I am sitting here, sweating, in the hot cyber cafe with my tender companion, Sister Torres, and Sister Kemer and Sister Marzarella. We ate lunch together again today- spaghetti, grilled vegetables, banana/apple bread (another Sarah Kemer specialty), and water with ants. Yep, I´ve gotten used to drinking baby ants. However, I have not gotten used to eating horse flesh yet. I just can´t do it. It offends people when I don´t eat their beans, but seriously, it´s just too much for me. I´m good with cow heart, chicken neck, and even this weird dish made with chicken blood they said they were going to make for me this week (thankfully it didn´t end up happening), but Black Beauty is too far.
So, something I learned this week is that Irmãos are way more fun than Irmãs. We spent the whole week trying to convince all the women of the ward that our cooking competition between the women wasn´t actually a competition, but something fun that they could bring investigators to. They were so worried that people were going to judge them for their culinary skills. I´d forgotten that we women are more sensitive. With the men, all of them made their cakes like an hour before the activity, most of them were pretty awful, but the activity was really fun and a huge success! We got tons of references. After putting in our best efforts with this activity, turns out that only TWO families from the ward came.. it was pretty frustrating. Thankfully, from my expreriences in Mosqueiro, I´ve learned to make the most of these situations and move on even though I want to get bitter and refuse to plan any more activities. In spite of this failure, the people want another activity, so we´ll see if I stay here another transfer.
Unfortunately, because of the work we were putting into the activity, we didn´t have a lot of time to follow up with our investigators, soooo... not a lot of success at church yesterday either.. but, other than these stumbling blocks, we had a great week!
At our zone meeting on Wednesday, our ZLs gave a training on finding new people to teach and challenged us to invite everyone to be baptized on the first contact. A LOT of people did not like this suggestion, and to be honest, a little voice in the back of my head was saying, ´´you have never been a huge fan of this kind of ´just baptize at whatever cost!´ missionary work´´. But at the same time, I´ve gained a strong testimony that the priesthood has been restored and ALL of our leaders, even the not so great ones, have been called of God and recieve revelation from Him. It´s up to me to follow. Thankfully, I have a companion that´s on the same wave length, so what have we been doing all week? Baptism contacts! And it´s actually been really great! Our area, which usually has 3 new investigators with baptismal date per week, had 12 new investigators this week, 10 with baptism date marked. Obedience first, and the miracles follow.
A lot of other stuff happened, but that´s all I have time for.
I love you all!
Sister Barkdull
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