Barreiras has been receiving a LOT of cloudy weather lately (glória a Deus nas alturas!) hahaha. Our days last week have been starting out really sunny from 2 o´clock until 3 or so and then a lot of cloud coverage will come out of nowhere. It´s funny because it´s only really rained one of those days but we´ve been getting a LOT of lightning/thunder. It´s made working considerably more pleasant because the hardest moment is having to leave a lunch appointment straight into the sun.
I don´t believe I mentioned it last week, but last week we started continuing our teaching and it´s really been some ´´milagres pequenas´´ as we like to call it (little miracles). Really adds to my testimony of that scripture in Ether that says that after the trial of your faith comes the miracles because it had gotten a little hard the first week of this transfer. I suppose you could say that that´s something I learned this week. Anyway, we started continuing with a family of a man and woman who aren´t legally married and the daughter of the wife (Janaína, Vivaldo, and Vitória as they´re called). The first time we met them, we were teaching their nephew in another house, invited them to hear our message, and visited them the other day. We started off by teaching the restoration, left a book of Mormon with them and thought nothing much of it. When we had returned in a follow-up visit, we discovered that they had all read and that Janaína had read even more than what we had left with them. They also went to church that sunday, but just for the sacrament meeting. I think it was a Friday night that we had visited them just to follow up with them real quick and then out of nowhere, she says that the other night, she sat down before going to bed and really gave an earnest prayer asking God what it was that He wanted her to do with respect to everything that was going on in her life, to which she had a tearful time explaining to us. That night, though, she said she had a vague dream of which she saw me and my companion but doesn´t remember anything about it, just that she saw us and she said that she felt that that could´ve been an answer from God. It was a really neat experience and probably the first time that something like that has happened to an investigator that I´ve had the chance to teach until now. Anyway, that was the biggest miracle of our week with several other little ones, such as newer investigators that show potential.
Not too much else to report. We had a quick companionship exchange with our Zone Leaders from Luís Eduardo where they came to do a quick baptismal interview with a boy named ´´João´´ and Elder Arimuya (Peru) stuck with Elder Marim and me in our day. I really like the hispanic missionaries here, mainly those from Peru (Elder Macalupú and especially Elder Cerna). It was neat to have him and Elder Arimuya helped us with some of the difficulties a few of our investigators were having.
When we had our ´´Almoço na Sexta-Feira Santa´´ (our nickname for the best lunch of the week, Sacred Friday lunch) with Joanita, we showed up a little early and I made cookies for everyone. A while back, I remember her asking all of us if we knew how to cook anything, and I said that I knew how to make cookies, which she had been wanting to try for a while and I finally ended up making them. They turned out little more like little cakes or muffins of sort with they way they tasted, but that was because we didn´t have vanilla, chocolate chips, and such. I always look forward to having our lunch on Fridays now because Joanita is a funny, sweet, little lady. I´ve also been visiting a 15 year old boy named ´´Eduardo´´ that´s also became one of my best friends in the area. I suppose in each of my areas, there´s always at least one person that becomes a great friend (like João and Nilda were in Petrolina to me). He´s a recent convert that has some problems with going to church and reading the scriptures because of lazyness sometimes but says he wants us to help give him motivation to which I´ve developed a little calendar of great stories in the book of Mormon that we´ll call him each day and say, ´´Have you read x scripture yet?´´ and we´ll have a trivia question or two for him to answer and if he achieves a certain number of days, I´m going to bake cookies for him which he´s been wanting too. He´s a great kid and I hope to take a picture with him sometime. He reminds me a lot of myself with the things he likes (skate, video games, music and such).
This Sunday, I had practiced (but did not play) the piano and I´ll probably be playing this Sunday. I´m sure you all are like, ´´what?!´´ hahaha. So one of the young men in the ward had a hymn book simplified, which is easy enough for me to play and still sounds good. So yeah, no big deal, but I could be the next branch pianist. For some reason being out here has given me the desire to learn to play the piano once I get back home as well.
Isso é tudo, gente! Hope you all have a great week as always! Love you all!
Love,
Elder Skinner
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