Weeks Like Days and Days Like Weeks

A big, nice tree that marks the boundary of our area.

8/25/14

Well as stated in the subject, my second week here has flown by! But there were some rough days that wouldn’t end, haha. First off a bit of an explanation of the terrain in my area. It is filled with huge hills! Everywhere is a hill there is no getting around it. And 80% of the roads are all cobble stone but the cobble stone is different here than in Santa Maria. And by different I mean worse and not as smooth but ya get used to it.

Going UP!!!!

Going DOWN!!

 (this street is Fancisco Alves if you can find it on Google maps, you can see tiny people if you zoom in at the top and bottom of the hills in the pictures)

So this past week decided to switch to summer and it was hot!  And on an especially hot day last Friday nothing worked out. All of our plans fell through and we literally only entered one house all day, a house of a member to drink some water. So we just kept walking to one appointment falling through after another hot and sweaty. We are trying really hard to find new investigators because Elder Gois only has had one transfer here and obviously I’m new so we don’t have much of a teaching group which we need to help out planning our days effectively and such. So Friday was one of those days but diligence brings blessings and Saturday was great! And we ended up having 7 new investigators this week! And one in particular has great potential, a friend of the Bishop and some other members of the ward who even went to church for a couple months last year who is making the decision to come back, pretty awesome and your prayers are always appreciated!

Also a cool experience of how the Lord works with what we study especially as missionaries. This past week in my studies I was reading (brain fade on the name in English) Efésios 4:5 " Um só Senhor, uma só fé, um só batismo." (One Lord, one faith, one baptism.) Most people here use this scripture as an excuse that it doesn’t matter what church they attend because its "all the same". But as I was thinking about it and how the scripture means the opposite and how we really do need to be baptized in the correct way with authority and by immersion at an age of accountability I thought of an example. I took out a note of 5 Reais and drew a fake note to demonstrate that just because it "looks like" the real thing doesn’t mean that they are all the same and that there is only "one true money" like there is one true way to baptize. That night we had a lesson with a woman and she used that exact scripture Efésios 4:5 while we were talking with her about different churches and why there were so many and it was perfect! I whipped out my example and Elder Gois was totally smooth in the transition and I explained about how the money "appeared the same" but that doesn’t mean that I could use which ever and she understood really well, cool. Oh yea and I’ve got 7 months on the mission now! It’s kind of funny because now Elder Gois and I have the same time in months, haha.

My R$5 example

Love you all and best of luck to all starting school! 

Elder Pierce

My new district