hand! It was crazy. Elder Davis and his previous companion had given it to him a long time ago and havent seen him since. He is Gustavo´s cousin. So we started talking to him and invited him to church. He was there yesterday and really liked it. We bought matching ties last p-day and snuck one into Leonardo´s backpack during family home evening. We wrote our names on it and the date of his baptism. We didnt tell him we had some also, so we all showed up to church yesterday with matching ties. It was fun. He also passed the sacrament for the first time and bore his testimony. He is super awesome and plans on converting his entire family. He is also counting down until he can serve a mission. 3 years and 9 months. We have another investigator who wants to be baptized and he has been working towards it. He is really close and we just need to finish a few things and get him to have some time off from work. Soccer is huge here and I havent picked a team yet. Everyone always asks which team you like. I promised this young man that if he gets baptized soon, I will pick the Corintians, his favorite team. We have started an English class and meet once a week. Thats is a lot of fun. I learn more portuguese as I try to teach Brazilians English. Its really cool. Well, things are busy. We hope to have some baptisms in the near future and hope to keep finding more people to teach. I will talk to you all later. Tchau!

Waterfalls and Walking

This last week was a little long but there were some definate good moments. We had two days where all of our appointments fell through and we ended up walking all over the place. We taught a few really good lessons though. We had training with our mission presidents and the asssistants one day. We found out about it just a couple days before hand and didnt find out until the day before that we were leaving that day to spend the night with our zone leaders. So everyone had to cancel teaching appointments and take the bus. Our zone leaders´ apartment had their power cut so when we got there we didnt have any electricity. We spent the the night on mattresses on the floor with no blankets and hardly got any sleep. It was just cold enough so you couldnlt fall asleep for very long, but not cold enough that we were freezing. I was awake from 3 oclock on. We had a meeting with our zone leaders then we had our training that lasted all day with the assistants to the president. I could follow most of it, but I got a little bored. My companion really like it, but I felt like I was in the MTC again, which i was really ready to leave when I came to the mission field. We went and visited a really pretty waterfall nearby with some other elders in our district. All of us took so many pictures. I think I doubled the amount of pictures on my camera. We confirmed Leonardo in church yesterday. He is super awesome and is already counting down the days until he can serve a mission. 3 years and 9 months. We fasted for another investigator this last week and a few days ago he told us he wants to be baptized. We were super excited. Another one of our investigators that is having a hard time coming to church almost came yesterday. We had a good lesson with him the other day and his friends kept showing up, so we started teaching them too. By the end he was inviting everyone to church and he was disappointed when nobody showed up yesterday morning. He really wants to go to church but he doesnt want to go without a friend so he stayed home. Next week we will bring him to church though. I mentioned to my companion the other day that I really want to baptize somebody who is drunk when we first meet them. On the way home we had two drunk men come up to us and start talking to us. We will do some follow ups the next couple days. =) I managed only to put on about 5 pounds throughout my MTC experience. I was excited to lose some weight by walking up and down the hillly streets of Conjunto Habitacional, but the members stuff us full of food every lunch. Its super good food also, so it´s really hard to say no. So I don´t know how fast the pounds are going to fly off. The language was coming easier this week. I could actually see progress everyday. I can´t wait until I can talk to and understand everyone. As of right now I can follow and understand most conversations, but I can miss a detail here or there. Sometimes that changes the meaning of the conversation completely so I can get lost. Every day is better though. Well, life is pretty good. It would be better with more letters though ;). Talk you all later.

Elder Siemers