I'm running behind today so it'll be a quick letter, but this past week was amazing. We were really wanting to have a baptism, so Elder Gaertner was led to a young man that'd already been to church and Brazil's version of mutual a few times. We taught him on thursday, marked his baptism for sunday, and he accepted the invite!! He's only 13 so we had to get the authorization from his dad which looked like it was slim chances cuz I guess his dad has been known as "The guy who wants to kill the missionaries." Haha. Anyways, after a TON of prayer, we taught him again on saturday, he was interviewed, and then baptized on sunday!! I've never seen anyone progress so fast and accept the gospel like he did, truly was a blessing and miracle. Then on monday we did a comp study and really swapped and mixed up the way we taught, and that along with a lot of help from the Spirit, we had an amazing work day. Last friday we taught 8 lessons, and no one accepted a date to be baptized. Monday though, we only taught 3 lessons and had SIX people accept dates!! I've never EVER had so many people accept dates like that... it is SO incredible how the Lord can bless us. Now we're just focusing on the fact that it is totally him that is doing these results, and being completely obedient 100% so that He can keep protecting these people against the bad influences that always come when someone accepts a date. Some of these 6 people are SO prepared... it is absolutely amazing the way the Lord does that.
I also had some interesting foods these past weeks. First, I had this little dish called Dobradinha. It used to be like a dish for slaves, and I can see why. It's basically cow intestine stew... and it smells like pure dogfood. The nasty dry kind that we always buy for Luke. The taste wasn't as bad as the smell luckily, but the consistency = nasty. The pieces of intestine still had the little microscopic finger-like things (i think they're called philli or filli or something like that?) Yuck... but it was a fun experience anyways. I also went to a restaurant and had horse meat... It was in a patty like beef usually is so it wasn't that weird or bad, but just thinking that it was horse was kinda odd. Austin'll probably know what this is but I had a dessert called Sagu. It reminds me of flavorless jello, but with like a fourth of the water you'd usually add, cuz it's really really thick. Definitely one of those foods you can't explain haha. I'm enjoying all these new foods though, Brazil's fun haha.
Well, this next week is looking really bright and I'm very excited to work. The Lord has really been blessing us a lot, and I'm excited to do my part and really put my shoulder to the wheel. Nothing like LDS puns. I love this work and things are going great out here. Thank you all for all you do and especially for your prayers. Hurrah for Israel!!]
-Elder Ballard
Pic - This is Hugo! (pronounced ooh-goo haha)
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