May 26, 2014

This week was a week of miracles.  Our whole district worked to achieve the standards of excellence (partly because our district leader said he would buy us all açai if we did.  We are all prepared for uma festa de açai tomorrow!)

We helped two sons of god enter the waters of baptism yesterday, One, a 22 year-old rapoze from Ciará whose brother is a member of the church there and who is part of the fraternity of men who work here to build electrical towers, and another, a 55 year-old homem who has a small farm here in Mosorro. 

The first was so prepared to be baptized.  He had met with missionaries before and we only needed a week to teach him before he agreed to be baptized.  [The second investigator’s] baptism on the other hand was a miracle.  [He] lives behind his sister’s house and his sister was a big goleira (stopping him from being baptized) seeing that we always had to get through her before we could see [her brother]. There are three fences we have to get through to get to his house.  But this week we saw miracles when we were finally able to speak with [him and he] said that he wanted to be baptized. (This has happened three or four times, but he has never gone to the church to be interviewed or baptized.)  But this week, we were able to catch him the day [our district leader] came to our area for interviews.  When we asked [our investigator] if he wanted to be interviewed he said, "Vamos!". [Then] on Sunday when we drove to his house in a member's car, he was miraculously sitting outside waiting for us.  It was a miracle!

The other day when we went to [our investigator’s] house, he wasn't there.  When we asked his three nieces where he was, they told us that he was searching for one baby chick that was lost in the field.  He has a lot of chickens on his farm.  What an example [he is] of a true shepherd who leaves the ninety and nine to hunt for the one lost lamb?  He did find it in the end.  We later related this story to our district leader, which led to a humorous misunderstanding.  We told him, "Ele estava buscando um 'chick'." [“He was seeking a chick”]  After which he paused for a moment and said, "o animal, sim?" [“the animal, yes?”]  Of course he was searching for an animal.  He was not searching for a 'chick' (mulher) [woman] in his field! lol.

I finally was able to attach some photos: