Heat Death

Whattup Wormcallers,

Grab your stillsuits and walk without rhythm because this week, the sun descended upon São Paulo and my poor, pasty Wisconsin skin is... fine, actually. And I even remembered to use sunscreen at least once. After witnessing the miracle that my skin hasn't taken on about the same texture and color as Bob the Tomato despite very dubious sunscreen use and killer desert sun rays, it's surprising how many people still don't believe in the church. 

But seriously, it's not even summer yet and it is burning over here. We're consistently getting in the 90s and Itapecerica is infamous for its morros (big hills), so walking from lesson to lesson is definitely fun. The sun has given me an excuse to make very liberal of use of my "Top Gun Glasses" as my mom refers to them, so that's, in the most literal sense of the phrase, a bright side.

Killer Squids

In the continuing saga of our PD&D, we just fought mind flayers the whole time. I love D&D but caramba combat can take a long time. Low-key was freaking out after the nightly mission meeting cuz I was like "wait what if I'm actually a bad missionary" and then God was like "chill out" and had a very spiritual experience. Tried to visit a bunch of people and nothing really worked out, then got to call my little sister at night and definitely absolutely nobody else was with her that I may or may not have talked to. 

>:) 

O livro dos mórmons

Tuesday we had to go to the mission office to get more books of Mormon because we ran out. My backpack was absolutely STUFFED with books of Mormon lo key felt like I was smuggling contraband with my huge backpack. And while we were there, we got some Açaí from that one place we went the last time. The only other thing that happened Tuesday was that we had yet another lesson with Francisca trying to explain the priesthood.

High School Musical

Wednesday we had a lunch with Rogério and it was awesome, also Rogerio and my comp made fun of me the whole time because of... things. Also got lo key roasted by the bishopric because apparently the kitchen in the chapel is NOT for cooking, just for decoration. Afterwards we went back to the chapel and the youth put on a huge activity where they sold food and put on a musical to raise money for FSY, it was pretty hilarious. Finally we ended off the day with another lesson with our parceiro Guilherme, taught the plan of salvation and it was pretty fun because we were like 'so what do you know about what happened in the garden of eden' and he was like 'well idk for sure but here's what I learned in the past' and then he said a whole bunch of stuff that I was like. The apostate garden of eden story is very sexist. It's very interesting as well to see how drastically the plan of salvation differs in doctrine from every other organization on the planet, basically everything we teach would have been like blatant heresy in the middle ages lol.

More work

Thursday we visited Vanessa (who still hasn't received the holy ghost :( and we also visited a whole bunch of people who didn't want nothin. However to end off the night we did have a pretty miracle encounter cuz we were walking up the road and we saw a member talking with two ladies on the street and he saw us and freaked out and was like "Elders I literally just was talking with these ladies because they were saying they were disappointed with the church they're going to and they asked me about mine and I was literally just talking with them about meeting you guys" so God pulled a nice one on us cuz we actually weren't even gonna go to that road then. So we talked with them a little bit and set up a visit for the next day.

Jennifer

Friday we were visiting some members who their son does a lot of visits with us but that day he had to go to school. Except he didn't want to go and his mom was like "no you have missed 20 days already this year you can't miss any more" and I was bouta say he should just come with us anyways because missionary work is more important than schooling but I caught myself and was like "I should probably be a good example". Just don't talk about my senior year lol.

We also got to watch Elder Ballard's funeral service, which was sad but also happy. Like it is sad that he's not with us anymore but lo-key must be pretty nice in the spirit world. I also messed around with the church music app and discovered the following:

-Whoever made the portuguese covers of the youth music went absolutely nuts and changed a bunch of the backing tracks, for example "Posso tudo em Cristo" and "Voltar pro lar" go way harder than the original.

-Changing the language into japanese just turns all of the youth music into LDS anime ops.

At night we had a lesson with Jennifer (the lady the ward member was talking to the day before) and it was a really great lesson. We talked about the restoration and what really makes our church different from all the rest. It was super spiritual although when we got to the First Vision and asked what she thought she was like "I'm not gonna lie to you guys, this seems like a lie. Why did Joseph see God and Jesus and we can't?" and I was like "that is an excellent question, allow me to explain" and then we talked about his prophetic calling and the priesthood and whatnot and she was like "hmm ok" and then we gave her a book of mormon. Fun fact: the book of mormon is the solution to everything. Afterwards the members we were with gave us ice cream :)

Beginning of the struggle

Saturday we invited everybody to church and had a bunch of lessons. I also got my hair cut cuz we had some extra time in lunch and the barber nextdoor is a guy we're teaching. He said some super wise stuff about being a father and how he understands God; he gave this one example that he took his two daughters to the beach and one of them stuck with him while the other one went out to the water, and so when people came passing by to sell treats and fruits and whatnot he always bought them for the daughter who stuck by him but he couldn't buy them for the daughter who was far away because she wouldn't come out of the water. And he was like "so even though I love them both equally, I couldn't bless the one who was far from me because of her own choices" and I was like " I'm definitely gonna steal this as a teaching example"

At night we tried to have another lesson with Guilherme but we only were able to have a lesson with his mom Graciele. Now Graciele has been a member for a long time but she was inactive for the majority of that time and is just now returning to the church. So, we had a great lesson with her responding to her questions, but she also explained this situation which she had to pass through because she didn't understand the standards of the church and some members were judging her for it and she also had a bunch of tough questions for me to answer about the church. Now we're gonna thank the Holy Ghost that I slipped up some great answers to those questions out of nowhere but as for the stuff with other members I was just like ".... yeah that's cringe." Lo key frustrating to do all this work to reactivate and teach and help people come back into the church and then have dumb drama among members about calling and whatnot that almost drives people back out. So we gave her some support and she testified that she still loves the church and knows it's true. But still. Got a little bit of steam going.

Burning up

Sunday we had nobody except recent converts and one guy who is at a roadblock before he can get baptized come to sacrament meeting, the weekly coordination meeting which we are required to do with the members fell through because the ward scheduled a leadership meeting without informing us and without inviting us, and then when we got there literally nothing happened the whole meeting, and there was more drama among the members which led to somebody leaving an angry message in the whatsapp group and saying that they were gonna leave the church.

If I sound a little bitter, it's because I am. Petty drama and anger are absolutely not acceptable for the Savior's church. If there is one group of people on the face of the planet who should be full of charity and love, it is us. So sunday morning high key put me off for the day until we got to lunch with the same members who gave me a birthday cake and they were still very kind and the lunch was great and I was like "hmm, maybe the world isn't ending after all."

So sunday started off pretty stressful but after lunch we visited a bunch of people with those youth who do visits with us which was pretty fun. We didn't actually get much done because basically nobody was home, but at least it was fun.

Cooling Down

So an interesting and lo key rough week. It's difficult seeing such ugly behavior in the church and people I love so much, but c'est la vie. And really, none of this changes my responsibility here, which is just to do my best. But anywho, I'm finishing this off with about 8 minutes left of p day so that's gonna be pretty much everything for now, hope all of you have a wonderful week!

God is Good,

Elder Ebbert