Two Letters, Three Baptisms

February 24, 2013

So this past week was crazy.  We baptized 8 people in our zone this last Saturday, on the B-day we planned.  It was really great.  We had a baptismal service for our whole Stake.  It turned out really great.  Two of the baptisms were from our area,  Ana Clara and Adria.  We had a bunch of other baptisms that fell through as well.  Ana Clara almost fell through as well because she got really sick and a lot of women from the church that she used to attend went to her house and started telling her a bunch of lies about the Church and tried to convince her that she shouldn’t get baptized.  But she stuck with it.  I was really amazed she really has worked to gain a testimony and repent.  She is probably the most prepared person I have ever baptized.  When people really search for God and are willing to follow Christ, God always provides a way for us to overcome.

Elder Leite has been a bit stressed these past few days and yesterday he got sick and spent the day at our apartment resting with a young man from the ward, while I visited people.  When I got home at about 7:30 to let one of the young men go home on time, I walked in the apartment and found E. Leite sitting on his bed in only his garment bottoms with a fan blowing on him.  He was looking really sick.  He taken his temperature and he had a fever of 104.3.  That is really high.  I had never seen someone with a fever that high.  So I quickly ran to the house of a member that lives on our street, and only the mom (who is very pregnant) was there, but because of the situation we brought her to our apartment to help out. We decided to take him to the hospital.  At the hospital they gave him a shot and a prescription.  By that time the fever was passing and he was feeling better.  That was an interesting experience.  

While waiting at the hospital, the Oscars report passed quickly on the news and I realized that I had not seen any movies this last year...  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  

When we were about to leave, a bunch of policemen (they where SWAT... well the Belém equivalent) appeared in the hospital because they had a prisoner that was in terminal condition.  We conversed briefly with one of the officers who said in essence that the man was caught in the act of robbing someone and that a police officer had unloaded a clip on him, but the officer used a bunch of slang to say that.  Apparently the prisoner had killed a police officer because he had a tattoo of a clown on his leg (apparently that bandits here in Brasil get a tattoo of a clown on their legs if they kill police officers). Crazy story.

So that’s my crazy story for the week.  I am doing great and I am being safe, Mom.  E Leite is doing better.  

I hope that your week was great and that this week will be productive.

Love,

Ben

P.S.  Mom, your shelves look great! 

March 4, 2013

Dear Dad,

Thanks for the e-mail.  I really liked the description of Dan's testimony.  He is really great.  It seems like everything is warming up there [in Moscow].  Here in Satélite, things have been a bit cold because of the rain.  For the past few days I have slept with my Trogdor hoodie because it has been a bit chilly -- I think between 19 and 22 degrees Celsius.  It will be interesting to come back home and sleep in a bed and not a hammock.  But I have been thinking about ways to secure one [with hooks in the walls] at home…

This week has been pretty hard.  We have not had much progress with our investigators and we have found about 5 families that need to get married so that makes it a lot harder to help them, and more complicated for us missionaries. During the week we had a lot of important appointments that fell through and yet again our bishop did not come to our baptism (probably because we told him about it on Tuesday and called to remind him on Saturday.)  Well usually when we make mistakes we learn better.

So this past week the most important thing that happened was that we Baptized André!  André was the boyfriend of Ana Clara.  We taught him and it was clear that he was really prepared.  During the week he went to the other side of Belém to get his Sunday clothes from the house of his grandma.  He went to his baptism and the church on Sunday in a white shirt, tie, dress shoes and he even took out his earrings!!!

So that was nice to see.  Oh and I got to confirm him a member of the church which is always a spiritual experience.

I´m doing great here and thankfully my zone is doing a lot better.  So things are looking up.  

Oh dad, I will think about the UI Hockey team but I still don´t know.  The UI is really.... cheio de iniquidade.  But I’ll give it a look.  Oh, I also got a letter from Josh today which was really great.

Love,

Ben