This week Elder Marim and I have been sitting down and teaching as many people as would let us enter their houses. It´s been a hard past few weeks as our teaching group is graudually diminishing in interest with regard to the things we teach. Usually the visits don´t end up with the people progressing but I´m still holding out in faith that we will find someone ready to hear us. This week, Elder Marim and I faced a few investigators that simply wanted to debate scriptures with us. One guy we left a Book of Mormon and in a follow-up had a small page of notes that he took, looking for flaws in the book and such, which got on my nerves. We responded well to his doubts but it was clear that he wasn´t interested. We left our testimonies and the book and left, which was about all that we could do.
We also had a District meeting with a funy little training fro Elder Trindade. He likened a cake unto the message that we bring to people. The first slice of cake he gave away to one of the elders no problems. The second piece he offered to Elder Marim, coughed on it, and offered it to Elder Marim, which declined. The last slice was offered to me, which he took and threw it at my shirt and stained my nametag, which was pretty funny actually. The training, like I said with this little skit, was designed to help us really present our message to people the way that we need to present it. Anyway, it was a good little training that was given.
One day in the week, we stopped and helped a pastor clean up a small little church that he was opening. Just a quick little sweeping and afterwards we introuced ourselves and said goodbye. I don´t imagine he´ll end up going to our chuch but it was cool to be able to help another person out, even being part of another church.
We also had some rain here in Barreiras and in the middle of an appointment, we had to leave in the rain. At first, we started running but I was no use so we ended up just walking gettting soaked. Barreiras is so unpredictable and you don´t even now when it is that you need to take an umbrella with you. We did a lot of hopping through mud-filled unpaved roads and such which was pretty fun actually. Because of the rain, the power in our house had gone out a day so we moved our mattresses to the study room and slept well with a fresh wind coming in every once in a while.
This week, I also taught the other 3 a few things in English. The languages thing is pretty funny. When we do our companionship studies, before starting,, we all get together us 4 and sing a hymn. The only problem is that the little hymn book in Portuguese I had got lost and we have 1 in English. So while the other 3 sang the Spirit of God this week in Portuguese, I sang in English and we had a little sing off of sorts of who would drown out the others. Even against 3, I pretty much won hahaha. In the end, Elder Trindade said, ´´Come on, Brazilians! What was that?!´´ hahaha!
All in all, I suppose that was my week. The thing I learned this week is that the Spirit won´t always tell us what to do. I remember feeling really frustrated with that in the begining of the mission and up until now, but I learned that God already knows what we´re going to do in each moment and will only tell us what we need to do when he already know we won´t do what he wants us to do. A majority of the time, he´ll just let us make our own decisions, even if we pray for his help because he knows we´ll make the right call.
Anyway that was my week, everyone. Love you all!
If you haven´t already gotten around to it, go to christmas.mormon.org and watch the new christmas video.
Abraços!
-Elder Skinner
No comments:
Post a Comment