Week 5

This week in general was not very prosperous for the work. We finally have a certain baptism and will be lucky to have a second before the end of the transfer. We have been working hard and walking allot. I just got my shoes half soled (sp?) for the second time. The hills are killer. We have been enjoying allot of cool weather so the sun at least is not so hot now. We have actually been wearing long sleeve shirts most of the week. Today the weather is actually quite miserable, I love it. We have been working with little success, but we did just get some great advice. We have been trying to work with our entire area and with everyone in the area. So over half our day was spent walking up an down hills to get to appointments. Our district leader gave us the advice of focusing on one road at a time. He said that we should be spending most of our day within 10 minutes of our house, which has several advantages. First we don't have to carry around supplies for the entire day because it is very easy to resupply, second we walk allot less and spend more time at peoples houses, and third we don't live on a hill. We were planning lessons for every hour before, Elder Garcia told us we should be planning 2 for every half hour, the way things tend to fall through this will give us more opportunities to find someone at home. We put this into practice yesterday and we had 6 lessons on a monday. Mondays generally are terrible. We knocked every door on a road near our on friday to get names and addresses for monday then on monday we went to all the of houses of those that said we could come back, about half of them were there. We also knocked on a few more doors and found 2 new *families* to teach. (I put the stars around the word family because families generally don't exist here). So it looks like we will have more success this week. We however discovered this strategy a little late for this transfer.

On friday We had a 24 hours division. it was generally insane. Elder Garcia went with elder Allred and trained him on this new technique and I went with Elder Fennel, He has one transfer less then me and my Portuguese is significantly better then his so he mainly pointed and I went. but it was great. It is the first real time I have lead on the mission. We spent half the day trying to find inactive members to reactivate them. There ward is at about 25 percent attendance. They have worked almost all transfer to get it that good. The area is tough. The members don't like the bishop and the bishop doesn't like being bishop either. He is at the end of his calling and is running out of steam. So the ward was at about 10 percent attendance but has started to improve. So the first part of the day we spent talking to members. The next part of the day was crazy. We did a second Devision. I went with a member and so did he. He gave me the map, because I had never been in the area before, and also a list of people to contact. So I and the member went out to find there investigators. None of them knew either me or the Member with me. I ended up teaching two lessons there that afternoon. We found one pair of sisters (they were on the list of old investigators) that had had all the lessons, They said that they were moving (there house was completely in boxes) I asked them were, they said rua Santa Helena, That is where my chapel is. I thought that they were moving into my area, so I invited them to be baptized this next week. (right after they would move). They agreed to pray about it and to come to church this week. (At the chapel closed to there current house). It wasn't until afterward that I realized that even though Santa Helena is the road of the chapel it is definitely not in my area. After I realized that the member I was with started laughing. I was so fired up because they seemed like the easiest baptism on the face of the earth, they had not been baptized before because of coffee but had since stopped drinking coffee regularly and agreed to stop all together. we also gave a lesson to a family that was very excepting of the message but wouldnt come to church. They agreed with everything I said up to the whole be active in a church part. They didnt want to be restricted or compelled in there worship. It was slightly disappointing. The division in a whole in that area was not very prosperous. I tought 2 lessons, and Elder Fennel visited one member, she insisted on making them dinner and then talked with them for 2 hours, so while I was finding people that were going to move and not going to progress, he was eating with a member. The next morning we switched back and things went back to normal.

For now that is all.

Hope everyone had a nice mothers day, And happy mothers day mom,(I don't remember saying it on the phone, sorrry). and Also happy mothers day to LaDawn Candice and Erin.

Love you
Elder Risenmay