Glad to hear that everything is going well and all had a good time and are now home safe and sound!
Uh.. Mom I forgot the name of the speaker from the 70...it was such a long time ago. This week was crazy long! But it was something like Dobby Dobly... I don't know :)
Funny YOU ask that mother darling because I'm reading the Book of Mormon again while I'm here in English and I finally found my favorite scripture! I never really had a favorite before now but this is for sure it! 2 Nephi 22:2 oh shoot it might be 2:22... but I'm pretty sure its 22:2 it talks about Christ being our Savior. LOVE YOU
Man I made a list of the things I was going to tell ya'll but they feel like they were so long ago and I can't remember. There was one day when we were teaching our female instructor who is totally awesome! We taught her second, we planned our lesson were all set and stuff and the elders who went before us came in and were super ecstatic and said they baptized her, that she was in a great mood, and that it would be totally easy, right. So this gave me and Elder A some hope right. We were excited to ask her to be baptized too. We got in there and she gave us back the BOM and said she didn't have time.... everything we said, every confirmation that she gave us in the past and at that time... didn't matter. She could only say I don't have time. We gave her back that Book of Mormon then our time was up and she told us to act as though it was super easy and to not tell the other elders. I was so ticked at her in a fun way. But I guess that's real and that's something we have to get used to.
I got my first hair cut since I've been here. The Brazilian that cut my hair was an older chap who sang church songs to us in Portuguese the whole time! It was awesome! I'M BALD, haha, but it's nice and breezy :) it's amazing to see how much perspectives change when you go on your mission, like before I could not have studied the Book of Mormon for half an hour. I would go crazy! Now an hour isn't nearly enough time to satisfy and I start going crazy when I don't have that precious time to study.
More and more elders keep showing up. I know four of them from Helaman Halls at BYU, and elders every week keep leaving, our roommates left this morning along with a bunch of American elders who took us under their wing and of course a bunch of Brazilians left this morning that Elder A and I have become really good friends with. It was super depressing to see their rooms empty this morning. They taught us so much. They sacrificed so much to go on their missions. It makes us Americans look spoiled. A number of them cried when they came to say good bye to us. But after we got home from the temple today I saw our first roommate again. His visa didn't come in on time so he served in Sao Paulo for 3 weeks and he came back here to go to Cape Verde, it was so great to see him again and he was very impressed on how much our Portuguese had improved :)
Man, I'm getting so excited to go out into the field. Every talk, every week elders leave, stories from our teachers, going to the temple ahhh all these things just get me super pumped to go out into the field! It's crazy :)
It's awesome to see how my teaching is improving! I feel bad for my companion, cause there have been times when I've talked for a majority of a lesson just because I was on a roll and I found a way to connect a person's problem to the gospel and how it can help them. So sometimes I feel bad. We were able to commit our second investigator to baptism the other day. It was such an awesome feeling AND haha when we left the little room we were in and went into the auditorium we did a little victory dance and were just celebrating quietly and we turned to the left and the president, his wife and the counselors were taking picture with a district that was leaving that week hahahaha embarrassing! But it was worth it!
It is SO hard to teach a lesson in 15 minutes. That's how much time they give us. Especially the plan of salvation! I don't even think I could do it in English for 15 minutes and I have to speak Portuguese! So it'll be nice to get into the field and have real time! And get robbed haha love you mom :)
I love you family so much, I'm so happy for all of your examples and the strength that you give me every day. I won't let you down.
My testimony and love for the gospel grows every day. I love this gospel :)
Elder Ralph :)
