This week was kind of hilarious. I love Sister Anderson so much. We just laugh all day long. Even when no one is interested and they just stare at us and then walk away, we just have fun anyways. We sing a little song about it: "A seed... a tiny seed..." It´s so wonderful.
Our first adventure: We had an appointment to teach a homeless man in the park (he is only homeless because he likes to sleep outside). We showed up and he was there with another person, but he had to leave for a minute, so we were just going to sit there and call some people while we waited. Suddenly, a man with a dog literally the size of a small cow showed up. It was un-leashed. It started walking towards us and Sister Anderson exclaimed, "It´s a baby cow! And it´s coming this way!" So we moved to the other side of the park, still waiting for our investigator to come back. I think it smelled our (her) fear, because it followed us. At one point it ran to its owner and bit his arm, so he hit it, and then we thought it would get mad, so as it ran back towards us, Sister Anderson was praying fervently in her head, until finally she cried, "Oh God, please help us!" After that, we left. Hopefully we´ll run into the investigator another day.
So there is this less-active member named Smith (pronounced Smeet) who works at a restaurant right below our house. Every night we shake his hand and he asks us to pray for him. This week he told me that I have a Portuguese smile (toothless??) and Sister Anderson that she looks like a grandma.
We had some member meals this week taht left their... footprints on our memory. One was chicken foot jardineira and the other was pig foot stew. With toenail and all.
We contacted a man stopped on his motorcycle. He didn´t want to give us any information, but called us the next day to say he´d gotten in a motorcycle crash and that he needed the number of a hospital. We called a member and got the phone number and gave it to him. But when we called back the next day he didn´t answer. So hopefully he is okay.
There is this Russian waiter that works in two restaurants, one right by the chapel and the other in our area. He always tries to teach us Russian words, but we can never remember them, so sometimes we just smile and shout a gibberish word across the street "Arribadoocha!" He always answers though. Gift of tongues?
We ran to catch a lot of buses this week. Some of them we missed. Some members told us at church they saw us running. Also the bus drivers here are REALLY good drivers. They can parallel park the buses!
On Saturday, we had lunch with our ward mission leader Joel, his less-active niece Joana, a recent convert Wang, and his investigator friend José. We ate some Portuguese rice and sausage and cabbage stuff, then for dessert had something called "burned eggs". It is literally scrambled eggs carmalized in sugar. It was interesting. But then we watched the Restoration video (it was Joel´s idea). He is awesome. He was talking about his baptism to José and how great it was. He also has like 4 callings, including ward secretary.
In Church yesterday we had the 5th Sunday lesson. For the first 40 minutes we "trained" two hymns with the regente (chorister?). He had music on his computer and would stop and say "No you´re not singing it right" and then teach everyone how it actually goes. It was so funny. I didn´t really understand why we were doing that but, now our branch knows a new hymn and will sing an old one on tune!
It was really hot this week. There was a weather forecast for the week: Every day--low 75 degrees. High 88 degrees. 60% humidity. More ice cream!
I liked this quote from Church: "The only thing that matters [in the work of the Lord] is that we do our part, and that we are willing to never give up." It doesn´t matter if the investigators aren´t interested, or if the people you home-teach never answer the door--it only matters if you do your part consistently and diligently. Then we will see miracles in our own lives, and in the lives of others as well :)
I hope that the first week of school was wonderful, and that it just gets better from here! I love you all TONS!
Com amor,
Sister Gidney
P.s. Don´t send me any more mail after this weekend!
Also, Joaquim got baptized back in Miratejo!
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