February 15, 2011 - Letter Home

Greater Growth


Hey Family!

This week has gone a lot better than last! It's been raining pretty constantly here, but today opened up with clear skies and a light breeze and it's definitely getting pretty autumny here. Good!

We finished with our house destruction project FINALLY last Pday after my last e-mail. 
Negative things first: 
1. Because of constant rain and lack of cover, the people who were going to buy all the wood we made out of an old house REFUSED to buy our wood, saying that we had lied that it was good enough to use in construction! It's their fault they waited 3 more days to come by to get the wood, leaving it all in the rain. Shoot! 
2. The lady we were helping had promised to go to church and even accepted the invite to be baptized in two weeks, but she didn't answer the door when we stopped by Sunday morning to go to church! Shoot! 


Positive things: 
1. The wood has a little bit of value to be sold as firewood. 
2. Solid hard work in the rain is good for you. We got something DONE! It's a manly well-being booster. 
3. We did our best to help someone, and that's all that matters. We'll see if she changes her mind. We did our part.

We had a division, me with Elder Diego, an awesome Elder from Manaus that's in MY district. It was raining but we managed to go out and knock doors in the rain because everything else had fallen through. We found some cool people! The harder it is, the greater the reward. It was his one year mark on the mission so we decided to do the tradition of burning an old shirt that was laying around the apartment. We didn't have any matches or a lighter. There's this thing here (might be illegal in the states, I never remember seeing one there) the warms up water called a Rabo Quente (hot tail) which is a wire that you plug into an outlet, but to complete the circuit the wire ends in a spring. You put the spring in the water. The electricity can completely the circuit faster by jumping through water molecules, so it pretty much shocks the water to make it heat up. Cool huh? So to make my shirt-burning fire, I dumped a bottle of alcohol into a pitcher, and put the rabo quente into to start it on fire. So I think I used too much alcohol, because when I went to plug in the rabo quente, it EXPLODED THE ENTIRE PITCHER IN MY HANDS! The alcohol splashed over my entire lower body giving me crazy burns!!!! Elder Diego tried to put it out but it was just too much alcohol!! It was horrible!!!!

Haha, just kidding. Nothing exploded. Hehe. Good thing huh? Apparently alcohol can burn but doesnt conduct electricity, so the rabo quente didn't have any affect. Were you worried? Aren't you glad that didn't happen? ;D ;D ;D :P :] :/  Heh heh.


(Kay Lea here ---- remind me to beat him -after I hug him - when he gets home!)

We went and asked our neighbors for a match and we were able to light the shirt on fire. We were going to let it burn in the air, avoiding contact with anything that might get burnt, but the flames got too big and we let it drop on the floor. Not wanting to clean it up, we decided we wanted to scare Elder Carroll when he came back from the division, we left it their and put some candles around it to make him think something weird happened.

But what happens next morning!!!! PRESIDENT comes and gives us a surprise visit, and there in the middle of the floor is a burnt mess in the middle of our living room! Well, in the end, we were burnt after all by President, who after some scolding about how we could have burnt the house down, patted us on the back and said he knew what it was like to be 19. (But I'm 20 so I don't have that big of an excuse)

He also sat down with me and gave me a lot of encouraging words that I was needing. It was awesome. A lot of what he said were direct answers to prayers and questions which I have had in the last couple weeks, where I thought that if I prayed hard enough or excersized enough faith, those answers and feelings would HAVE to enter into my mind at that moment. But at the moment, I felt a quiet, peaceful silence, which left me a bit frustrated. But President was inspired to show up a couple weeks later and say exactly what I had asked for. Isn't that cool? God responded my prayers in a way that ended up being better and wiser than how I had wanted it to be. This is God's Church, and he does answer our prayers. He has a very effective system of answering our prayers and giving us not what we want, but what we truly need. This system is one that usually doesn't spoon-feed you all you ask for, but in the end that's all for our greater growth. Very cool.

So with a boost of motivation. I started a little game in our zone. It's pretty much like the movie "You Got Served", but instead of handsome street hoodlums it's even more handsome missionaries and instead of beatin out grooves it's teaching lessons. 
Our gang name is the Sharks, and we got up all in everybodies face to challenge the other districts to beat us in our numbers. We are going up against the Tiger Giants, the Tsunamis, and the American Bald Eagles, and it's not gonna be easy but I'm pretty sure we're gonna get out on top and win against the other districts and beat 'em down. Obviously it wouldn't be a good game if everybody took it too seriously, and I hope everybody can play it in good spirits, but it's motivating to get someone calling you from another district saying "You Sharks are going down, we just entered into a daycare and taught 30 new investigators that are excited to see our next Book of Mormon sing along game. CAN YOU DEAL WITH THAT?!?!" 
And then here I call up the rest of our peeps and tell 'em to stop in their tracks and find a daycare or retirement home to bust into. That's what it's all about.


hahaha

I'm a bit scared that I might come home just completely crazy. But maybe that's just me.

We had a crazy lesson last night - could I say Bible bash? - that lasted like 3 hours from these Evangelical ladies. One of them was a missionary for her church and at first just came out with these ridiculous questions and kept interrupting when we would try to answer. But we managed to answer all of their questions and explain the message to them, and in the end they all just stood there quietly as we testified to them of the 1st vision, and as we asked to say a prayer and leave, I gave the missionary lady the Book of Mormon. After the prayer she said really quickly, "Thank you for the visit. I'm not going to sleep tonight. I'll call you when I finish reading your book." And then someone sheepishly let us go. I really feel like the Spirit testified to her even though she was resisting it alot. I'm waiting for that call! But the Spirit definitely helped us proclaim the gospel to them. We did it!

Some investigator's are progressing and maybe we'll have a baptism here in a couple weeks. Your prayers are definitely helping alot. Thank you all so much. :)

Have a good week everyone, sorry I can't go into details about more little funny stuff, but be sure that I'm having fun and living it up and loving the gospel and making it fun by making a lot of Will Ferrell movie references in the middle of contacts just to see if Elder Carroll will keep his bacon and not blank out in the middle of his conversations. Contacting skills aren't real until they are tried. I just do it to help.
;)

Love love love forever! Thinking of all of you a lot still! You are with us here in Brazil,

See you later,

Elder Con