Week 3

Well this week was one of the best and one of the weirdest. It started off bad. I was getting really agrivated with Elder Ramos. I felt like we weren't getting anything done and that it was all his fault. But then I decided that I was going to take my mission into my own hands, and quit just following Elder Ramos around, and do something. I starting doing alot of street contacting. Because we do alot of walking to no avail. It takes 25 minutes to walk the entire length of the area, yet one time, I timed it, we walked for over one hour without talking to anyone, including each other. I have no idea how it was possible. Elder Ramos doesn't talk much to me. He just goes and i have to ask him questions about what is going on, because we are almost never following the plan that he made the day before. I keep trying to get involved in the different things but it always just turns into me sitting while he mutters to himself in very rapid portugese that i cant understand and then at the end when i have missed something and ask him what we are doing at that time he complains to me about not being intrested in what is going on. So that was the Bad but now I decided to be a missionary on my own. Not that i have given up on working with Elder Ramos, just that I am working on my own motivation. So I do street contacts. In week 2 I did 38 street contacts. This week I did 88. I also gave 8 lessons on the streets. 5 of them in one day. That day was friday. It was the day it all changed. I was sick of doing nothing, so I started to do street contacts to everyone. I told one lady that I was here to testify of the restoration and then it hit me. That is what I am here for. I now know what it was talking about in judges when it said the spirit of the lord came on samson and he slew 1000 philistines with the jaw bone of an ass. If there had been an ass's jawbone laying around and a thousand philistines, I think a simalar thing would have happened. I went street lesson crazy, I would teach as long as they would listen. I gave 5 complete lessons and a half dozen others parts of lessons. It was great. Things have been better after friday. At least my attitude has been. Since last tuesday I have given out more pass along cards each day then Elder Ramos, Tuesday really shouldnt count though because together we gave out a total of one. Which i gave to a lady right before we went into our house, just so all our numbers would not be zero. It was pday, but that doesnt mean that having zero lessons and zero contacts is good. (Tuesday was the day that made me angry at Elder Ramos) We spent all of our prosyliting time at members houses. I am understanding the language better, I have had a few conversations without any help, but they are few and far between, my vocabulary is small. But i was complimented on my accent a couple of times. They said that when I know all the words I sound like a Brazilian. Today I finally got a haircut. It is carnival so alot of places are closed but we found a barber that cut my hair for 7 reais, which is about 4 bucks. We only saw one other open and they were really nice, they were 20 reais which is about 12 bucks, I was going to go in but Elder Ramos said it was to expensive. If no where else was open I would have gone back. I got a very nice hair cut the lady was about to cut my bangs straight across and I had to put my hands over them to save them, it took me a little to eplain how I wanted them. It looks nice and i can work with it. We will have hot dogs again for lunch. Yippy. We bought the biggest pack of hotdogs i have ever seen and have eaten about half of it. I think it has more then 100 hot dogs in it. I was worried about how long they had been on the shelf when the cashier tried to scan it and it wasnt in the system. We had to wait 10 minutes for them to put it in so we could pay and go.

We still havent baptized the other two investigators from the first week. The girl is very wishy washy and the mom still is smoking. She claims to be trying to quit but she hasnt changed her smoking habbits at all. We have a couple of new investigators that are promissing, One has a brother that is a member and the other is very reseptive to the gospel his has agreed with everything we said and only has had a slight problem with coffee that which he said he would stop drinking. Also another young man who went to church last week. We also finally got the mom of the little girls to go to church. For some reason only one of the girls went with her but that was fine. Her husband doesnt like the church but doesnt seem to have a problem in letting his family go to church he just wont. we have only talked to him once. He works late. In all everything is good. I am trying to get to brazilian culture, one thing i found out is that it is rude to touch other peoples doors, they will open it when they are ready to let you out, or in. No matter how late you are running you dont open the door to let yourself out unless they invite you too. Other cultural things are just different. But something that bothers Elder Ramos is that I am not afraid of being ripped off. All brazilians are jumpy when it comes to being ripped off. Stores make you check bags at the entrance or seel them in plastic bags. All windows have bars on them and all houses have gates with spikes or glass or other sharp objects on top. Elder Ramos wants the door locked at all times even when we are just going to be in the house for 10 minutes to grap something we forgot or go to the bathroom. and one guy yelled at me because I looked at his car too long. It is weird how paranoid of being ripped off they are. They think that I am wierd because I am not afraid of being ripped off. Or at least not like them. Also pedestrians do not have the right away. There are a few other things I will need to get used to but that is all for now. I hope everything is going well you you all.

Elder Reed Risenmay