Friday, December 16, 2011

Working with Investigators in Abaetetuba

Dear Family,
Well, this week was pretty good.  Still no baptisms and 0 progressing investigators.  We have a problem here and I'm not sure exactly what it is.  It's been hard to get our investigators to come to church and keep their commitments.  It's actually a bit funny because the investigators that come don't want to get baptized and the ones that seem really promising in lessons either can't come or don't get around to it.  But, we do have some really cool investigators even though they are not progressing.  We have been teaching a 42 year old man named VanHilson.  He was in a really severe motor cycle accident a few years ago and had to have part of his skull reconstructed and a bunch of other surgeries done.  The doctors told his family that he wouldn´t recover (wouldn´t walk, talk, remember...) but he did recover and now he seems pretty normal to me.  He has a bit of a problem remembering stuff (he tries to show us the x-rays and CAT scans of his brain almost every visit).  But with repetition he retains the important things from our lessons about the Word of Wisdom,and he reads and prays (sometimes he forgets).  Well I hope we can baptize him.  He has a really cool past -- really good musician... well was, now I don't really know.
 
I went running with Elder R. Silva the other morning.  It was pretty funny for me to watch.  He is pretty tall with super long legs and when he runs its kind of like road runner -- really straight-looking legs with super long strides.  He runs pretty fast but doesn't have much stamina.  We ran about 2 miles maybe and he had to stop about 5 times.  I think I'll tell him to run my speed and then it won't hurt as much.  (Not much formal athletic training).
 
Well I found honey here ("mel") and its really different.  A liter is about $3.50.  The honey is really dark but good.  I have been experimenting with smoothies.  I make a pretty mean avocado smoothy.  Health-wise I'm doing pretty good --  a little bit of a runny nose, but its getting better.  And mom, you wouldn´t believe how hard it is to get a lot of vegetables.  Members don't prepare them much.
 
I hope the ward switches are working out from the little bit of your letters that I read, it sounded like they are pretty good.
 
Dear Mom & Dad:
 
Hey, can you tell Ricki Martin thanks for her letter, it was great.  And if you talk to Uncle Dan [Clark] tell him the letter was great and that I want to go ice climbing with him when I get back.
 
So, I had some thoughts this week about faith.  Some of our investigators had questions about Adam and Eve and how their kids had to marry each other and they wanted to know how this worked because that's breaking the law of chastity.  Well, when i was talking about this with Elder R Silva, I brought up evolution and how I think there is a lot about the story of Adam and Eve that we don't know.  God gave us this story to teach us about the plan of salvation, and choices, good and evil, and a bunch of other stuff.  This story is true, however it does not tell us how God created man or the earth or a bunch of other sciency things.  This is where faith comes in.  We need to understand that the world is bigger than some magical event where God snaps his fingers and things happen.  There are eternal laws that govern God and man.
 
Well that's about it.
Love you guys and ill try to send another letter today!
 
Love you and thanks for being great parents.
 
your son,
Ben

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