Among the Gaúchos: Humility, Musical Adventure & 1st Baptism!

Letter from 3/31/14

So this past Tuesday in personal study, I was reading in Ether 12 where we have weakness that we may be humble and through our faith in God our weaknesses can become our strengths. So I prayed that my weaknesses would become my strengths, not really thinking specifically about any "weakness". So Elder Fávero and I went and visited this in-active young man and they just started talking it up about some anime stuff or something and I didn’t really know how to contribute much less in Portuguese so I just wasn’t really talking. So time goes on, and on, and an hour and a half roles by of not talking about anything really and so I start giving Elder Fávero the eye to start giving the message or do something other than talk to this guy about whatever. So he continues talking about whatever and I’m just waiting. 2 hours rolls by and at that point I’m like forget this, I whipped out the scriptures gave a spiritual message and we were out of there by 2 1/2 hours. So after I was like ughhh why in the world were we in there for so long doing nothing?! and all he said was that he was waiting to see how long it would take before I did something. So I was kind of ticked but then I remembered the scripture I read and my prayer and I realized that my weakness was shown unto me. And I realized that I have been too passive in our companionship thinking of excuses like I’m just the new missionary and let Elder Fávero do the majority of the planning or make the contact or give a message or I don’t know what they are saying (which is partially true for some people ha) so I just will let him talk. So that’s kind of hard to accept but I’m really trying now to not let anything stand in the way of me becoming the best missionary I can and helping the people here in our area.

Anyway so Thursday night I get a call from President Parrela that I would be singing for a chapel dedication in Palmeiras das Missões, which is the northern most city in our mission 3 1/2 hours away. So President and his wife came and picked me up and I got to talk with them in the car for a while so I know a lot about their meeting story, or at least I think so, Sis Parrela talks really fast haha, and they know a lot about my singing back ground and our family and stuff so that was cool. We get there and there were two other missionaries there too, Elder McMaster who was my room mate the first night in SM (Santa Maria) so we had met before, and he plays the piano really well, and Sister Clay who plays the violin really well so we had two hours and whipped together arrangements of “I Feel my Saviors Love” and “Come Thou Fount” and “The Spirit of God” to sing for the meeting and the first two went really well then while Pres. was speaking he switched it up and asked me to sing a song about Christ solo. So I sang “I Believe in Christ” at end the meeting and it was just super great. Then after the meeting I realized that President wasn’t going to take me back to SM so that was a little nuts figuring that out but the assistants to the pres were there and they got a ride home to SM from a member that lives there too and so I was able to come along. We drove from 10:30pm till 1:30 in the morning and I spent the night at their house then grabbed a taxi in the morning back to our house, crazy adventure.

Also this Saturday I had my first Baptism with Matheus! It was a combined baptism and the other girl who was getting baptized played the piano crazy good so we pulled together (in like 10 seconds) “Joseph Smiths First Prayer” and sang in English! because she knew English and it was cool. Anyway so Matheus was literally the pesquisador de ouro (pes-key-sa-door gee ohoo-roe), so I felt that I really didn’t do much but it was just a great experience!

Love you all! Still trying to get back to everyone sorry! aaaaaaand Noah BYU all the way!!!

Elder Pierce