Biggest São João In The World!

One more week flew by and yes, I'm still alive! It's currently pouring rain and freezing, but that doesn't stop us from doing the Lord's work! This was a very hard, yet rewarding week, so let's get right into it. 

São João

This week was the peak of Brazil's São João holiday, and the city that I'm in, has the biggest São João in the world! Some of the biggest performers in Brazil were holding concerts right outside of our apartment. To celebrate, everyone eats corn. I'm talking corn on the cob, roasted corn, corn soup, corn dessert, corn cake, whatever you can do with corn, they eat it. They also celebrate by throwing "fireworks" everyone. And when I say fireworks, I literally mean bombs! These things are insanely loud and get me jumping in the middle of our lessons. On Saturday night, we had the opportunity to bring a couple of investigators to our Stake São João party. There was food, square dancing, and I got to see all of my missionary friends from this side of the mission! This holiday is crazy!

It's Growing!

Honestly my favorite thing ever here is sitting in the chapel and counting all of the members come in and take their seats. We are focusing so much on visiting all of the members in this ward and helping these members visit other members, and it's starting to pay off. When we got here, we had 20 people at church, and yesterday, we had 36 people at church! I love this area so much and I love each and every member in my ward who come to church every week!

One Day, One Lesson

On Thursday, my comp woke up throwing up, with a stomach ache, head ache, and body chills. I let him rest all morning, reading scriptures to him by his bedside lol. He didn't think that he would be able to work that day, but we had both felt really strong that we needed to go through with one of our lessons that we had marked. I gave my comp a blessing and we headed off to the lesson. We had planned to teach the restoration lesson, but when we got there and started to get to know them, I felt really strongly that we needed to teach them the Plan of Salvation. We then taught a mom and her 17 year old son about the Plan of Salvation and the spirit was super strong! Afterward, they said that we had answered some questions that they didn't even know they had and a doubt that this mom's husband has had for 13 years! I'm so happy to keep teaching this family and help them to have an eternal family one day!

other cool things :)

- finally went through with another toe surgery and my toe is currently super swollen, bloody, and full of puss. I'm been limping everywhere this week.

- I stepped on an anthill waiting for someone to answer the door, and when I walked in, my legs started itching super bad. There were about a thousand ants crawling up my legs, in my socks, and biting me. Was not fun.

- We ate lunch yesterday with a Venezuelan family yesterday and they only spoke spanish. Going into the lunch, I was pretty confident with my understanding spanish skills, but I came out of there like it was my first week in the mission. Spanish is hard! Portuguese > Spanish.

- We visited a member yesterday, and when we got there, there was an ambulance outside of the neighbors house. We then see this woman getting wheeled out of the house screaming. Turns out, she had tried to take her own life and stabbed herself in the process. Everyone was super sad, and we were able to give a message of comfort in the Lord's time. 

That's it for this week! I love you all and hope you all have a great week!

Elder Ware