Elder Rhodes Missionary Experiences while serving the Brazilian people

This week was really good. We had a baptism!  Augusto was baptized and now his mom is interested to learning more, It was super funny too because the water was very cold and when he got in his eyes lit up like what the heck, and we just laughed. It was cool to see our work get rewarded finally. The last baptism in this area was a year and a half ago and right now we have another one this week and 4 more on the 15th of December. The members of the ward love us because of the work we are doing.  The Lord has blessed us. Portuguese is good and I can speak pretty well, i think. We did splits with one of our zone leaders this week for a baptismal interview with Augusto. I worked with Elder Estigarribia and I learned a lot from him. We actually invited some people to be baptized in our first contact with them. They accepted but we still have to teach them lessons before we can have them be baptized. It was super cool though.  We also taught this la...

Yea this week was pretty fast. We have had a lot of good lessons. Yasmin and Julio quit drinking coffee and so did Alice. We are teaching a new guy named Carlos who we are going to try and mark a date for baptism this week. Shiela and Socrates are doing good, still waiting on the documents of Socrates to arrive.  Alice is doing well and her parents are interested in the church now because of her. Augusto will be baptized for sure this week. We have talked with everyone and it is a sure thing this time. He is super excited and actually invited us lol. He also asked bishop to announce it over the pulpit. We talked to his mom this week and she has started reading the Book of Mormon.  She has a ton of questions which is awesome.  Funny story, we walked all the way to Augsto's house which is like a 5 mile walk. He called us and said he wasn't home. There was a store nearby and I was like i need a snack. So we went in and when we left Augusto's mom was behind us ...

We had transfers this week and received a new missionary in our house. Elder Aguilar, he is cool and super funny. He is from Peru. This week started with me throwing out my back first thing Wednesday morning. I couldn't really move and had basically concluded that I wasn't going to be able to do anything that day because we walk roughly 8-10 miles a day. In addition, we have to carry our bags with books and stuff; it's not light. I decided I would receive a blessing. In the blessing, Elder Costa said that I would be healed according to my faith.  After the blessing, I felt the same. I got to thinking and I remembered that faith is shown by action. I decided this day would be just like any other day.  We had a short planning session and left the apartment to work. I walked all day with hardly any pain whatsoever. I was literally healed. To bring a little levity, we found this fruit called jaca which is just a giant ball of whatever.  We grabbed a bunch of them an...

This week we received the news for transfers which is tomorrow. Elder Costa and I will stay together and Elder Wright stays as well. Elder Barros has almost 6 months in this area so he is getting transferred. Sheila and Socrates are awesome. They were considering not getting married.  We were able to teach them an awesome lesson and let them know transfers were this week. Shiela had a real fear we would both get transferred. I don't know why but I guess she just loves us so much! Lol ;). On Sunday at church, Socrates got up and bore his testimony about how before the missionaries came to him his life sucked and he didn't believe in God. He also stated his life is even harder now than it was before, but because of us and the church he is happier.  He is able to see the blessings in his life more easily. While he was bearing his testimony Sheila whispered to us that she said a super sincere prayer and promised God that if me and Elder Costa both stayed in the area they wou...