Hello one and all welcome to another week in Inamar.....
My first baptism in Brazil was AMAZING. That right there is why I’m here and it makes all the days that I’m dripping with sweat and my calves are burning worth it. But more details on that later, on to my week!
Not much went down this week because we had meetings and went to the temple and all I can really think about was yesterday (the baptism) so looks like I’ll just start the rambling and see where it takes us. First off a little language rambling, it’s still a work in progress... it’s hard having an English comp because we both want to speak English all the time so it’s always kind of a struggle to always be talking Portuguese but really for me I think it is probably better. This week I’ve been trying to work on using subjunctive conjugations and it’s hard to learn how to speak correct Portuguese because none of the Brazilians do but speaking of the spelling I found out I’ve been spelling ala de ingles wrong this whole time... is aula not ala... got to love it oh and during English class we were talking about days of the week and stuff like that and how do you say the morning of yesterday? Is it really yesterday morning because that is what we decided it was but that sounds really wrong. Language limbo. Also this week kind of flew by as a whole but day by day things either fly by because we have way too much to do in one day or they crawl by... you have to think that the work for one day can transfer over but apparently its doesn’t but on to yesterday!!
Sunday was a day of firsts, my first testimony meeting in the field and the first baptism. I’m sure you have all caught on that church meetings are kind of extremely different here but whoa testimony meeting was way cool! I really like that everyone bore their testimony because our ward is a little small but I felt like really everyone wanted to share which was shocking to me! There really was no break from person to person and I don’t think there was never not a line to bear testimonies either but now onto the highlight of the week, the baptism. First off the baptism was supposed to be at 3:00 so of course we plan on leaving an hour early because it takes 20 minutes or so by bus to get to the stake center because our ward "building" of course doesn’t have a font but so we are all gonna meet there and we are waiting for the bus which really NEVER showed up. It took like 45 minutes to show and at that point we had already called one of the 3 people in the ward with a car to come pick us up but we finally arrived and the font was just taking its time filling up because the people that were supposed to start it early didn’t do it early enough so we are all carrying buckets and buckets or water from the kitchen to the font and dumping. It was quite a sight but finally the font gets filled we had some special musical numbers by some ward members who we actually had an extremely good turnout in people coming especially considering that last time Elder Pedersen said he got a baptism it was just the kid, his mom, the Bishop and them so man am I glad people showed up! We had a solid 25 or so people and after the opening stuff it was time for the baptism! I was kind of freaking pumped :) so Rafiel and Natane go into the water which turned out to be nice and cold and it may have taken four times before he got here all the way under but after what felt like a lot of stuff not going how I had pictured but the testimonies after and the spirit that was there was amazing. It’s amazing to me how you really can go from any state to just complete joy within seconds when the spirit is there. Natane's whole family is Catholic so that’s why only her Mom came because I’m sure the rest of the family didn’t really support it but her Mom was crying and it looks like the spirit has opened her mom up just enough to let us and I think there is a chance that we may be able to get her as well. With all the things that could have gone a little better it really felt perfect because all that mattered was that Natane became a member of the only true Church of Jesus Christ on the earth and that she became perfectly clean. Isn’t that absolutely mind blowing if you think about it. We really can become as Christ was, perfect even if it is only for a little while we have the opportunity to partake of the sacrament and renew the sacred covenants we made and become clean again. Also on Sundays we are usually supposed to go home early because we have renew the area book but we felt like we should talk to a few more people which ended up taking the whole night but it was well worth it. The spirit really shows you exactly what you need to do even if the things you were planning on doing were good too. We ending up having a family night at a members house and after much convincing got an investigator and her 2 kids to come with us and wow was the spirit there too. We watched kind of a really weird little video on the organization of the Church which I was a little nervous about but after once again the testimonies that were born saved the day. The simple yet powerful testimonies about Christ and His Atonement brought the spirit there so strong. we may have to go to her church before she will come to ours so I will tell you how that is next week. Wish us luck because the Assemblea de Deus doesn’t like us but we now have an in with her. So essentially Sunday just rocked :) definitely a great day :)
But really that is pretty much it for the week! We went to 25 de Março today (yes they have streets named after days of the month and no one knows why...haha) but it’s essentially just Brazilian Chinatown but on steroids!!! It was insane and I kind of ate it up :) I wasn’t joking when I said start saving up so we can come back here :) but that’s it for now I think.... até mais!
Eu amo todos de voces com todo meu coração.
ELDER GUBLER
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