My Body Is Fueled By Faith And Churros

Whattup Steads and Smiths, 
Yet another week of amazing spiritual experiences, heatstroke, miracles, and extreme difficulty getting anybody to come to church. But we drown our troubles in goiaba juice mixed with sweetened condensed milk, and our hope pulls us into the baptism-soaked future. 

I love being a missionary. 

Quote of the week
Were going crazy this week and imma just put a quote here from Brigham Young that I love:
"You may see, or think you see, a thousand faults in your brethren; yet they are organized as you are; they are flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone; they are of your Father who is in heaven: we are all his children, and should be satisfied with each other as far as possible. The main difficulty in the hearts of those who are dissatisfied is, they are not satisfied with themselves."

Brigham Young is epic. Doctrine and Covenants is lit too

Holy Places
Two Tuesdays ago we went to the temple! It's like the first Endowment I've done in 10 months and hooooo boy do I miss the temple. It's just.... the best. I don't even have words for it. 
Afterwards we went the mall near the temple for lunch and Elder Wilson finally got his credit card activated. This man had like 900 reais from three mesadas cuz we couldn't get his card activated and it turns out all we had to do was turn the bank machine into Spanish and it worked. Spoilers: We have managed to spend all 900 reais on healthy and wise food choices since last Tuesday. 

Heart and Mind
Nothing else notable happened last week which is why I didn't write an email. 

Actually, we did have a dog come into the chapel during sacrament meeting. He really wanted the sacrament bread so I grabbed a chunk and lured him out of the chapel and then we shut it. Also on Sunday, we visited this member called Samira and she shared her conversion story and testimony with us and it was crazy. We also had an epic devotional with the old mission president from our mission where he talked about the Gift of the Holy Ghost and it was so amazing. Almost made me forget I had an insane migraine from heat. 

Oh yeah, Brazil summer is rough. 

Many are called
On Tuesday of this week a random guy stopped us on the road and asked "hey... what year is it?" and we were like "what?" and he was like "like, it's 2024, but 2024 since what?" and I said "after christ" and he said "oh thanks" and then he drove away. 

But few are chosen
Wednesdays district council training was Minecraft themed. "how to find diamonds and not just coal and iron". Also, we got a new washing machine. 

By the way, our water has been broken in our house for like a week off and on, and our washing machine has been broken for two weeks. So our clothes situation has been interesting. 

In our daily planning the Holy Ghost was like "yeah you should probably visit this guy right here" and we were like "sure" and we visited him and had a super spiritual lesson about Joseph Smith. I love to talk about the first vision and how it really applies to people personally. At night Samira came to a lesson with us and literally teaches and testifies better than like 80% of missionaries that I know. Very cool to have such a strong member to help us out. We finished off the night with a huge cake topped with vanilla brigadeiro 

You bosom shall burn
In the middle of the night our fan pulled a "Leonardo Dicaprio's wife in inception" move and ended up broken on the floor. So we slept the whole rest of the night in a pool of our sweat. 

Friday
Friday is lost to the gnomes. 

If you shall spend the rest of your days
Saturday we worked our butts off to invite people to church. We also had an epic lesson with Sara about Alma 34. Also all 3 of us broke our umbrellas in an impromptu brella bash at night. 

How great shall be your joy
Actually, a bunch of people came to church! Including some people we had no idea would come! Sunday was epic. 

We also finally met the 9 year old who we've had marked for baptism for like a month lol. She's a kind of a little bit inactive member's daughter but she's coming back to church and we set up a bunch of epic lessons for this week, including going to the temple I'm literally so excited to go back! Baptism for her this week so that's exciting. 

All things testify of me
Today we went to Itapecerica again to have lunch with Maria and watch planet earth clips haha. I love nature stuff it's so cool.

So yeah. Awesome last two weeks, and despite the heat I am still loving it out here. Love you all and hope you are well!

God is Good, 
Elder Ebbert



































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