Tough to get 'em to church!

Dina and her grandson

Well, this week was sweet!  Sorry if the letter is a little shorter than usual, I tried to send some pics for like an hour but it didn't work.  The computer here are like the ones we used in 1990, so things just take a while, and everything is old ha.  But this week was solid!  We had two baptisms, Jaineny, and Dina.   Jaineny is the daughter of Nobert and Nice, my first family.  She is 14, and she was super sweet, listened well to everything, and was just incredible.  Her baptism was pretty cool, and we have to baptize one more kid to complete that family, so that’s pretty cool!

Jaineny and her mom Nice, and little brother

Dina is 52, and she is awesome!  She stopped drinking coffee after we taught her for like three days, came to church all on her own, and is just awesome!  The first time she prayed, she kinda started crying and feeling the spirit and it was incredible.

Our area is so amazingly cool.  I’m sure its different for every mission, but in our mission, anyone will let you in the door.  Like we can just go walk up and down the street and anyone will let us in and listen to our message.  The BIGGEST problem is getting people to church.  Our church is so far away!  And we commit people to baptism like crazy, like all the time, but they never ever come to church.  We have so many baptism dates marked that we have to push back because they don’t come to church.  And it's frustrating at times because they are way sweet when we teach them, and they want to get baptized, and we visit them before church and they say they will come. Then they never do...  Really that’s the biggest problem we have for sure.  This week we only had 1 investigator at church, and she'll be our baptism for the week, she's chill! And I was kinda feeling down and sorry for myself during church, because all our investigators are fubeckas (lazy, in Portuguese).  But then Nobert bore his testimony, and Edson bore his, and Zito bore his, and Nice bore hers!  And sacrament meeting was just filled with all our recent converts bearing their testimonies, and it was incredible.

Sundays are the day "Day of Rest", but for us, its the day of work.  We have church at three, so we go out to find people to come to church at ten, and spend 5 hours walking around in the African sun to babysit our investigators to get to church, and it doesn't really work.  That’s definitely, by far, just the most frustrating thing.  But other than that its sweet!  Everyone here is so cool, and I love the people we work with, and there are so many neat people here.  We have awesome investigators too, they just don’t come to church... But its all good, still the best mission in the world.

Gosh if you guys only knew the view I get everyday!  We walk down this huge hill to get to our church, and the Zone Leaders house.  And the hill sucks, but the view of the hill is just amazing!  It captures the whole city of Praia, and the lights, and the ocean with the beach! Especially at night, when you cant see how dirty the city is, its incredible, it would blow your mind!  And from what I hear, a bunch of the other islands have even better views so it’ll be interesting to see all of those!  Not that I ever want to get transferred or leave Praia, Praia is the best!  And I get to serve with my best friend Elder Gooch, so its still the coolest thing ever.

I just realized that I never write about the languages I need to learn.  I guess its probably because I don’t worry about it a ton.  I love Portuguese, when people speak that, my eyes just light up, its so nice.  And that’s what we study, and I feel decently good at that.  I never really worried about learning Portuguese, I just figured it would come,with speaking, which is what everyone says.  And worrying about it wouldn't do a ton of good.  The advice I would give to anyone trying to learn a mission language is prayer, obviously.  Because God called us to our missions for a reason, and he's not going to leave you alone while you’re trying to learn it.  That’s probably whats helped me the most!  Everyone says don’t stress about it, so I don’t.
Creole is just a native language that is tough to learn, and were not "suppose" to learn.  But 90% of the people here speak it, and that’s probably the most frustrating thing.  But I can't complain, I'll learn it.  But so many more people speak Creole that Portuguese, it's unreal.
This week I also did a division with Elder Darling, the ZL, and he's sweet!  We had a lot of fun, and worked hard!  I got to hang out with Elder Evans a little too!  We were good friends in the MTC, and we're in the same district, so that’s sweet!

Once again sorry for the short letter, it will be even shorter next week because I'm sending more pics next week.  I love you all, the church is true, and God is everywhere in our lives.  Let yourself be happy!!!
Love Elder Jarvis