Monday, December 16, 2013

16 Dec. 2013

Thanks for the recipes and the pictures. They were awesome! Hopefully we get a chance this week to try and make the cookies. This week will be super busy for us, but it will be awesome! Tomorrow we need to get up at 4 am to catch a bus to the mission Christmas Conference which is in Alvorada which is quite a distance from us. Found out that apparently i won´t be able to play the piano for it b/c they decided to change the hymn from Joy to the World to Angels we have heard on high and i don´t have time to practice up for it.  If I have time to touch a piano today, maybe but I really don´t know. It will still be awesome anyway. Wednesday my zone gets to go to the temple which is in Ponte Negra, which isn´t as far, but its still a bit of a bus ride, especially with this bus system. The rest of the week will be pretty normal but will still be really exciting.
  This past week has also been a little crazy. We had district meeting this past Tuesday which was awesome, for the first time we didn´t have to travel to it because we decided to have it at our chapel. Our district has only 4 people but it is still pretty awesome. Wednesday was a baptism for the 2 girls I wrote about last week. That was interesting to say the least. We showed up at their house with a determination to get them baptized.  One of the girls came out and said that she didn´t want to be baptized, but we quickly talked to her and explained how important baptism is for us and she changed her mind.  We were planning our walking while they got a ride with the YW President but the YW President told us that she couldn´t do it when we had called earlier that day so we were going to just walk everyone to the chapel, which is not that far, but its still a good distance. However, the same girl said that she didn´t want to walk, so after some intense negotiations we called a taxi and got them to the chapel. We were not taking no for an answer!  Got to the chapel to discover that had drained the font and it was 7:30 at night. The YW presidency met us at the chapel and talked the girls while we filled the font. Generally it takes about 1hr-1:30hr b/c its a lot of water and its really slow, but we opened the water as fast as would come out, hooked up a hose to help it fill, and had a bucket brigade going from three different bathrooms in the chapel to get this font filled. Got it filled in about 30min and notified the girls that it was time to change into baptismal clothes. We asked them who they wanted to baptize them and they chose me so I quickly got changed into baptismal clothes and we waited for them to get changed, but when they emerged only one had on baptismal clothes. You can guess which didn´t. We asked her why and she said she wanted to watch her sister get baptized first and then get changed. We just rolled with it, got pictures and got the baptism rolling. The first girl was baptized and then the other went and got changed, got her baptized, with no more problems. They weren´t able to get to church this Sunday b/c one was sick and the other had to work so hopefully this Sunday we can confirm them without anymore more problems. Thursday was normal, no drama which was nice. Friday was the same, nothing of major import happened, but Saturday was different. Saturday we were going to sing at the temple with a bunch of other choirs and we needed to be there at 6pm and it would start at 7pm.  Our ride was going to pick us and the ZLs up and take us to the temple. The ZLs were going to be here doing baptismal interviews for us. Morning was normal, just going around warning our investigators that we would be swinging by later that day with the Zone Leaders to do interviews. We were expecting the ZLs at about 3:00-3:30 but that time rolled around and they stilled weren´t here . Decided to go grab so dinner b/c we wouldn´t have a chance later that day and the ZLs called and told us that they were at the bus terminal waiting for the bus to get to our area. Anyway, as were finishing up dinner our ride called and told us that turns out he couldn´t take the ZLs as well b/c his parents would be in the car as well. Called the ZLs and told them not to catch the bus and apparently right after we called the bus rolled on by(they´d been waiting for an hour).  Ran to the house to drop some stuff off and we´d just left when our ride comes hurtling down the street and picks us up and whisks us to the temple. The concert went great. We had a missionary choir of about 100-150 missionaries from Zona Manaus singing an arrangement of Called to Serve and Joy to the World in 3 different languages (Portuguese, English and Spanish). Pretty awesome. Weren´t able to get a ride back so took the bus and staggered back home at about 10-10:30pm.  Sunday was normal, had the ward primary program and that was really cool to see but a little weird to hear the songs sung in Portuguese. This week has been a little crazy.
I´m a little jealous that you all have snow! Its super hot here and we haven´t had a lot of rain. Thanks for all the pictures! We´re going to be skyping. What time would be good to skype you guys. I don´t know where exactly we are going to be skyping, but if you see a random brazilian name pop up its probably me! Have a great week! I miss you all! Feliz Natal!
Love Elder Battraw



No comments:

Post a Comment