6/27/11

Oi Familia,

This week is São João. Its a big Catholic holliday here in Brazil, and it's even bigger here in the north. During this holiday, everyone makes camp fires in the street (with tons of smoke, we return home way stinky, and hardly breathing), play with fireworks (or bombs), they eat lots of corn, and they square dance (Brazilian style). So far I´ve really liked the holiday. We had a little party at the church, and our investigators really liked it. All of them said afterwards that they would go to church on Sunday, but none of them went, because they went to other parties...:P

This week was really bad for things falling through. We interviewed flavia, and had everything ready for the baptism, but then she went to the beach with her family during church. We had 20 people ready to go to church this Sunday, but then all of them had things come up. Tita was almost a month without drinking, and then this week he started to drink again... last night I came home exhausted, and overall dissapointed with our investigators. I didn´t know what else to do to help them. We went to visit Tita, and he was in his room crying, "Please just help me stop drinking!!! I need your help!!!" but we really couldn´t do anything to help while he was drunk. He gathered us all together, and he said a prayer to have strength to stop drinking, and then started to cry again when we had to leave. It made me want to cry too. He´s trying soo hard to stop drinking. He´s asking for help, praying, and going to church, but he´s still not succeeding. I think that just because of the that one experience with Tita, I´ll never drink in my life, and I don´t want anyone in my family to drink.

We saw an old man on the back of a motorcycle. The motorcycle stopped in front of us and we realized that the old man was falling off backwards. He almost fell on his head, but we ran up to him and caught him before he fell. It was really funny, and it was good that they stopped in front of us, or else he probably would have died. He too was drunk...

I taught some other drunk guys this week who do Macumba. Macumba is a crazy type of religion here where they beat drums and pray to statues and curse people. I think it's a little like voodoo. They let me play their drum, and showed me all of their statues. They gave me some crab to eat, and it probably wasn´t the smartest thing to eat, but I ate it anyway... and I´m still alive. I don´t think we have much of a chance to convert any of them, but it was still a cool experience to see what they believed, and I think we´ll talk with some of their neighbors and families this week.

The one really good thing that happened this week was that we had a baptism yesterday. It was an 18 year old kid named Joel. He´s awesome, and his family is really neat. He was a reference from a member. When church started he wasnt there, but then we went and got him during Sunday School, and baptised him after sacrament. He´s my first convert baptism as a senior, and now I feel like I´m really doing my job as a missionary. We´re starting to show some results for all the work that we´re doing.

I´m still excited in this work. We´re happy, and healthy, and learning a lot of cool things. I love you guys a lot, and I hope you never worry about me, because I´m having the time of my life right now, and I wouldn´t trade it for anything. Have a great week, and keep choosing the right!

Love, Elder Forsyth