Gangstars
Whattup Overlords,
I'm tired! But not in a bad way. In a "wow I did so much this week" kind of way. It's this interesting state of being where I'm constantly exhausted, in pain, and highly motivated. It's kind of like being on fire all the time. I love it.
So not only did we work super hard this week, but we had a bunch of crazy stuff happen. A couple of these things I am obliged not to talk about, and I only mention it because I want to torture all of you with the seductive scent of salivating secrecy. But I guess I can talk about some of the other, way less interesting stuff.
Brazil Moment
So we're at the house of our recent convert Higor, and we're gonna revise his plan because my color pen wasn't enough incentive to get him to read and pray daily. But first, we have to start a fast so that we can receive revelation to guide our area and my comp can have the spiritual strength to fight demons. So, we go out back, sit down because there's nowhere to kneel, and pray. When we finish and open our eyes, there's this guy across the way who's just... looking at us. And to clarify, we're in this super sketchy flavela (that the Bishop thinks we shouldn't visit lol), so that's not just weird, it's mildly concerning. Then, this guy straight up pulls out his phone, zooms it to the max, and starts taking pictures of us. So... we hid behind a tree. Higor's 5 year old brother actually came out cuz he had my flash light and when we told him what was going on he started pointing my flash light at the dude, so we put a stop to that lol. Eventually we escaped the house (without teaching Higor unfortunately, -1 lesson with members present :( and left the neighborhood. However, we noticed that there was another guy who was very conveniently taking the exact same route as us, behind us, while on a phone call. Thankfully, nothing really happened and we eventually lost the dude and met up with our relief society president. We talked to Higors mom and basically she said that the gang/traffickers in the area were probably scared of us because they thought we were snitches- because sending a huge, sun-reflectingly white gringo into a flavella dressed in a white shirt and tie is the least conspicuous way possible to get information on drugs. Besides, even I know the rules: snitches end up in ditches. And the only hole in the ground I'm trying to end up in is a baptismal font.
Anyways, we're setting up a meeting with the gang's leader so that we can present a Book of Mormon to him and ask for permission to baptize his whole neighborhood. So that's pretty cool.
Don't Think, Just Do
I hit some kind of advancement because my portuguese went absolutely nuts this week. I have no idea what happened but if I turn off my brain and just start saying stuff, it works. Don't get me wrong- I still have to ask my comp to repeat every other thing he says like I'm an orangutan on a riding lawnmower and he's trying to talk to me from across the lawn because I can't fetching understand him. But we're getting there. I'm very pleased to feel a little less like a Skyrim NPC with 3 predeterminted responses and more like an NPC from an actually good Bethesda game, like New Vegas or Outer Worlds.
The Walking Dead
Thank heaven for tender mercies. I think my comp tells me literally every day that he's 'dead'. And I can see why; it turns out, working is not easy. But it was the worst on Thursday this week; we were both sick and so tired that we were just shuffling on the road like zombies. However, all throughout the day we had members appearing from nowhere to give us car rides, blankets, fruit, and even pizza. Actually, I joked about stealing pizza from this kid in our ward cuz it arrived just as we finished dedicating their house and were leaving, and then his mom was like "oh Elders take some pizza" so we did because of course. Then afterwards she called us to apologize that she hadn't psychically known we would arrive at that hour so that she could buy us a whole pizza. And we were like "no it's actually like OK don't worry" but she still apologized. Then we bought pizza for ourselves lol. The pizza is so good here.
Hehe >:)
As I mentioned, some things that happened this week are only fit to be written in the leather tome bound on the front with a living human eye which I keep hidden in my suitcase. But basically, the most powerful experiences I had this week come down to that we had to stay up until midnight dedicating our house for unspecified reasons, and we gave a sick sister in our ward a blessing. Once again, the Priesthood is real. And I'm pretty sure it's... uncapped? Like, there's nowhere in the general handbook that says 'the Melchezidek Priethood can't do this' besides in the sense of delegated authority (ie you can't use the Priesthood for anything outside of your calling). And as missionaries, we have a pretty dang broad mantle of authority. There's also a bunch of scriptures that pretty explicitly say that if you "ask, you shall receive". So the only limiter on the power of the Priesthood is faith. Spiritual thought this week: go out and be faithful, and don't put limits on God!
The True Trial of Faith
And finally, the most harrowing, jaw-droppingly crazy experience yet: we ran out of toilet paper this week and didn't have time to buy more. Rip to our Word of Wisdom pamphlets.
In Parting
We're gonna have a dope zone activity today and finish our fast with an all you can eat churrasco, paid for by our mission president. Then we're gonna go play games and I'm gonna absolutely destroy president in capture the flag. Hopefully today will be good to recharge, because I only have 5 more weeks to learn everything I possibly can about being a real missionary before I almost certainly get transferred and no longer have the safety of an epic companion. I'm excited for it.
God is Good,
Elder Ebbert
)I can't make the link funny today because I'm writing on a phone:(
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