This was a sweet week. We are still working out the house situation since we were kicked out of our house a little while ago. I think well end up moving back into that house sometime this week. The whole things a mess because the owner lives in Brockon Massachusetts. Everyone from here either has been, or will go to Boston or Brockton. Anyway, we might move back into that house, who knows. But it really was a solid week here. Its kinda tough, like I have never had thoughts of going home, but its sad because my whole MTC district is going home except for me and Elder Crooks.
We are scheduled to have 2 baptisms this week, and 4 next week, and a bunch after that. Our mission baptises like crazy, its what we do haha. The first one is Lanna. She is like about 40 and has two kids. Her 13 year old daughter is amazing, already a member. And we are baptizing her son Lano next week if he will stop smoking weed, those drugs….. but she owns a bar, which is against the baptism rules, but we got special permission to baptise her because there is no way she could support her family if she didn’t. She’s kinda shaky, and i'm honestly not even sure here baptism will go through, we’ll see.
The other kid is Zito, an absolute stud! We found his 2 weeks ago, on a reference from a member, which is the way to find people by the way. He is 19, 6.3 with a stud afro. Were baptising all the gangsters from Achada Traz haha. But seriously, God prepared his heart to meet with the missionaries, he was way ready. Right from when we taught him he wanted to know more, asked for a Livero de Mormon, and wanted to come to church. He came to church last week, and 2 sessions of Conferencia Gerneral this weekend. So he went to 2 weeks of church, which is the requirement to baptise someone. But its the most amazing thing ever to talk to him, and literally watch his life change in 2 weeks. And its the coolest thing ever to know that I played a tiny instrumental part in changing his life. Not just for on this earth, but for the next, its incredible, this work is amazing!! He’s one of my favorite investigators.
Between the next two weeks we have 6 baptism dates, and 5 are boys from the ages of 17-23, which is sweet because its some priesthood, and they are popular guys around the town so hopefully they will have a positive influence on Achada Traz, and the area will explode! It’s incredible!
The language is definitely kinda coming along. Its just a process, and its not an on and off switch, it’ll take time. One of the toughest things is just the way you have to think. Because a normal sentence in english wouldn’t make sense in portuguese, so you have to change your vocab and just the way you think in general. And its frustrating because we study Portuguese for a couple hours a day, then we go out and everyone speaks creole, which is annoying. But some people speak portuguese, you just have to ask. I can hold my own talking about church stuff in Portuguese, but other than that I really can’t do that well, but it'll come. The important thing is to stay Patient like elder Uchtdorf says, work as hard as you can at it, and have faith in the gift of tongues. Its amazing how that works, but it does. We only speak Portuguese when we are with a member, which is all day when we teach because we only teach with members, its a lot safer that way. And we speak all Portuguese during comp study, language study, and daily planning. It’ll come.
One thing we do sometimes when I get way frustrated with an investigator or mad about the language, or just my temper boils up, we walk down about two blocks and there is an amazingly beautiful view of the ocean. And it just kind of reminds me that i'm in the best mission in the world, and how pretty the world really is.
About Conferencia General... definitely an interesting experience haha. The whole zone goes to the church in Santo Antonio to watch it. Thats the church on the Cape Verde video. It was so cool to see that church. The whole thing is in Portuguese. It’s a mission rule to watch it in portuguese, unless you have an investigator that only speaks english, then you can watch it with him in english. So despite our absolute best efforts to find someone from Nigeria,(they’re the only people here that speak english) we watched in in Portuguese. We watched every single session, everything in portuguese. It was good, I can pick out a lot of the words, because they're church words, but i had a tough time putting them all together and really grasp the thought of what he was saying. It was fun though.
We got all six of our baptismal dates to go to conference, which counts as church, so that was a major plus. The downside is we’re completely broke now because we bought taxis for all of them to get there. But its good because the word will provide a way for it to all work out.
But it was sweet, I met every single person from cape verde thats on the video about cape verde (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xF-rySmUGo I felt like a little kid, it was sweet!
Today we went to a nice brazilian restaurant because it was a couple guys year mark, and someone’s birthday. It was so nice, and out of our price range and sweet!! When I say nice, its cape verde nice, this place is like La Fiesta with flies everywhere, but for cape verde its 5 star haha.
This place is so crazy, you guys have no idea. Ive been here for three weeks, and ive never imagined a world like this. And the difference between the nice houses in Achada Traz, and the huts are insane. 2 of our investigators live next to eachother. I’m not even kidding, right next to eachother. One has a living room with a couch thing, and a flat screen t.v. Oderts house, the other one, is literally made from metal and garbage the staple together. Ive taught so many lessons just sitting on the floor, or on dirt. I put some of my nice ties at the APs house because I didn't want them to get dirty. every piece of clothing I bring here, and wear, will be absolutely thrashed by the time i get back, there’s dirt everywhere.
Anyway I've gotta go, the church is true, love all you guys, Africa is definitely a different world but its such a sick experience.
Much Love
Elder Jarvis
p.s Cockroaches, Everywhere, you get used to it though The other house is just as safe, its in Achada Grande too, good decently safe area. We have daily showers, pretty much. We have been blessed to have running water 5 of the last 8 days which is sweet!
We actually have a decently big lizard that lives with us, in our house! That a little scary, but he eats soo many bugs, so we keep him around!
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