Leadership with the ups and downs

This week has been up and down. Our numbers this past week have been down.  I have learned that more than half of your set appointments will fall through. It has been a bit of a rough week for the Piracicaba central gang. 

 We are still working with Seila and Socrates for a baptism.  Bianca, their daughter, drew me some pics.
Another special child drew this of me...I was impressed.  The hair is nice.
We had our first interviews with our mission president this week. He basically just told me how awesome I was. ;) It was funny though because, from what I've been told; usually the first interview with him while in the mission field is like 30 minutes and the others are like 15.  Mine was like 7.  He said he was glad, but also surprised because most of the new missionaries are super overwhelmed and just cry all through the first interview. I was like nope, I'm good. He told me that he can tell that I have helped my companion as well.

Yesterday we had weekly planning and my companion was struggling due to the lack of progress with some of our investigators. I was suggesting things and he just kept saying it doesn't matter what we do, we can't help them. I pulled out preach my gospel and read some stuff on hope and other Christlike attributes. I asked if we could say a prayer together. I offered the most sincere prayer I think I have ever said.  Afterwards, we made very specific goals concerning how we should help our investigators progress.

We both had also been struggling a bit at saying thoughtful prayers because when you pray so much while on your mission, often it gets repetitive. We set some goals for this as well. 

After finishing, we had about an hour of proselyting time left and as we were walking out the door I asked my companion to say a prayer. It was a really great, thoughtful, and fervent prayer.

We left our place not knowing where to go. There weren't many people to talk to but one man stopped us randomly and asked if we could visit him later this week. His name was Pedro. We then asked if we cold share a short message with him right then and he replied "yes". We then introduced ourselves a representatives of Jesus Christ and he started to cry. We shared a short message; took down his address.  He checked 4 or 5 times to make sure we had the correct address. We also found out he has a problem with smoking. 

When we walked away we thought, he is prepared, but needs help, good thing that is what we do. It was super awesome and I look forward to seeing him this upcoming week. I then testified to my companion that fervent prayer and optimism is important, especially in our work, which is often times very hard. Its funny because sometimes I feel like I am the senior companion. Its fine though, I'm gaining a ton of experience.

Optimistic and love life.

Love you guys, Elder Rhodes
Location: Piracicaba - State of São Paulo, Brazil

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