10-16-07

Hi!

 

Along with all of you guys, our time here was also affected by daylight savings, except it’s spring here, which means that we sprung ahead an hour and you all fell behind an hour.  So, instead of being 3 hours ahead of Idaho time, we’re now 5 hours ahead.

 

Last Friday was our last time proselyting here at the CTM.  It was awesome.  We went to a huge park (Ibirapuera I think.  You might be able to see pictures online.  It’s a pretty famous park.)  The day we went was a huge holiday here in Brazil - Children’s Day.  The park was full of families with their children.  That kind of made things easier, because there were an unlimited amount of people, they were all in families, and they were all sitting down in groups so we didn’t have to chase them down.

Elder Arslanian and I were praying the entire week before for the Lord to be preparing the people we would teach.  And as a result, 3 of the people that we thought were most receptive actually came up and talked to us.

Perhaps the coolest experience was when we went to talk to one man who was sitting on the grass by himself.  We started talking and he’d always say something that made it sound like he was interested.  Then he’d always end up saying something like "I’ve determined that all organized religion is corrupt and useless for people who want a one on one relationship with God" or "It makes me suspicious when people try to share religion with me.  They’re always after something.  You guys say it brings happiness to you when you spread the gospel - does that mean you wouldn’t ever be happy unless you went around talking to people like me?”  So after a comment like that, we always thought we knew exactly what to say, so we’d explain more to him, and it seemed like he understood.  But then there was always something else that bothered him or didn’t make sense.  So it was this continual cycle for 45 minutes that we talked with this guy.  Eventually we told him we needed to go, left him a pass-along card, and invited him to call the number.  He told us that he wasn’t going to call, so we figured we had just wasted 45 minutes of our valuable time.

So, why did I say this was perhaps the best experience?  For one thing, we felt like we needed to talk with him, and we all had an enjoyable conversation (by far our longest so far in Portuguese).  But the real result was that after we had gone down the road and contacted a couple more people, one man came up to us.  He told us that he had been listening from a distance to a little of what we were talking about with that man, and he felt like he should talk with us.  He told us that his girlfriend told him not to talk with us "so I left her over there." :) That was the awesome experience that resulted out of 45 minutes of "wasted time."  He seemed so excited and happy when we told him of the Restoration and the Book of Mormon.  We read a little with him, and he told us he would read the whole book.

Well, that’s the only part I have time to share.  There were a bunch of families that we talked to, and I also felt really good about those contacts.  It was by far our best time proselyting.

 

We went to the São Paulo temple again this morning!  We were lucky.  Out of out 8 P-days here, we got to go 7 times.  We know a district that only went 5 times.

 

We leave the MTC early next Tuesday morning.  It’s kind of intimidating.  Even after 8 weeks so far and 1 left, no one feels like they’re ready (even though most of the elders said they couldn’t wait to leave the CTM on day 2!).

 

Love, Elder Allred