I love working with Sister Barrios, she is such a good missionary. We almost work too hard, cause now we both are having pain in our knees for how much we walked this week.
Friday was rough because we woke up at 6 am to go to the office so that we could get my Visto sorted out with the elders who work there, only to arrive and 9 and find out it was a holiday and so everything was closed. We returned to Sao Sebastiao and honestly, we literally walked until the end of the earth that day. Of course, the majority of our appointments fell through, and both of us were feeling down and really not wanting to walk to our next appointment which was 1 hour away. Her phone number was disconnected because it was the wrong number, which usually means the address is wrong; but we decided we were going to go anyways. I can honestly say God blesses missionaries who strive to work as hard as possible. We went to the investigator's house and after teaching the lesson she told us she used to be super committed to how she was baptized in her church, but now she's thinking she needs to be baptized again. She offered the closing prayer, and was crying as she finished. We marked a baptismal date for her, but she works on sundays so we shall see what happens. As we left the house we felt a little better about our decision. Then as we were walking, a boy asked us who we were. As we talked to him, his uncle came and told us he went and visited the church in Lago Sul and really like it, but didn't know where it was in Sao Sebastiao. We definitely were on that street for a reason, and we are going to be able to visit him this week. The blessings didn't stop there, we went to our last appointment at 8:30: Erica. She is the sister of Nicolly, daughter of Lucimar who were baptized last transfer. The week before we had invited her to pray about whether or not she should be baptized. Honestly, her transformation has been amazing, she used to always leave the room as we taught, and now she's inviting us to come over and teach. Anyways, as we entered the house I could tell she was excited. She was just waiting for us to ask her if she had received an answer. I asked her "voce teve o opportunidade..." and I barely even finished asking and she was already nodding her head. She is so excited to be baptized. We marked a date with her for the 1st of December, but since she went to church this week we are gonna try to move it to this Saturday. As we left her house that night I had never felt so tired in my life, but both of us just ran down the street, dancing, shouting, etc. from happiness.
That being said, we are going to try to have 4 baptisms this Saturday...it's gonna be stressful and we are bringing the sisters from Lago Sul to help us one day this week so we can get to all of our appointments. The first baptism will hopefully be Erica. Then we have Adilson who just randomly went to church one day because a friend mentioned it to him, and he's been attending so we have to follow up with him and give him more lessons this week. Then there is Ester and Maria Clara, friends who are 11 and 10 years old. They rock! They love me because I am an American and want to be baptized this Saturday butttttt their parents are hardcore Catholic. We are going to talk to them tomorrow and explain what's happening. Definitely will be a difficult week to hit the goals of the mission, but we are hoping that with our obedience and fasting the Lord will provide a way, as he did the week before.
We found out last Pday that the number of invites for church has been moved from 70 per week, to 140 per week. We thought 70 was a lot, and now its double. On Saturday we realized we had only done about 1/3 of that so we realized we really needed to bring it, and in one day we did 73 invites, our normal weekly goal in 1 day. We managed to hit all of our goals this week which was really satisfying.
Oh and quite possibly the best thing EVER happened to me this week. There's this one member who is rather well off, and likes to take us out to a restaurant in Lago Sul every month. He always asks us what food we want and my companion, wanting sushi, told him that I was craving sushi. So we arrive, and the waitress asks what kind of meal we want. He says "Fica a vontade". That was music to my ears. All you can eat sushi???Yes please. I had 4 giant platters full of sushi, I kid you not (photos included). And yes, I was thinking "sushi?? in the very center of Brasil?? many many light years away from any sea?? how am i NOT going to throw up because of this." but then i thought "this will probably be the only opportunity I have in 1.5 years to eat good sushi. That's totally fine, I don't even care". The Lord blessed me yet again and I did NOT get sick and I was very very very very very happy. I also made guacamole again this week from another big boi avacado so I have been eating rather well here.
Thank you everyone for your lovely emails and prayers!
Sister Cecil
A saying on the mission is that you find out the kind of member you want to be and the kind of member you don’t want to be.
