week 4 - Transfer 2

Time is really flying in this transfer, in some ways it seems like it has been forever and in other ways it seems like it started yesterday. I dicided that this week my personal goal was to actually complete our companionship goals, and do my best to help Elder Ramos complete them also. Our number one failure in goals has been contacts on the street, so this week was devoted to contacts for the most part. I shattered all my old records for contacts this week. I did 86 on wednesday and on did 260 over the week. And the funny part is that it took no extra walking or extra energy or really effort. All I did was give cards to people that I saw. I wasnt even hitting 50 persent of the people we passed and I did more than I have ever done. But one part of my goal failed, by doing so many contacts Elder Ramos did less. He was letting people pass and expecting me to get them. his 73 to my 260 is almost a 4 to 1 ratio. I believe that this is the first time in a long time that anyone has done more contacts then Elder Wright, my zone leader, they did 316. Thought that said they only prosylite at night and on weekends because they are the office staff. We ended up meeting all of our goals except baptisms, comformations, and investigators to church. So in all it was a good week of work. We do have 3 baptisms set up for saturday and 2 of them are for certain and the 3rd is a young man that was going to be baptised two weeks ago but is having trouble letting go of his old church because he has alot of friends there. But he says that he will be baptised on saturday. We are doing the baptism on saturday so they will not have to wait two weeks, because of general confrence, to recieve the holy ghost. The other two have come to church the last two weeks and are great. when we set a goal for them to be ready for baptism they marked it on the calender as there date of baptism. They are mother in law and daughter in law. The son/husband doesnt want to here the gospel and is more than a little annoyed that they went to our church for Easter and not his.

Speaking of easter. It is much different here. It is a little more biblical even though the people dont understand it. They do have an easter bunny but it is mainly just american propoganda. On good friday they make scarecrow type Judas and beat him with sticks and then hang him up and burn him. I didnt see it first hand but I saw it at a members house on the news. They also do not have regular easter eggs, they have this huge chocolate eggs. They come in all kinds of chocolate. I wanted to get one but I knew Elder Ramos didnt have the money to get one two, the cheepest ones are about R$ 20. So I offered to buy him one also so he wouldnt feel bad or leftout. I wasnt expecting much from him but I sure didnt get it. He kept saying buy me a pizza instead. The ungrateful worm there was no way i was going to buy him a pizza. I really dont no why I bought him the stupid egg, especially after that. But I did, and got nothing but complaints about it. The egg I got for myself was the a chocolate and peanut egg (they are about the size of a softball, hollow and have candy inside) that had a candy in it that i had never heard of and cant remember the name of it now, but it was basicly made of the same stuff as the egg. A few sisters in the ward gave us candy and other treats. One lady (she is german, I dont now if it has anything to do with what she gave me or not) gave us some ginger cookies, the type that you generally have for christmas. I feel fat after eating all that candy and your candy isnt helping my figure either.

Today we are going to a StarWars geek fest for a pday activity. This will be the first time that we do anything special on pday. I, of course, am paying. But it should be fun, they have all sorts of original starwars stuff. Like a life size space ship that they used in filming, I dont know which one it was hard for me to understand the conversation, I dont know that many geek words in portugese. So this could be really fun. I plan to take a bunch of pictures and I will send you some of the pictures this next week.

Hope all is well for you all. Things are generally good here. If we end up having 3 baptisms this week it will be a very good week. I have been giving more lessons, and even successfully biblebashed with a guy on the street. As you can imagine it went no where but i wanted to see how much i could say and that man waiting at a bus stop with a bible was the perfect subject for my experiment. I highly doubt that he will call to recieve a book of mormon even though he did take the card in the end. He laughed when I told him we had a prophet and said that the bible had enough prophets for him. but it was a good learning experience.

Love you, got to go
Elder Reed Risenmay