This was a dry week. We did TONS of street contacting because, I swear, every single plan we made fell through. No one was home, and hopefuls turned out not to be interested. But we spent a lot of time with less active members instead, so it worked out fine.
We've been working with this inactive family of 3 generations-Grandma, Mom, and Daughter. The grandpa isnt a member, the dad isnt in the picture. Adorable, all 3. The daugher, Agatha, is 14. Super cute, and super up on all the social media sites. Enough so that through my /very/ poor descriptions (poor because my conversational portuguese needs help) of vines, she is able to find exactly the one I was thinking of. She agreed with me that the best compilation is that one kid who makes cup song videos where the song starts playing at inconvenient (I'm so sorry I've never spelled this word without spell check) times and "can't help" but start, resulting in water, cereal, coke, or an entire tub of oatmeal going EVERYWHERE while he screams "nooooooo every freaking time!!". literally its my favorite and she made everyone watch it. She's super cute.
Mom is nearly always working, so I don't actually know her. But Grandma, oh she's seriously the cutest thing. I LOVE her and she's taken a liking to me too. She refers to us as her children every time we stop by.
All of them 100% believe in the gospel, I don't know whats stopping them from coming. We thought we'd convinced Grandma to come yesterday but she backed out at the last minute :( Seriously, sad. But we'll get her ;)
Speaking of sad, we were teaching this inactive member, right? He hadn't gone in YEARS but he saw us teaching Matteus and called us over and asked us to help him. So we got him new scriptures and were helping him remember all the things that once had made him so happy and everything was all set for him to come to church on sunday, but when we stopped by his wife says "my husband is not going to that church of yours, take your book and leave" and when we tried to say "no no, its a gift we can't take it back!" she threw it away!! I can't imagine if my husband or someone I loved wanted to do something that would make them happy, that I could ever possibly do something like that! I don't understand it. You don't do that to someone you love! I hope her heart is softened and she realizes how ridiculous she's being, and I hope he can come back still. It should be his decision, not hers.
BUT that isn't to say this week was a disappointment. Valessa is amazing me. The day after we gave her a book of mormon she read the first 6 chapters or so, and thats seriously not normal, usually it takes some coaxing and a few days at least. We had some ridiculously good days this week. Like /ridiculously/ good. Days where everything went right and even when it didn't we had the spirit with us so strong nothing could get us down. One day in particular, we had three solid lessons. three amazing lessons, na verdade. All about the Book of Mormon. There's a power in teaching about the book of mormon that I can't explain nor do I fully understand. Like, I was wayyy more exhausted that day than any other, even though we walked way less and had way more success than usual and all in all should have been more full of energy than normal. But it was a good kind of tired. Someone on "The District" described this feeling like there's something inside you thats a little too big, and somehow I feel like thats accurate. Like after Thanksgiving dinner when you ate a little too much, but emotionally/mentally/spiritually. Feasting on the spiritual turkey!
Also this week, our district made our video for Natal! It was soooo much fun. Our district has me and Sister Pereira, DL Elder Rosa (though he's about to go home :( this will change super super soon) and his companion Elder Kosnocha (I have absolutely no idea how to spell his name) who are all from Brazil, Santa Maria I think. Then Elder Batten who is from Oregon and Elder Chave from Moçambique (I'm like 70% sure that's spelled right, its in Africa). All our Elders are hilarious, seriously. Every district is making a christmas video, and ours will be awesome. I think my favorite part was either Elder Rosa making a street contact with a golden retriever, or Elder Batten chasing down a bus trying to give it a christmas pass along card. I think we'll cut out the parts where the people we talked to said "christmas is for children, I hate christmas" though...seriously quem não gosta de Natal???!?
Children love me. I don't know how I do it (yes I do, I'm just cool) and all the 3-6 year olds have taken to call me Sister Frozen because they think I look like Anna. I still speak either like Tarzan or like Yoda, but its getting better! I understand a little better now how the Book of Mormon prophets felt, speaking Hebrew but writing in scriptural egyptian because I don't actually speak portuguese, I speak english using portuguese. (have I already said this, probably). Also, I understand how the pioneers felt (I'm so kidding) because we still don't have clean water, so every night I have to boil a ton for us to drink. I'm like a regular old pioneer ;) AND I HAVE TAN LINES. I didn't think that was possible, given that I'm the whitest person on the planet but here I am. Looking every so slightly less like a corpse than before.
I hope all of you are doing well! Natal é chegando!! Its almost Christmas!!! I hope you all have the christmas spirit with you. <3<3<3<3 love you all! Eu amo vocês!!
Tchau,
Sister Steele
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