11/3/2015
So first off a big apology for the scare in not sending email yesterday. I realized in the middle of the week that I didn't advise you all that this week p-day moved to Tuesday because Monday was "Dia dos Finados" (Day of the Dead) here in Brasil. This is their substitute for Halloween even though we did go to visit some recent converts who were heading out to trick-or-treat (they were the only ones in the streets haha) so we helped them make their costumes which turned out... haha yea just look at the pics.
It's a big tradition for everyone to go to the cemetery and light candles to brighten the path of their loved ones (apostasy...) and leave flowers etc. So what all the missionaries did, I think in all of Brasil, was go to the cemeteries and pretty much just walk around talking to people visiting the graves about the plan of salvation, and offering for them to learn more etc. To be honest this is a great idea but a bit difficult in reality because first off everyone who goes to the cemetery usually is extremly religious (this may have to do with the fact that we were in a cemetery behined a huge Catholic church) and second we aren't the only church with this idea so there were many other religions roaming through the tombs and with big tables etc set up. Anyway we tried our best but what we most got were adresses of people that lived in the areas of the other missionaries so we can't even visit them, haha.
Last Monday I got the "Book of Death" in the mail! It is a book for returned missionaries that Presidente Parrela gives to all the missionaries who are finishing up their missions to help us out in coming back to the "real world" and due to the "trunky" nature of the book I call it the book of death, haha. The book is called "Mantenha o Espírito" (maintain the spirit) and was written by a past São Paulo CTM president. The entire idea of the book is to help us keep that same spirit that we have worked so hard to develop for the past 2 years as we come home. There are a ton of great tips and ideas to apply in real life from planning your morning well to reading the scriptures to weekly planning to making promises with yourself and the Lord and even making you own "white bible" (the missionary handbook is refered to as the "white bible") for returned missionary life. Super cool, I´ll be finishing reading it for the first time probably today and for these next 6 weeks I'll go back slowly making my own manual and planning on how to apply all of the good stuff that it teaches.
Anyway today is the last p-day of Elder Longo and his last week in the mission! Pretty crazy, we have big hopes and bigger faith that we are gonna see some fruits of our labors this weekend and some extra blessings for a mission well done here. Last night we had a family home evening with a family of investigators (to the right in the pic) named Pedro and Janice with their daughter Carol at a members house. We hope that the message we left them made a difference and helped them to see how God really is answering their prayers and with a bit of luck and a lot of help from the Lord we will see some miracles with them! The message was this super cool trick that Elder Longo did to demonstrate the atonement sucking water into a cup buring toilet paper to rescue a coin from "sin" really cool.
Anyway love you all hand I hope the week goes well!
Elder Pierce
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| Having fun with E. Longo |
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