I'm just going to let out my frustration by saying the catch phrase for this week was ´´I can´t go to church this week because...´´. We taught a LOT of people and had a lot of people say they were going to church, but no one cares to follow up on their commitments it seems like. I would much rather just have them say it right up front ´´I'm not going to go to your church this week!´´.
I guess I'll just recount some of the happenings of this week, theres not a whole lot. Wednesday we had a few people planned out to teach, and most of the lessons went really fast, or there wasn't anyone home, so we ended up going around to members and talking with them and asking for references. The members here are not shy about sending us to their friends... we had like 3 references that day, and one of them, we ended up teaching 3 people in the street. Another thing, we were going to another reference (from the Mission office) and we found the house and knocked on the door, but we were a street over, so it was the wrong house! My companion asked if they would like to hear our message (the person who answered the door was an 18 year old girl, and when she saw us, she just opened the door and said the equivalent of ´´Hi! teehee´´. It made me chuckle inside, but we got to teach again! The problem is, when we went to teach again later, one of the members talked to us on our way and he asked where we were going. We told him and he just said ´´Cuidado.´´ It was about 5:00 at that time (the sun goes down at 5:30) so we went and knocked on a door really quick, no one was there, so we just headed out and aren´t planning on going back. It is one street from the boundary of our area, but we look like americanos, so no time is really safe down there.
The next day, it was pretty much the same. References and teaching the restoration. Although, at 5:30, we went to the church and sat in on their seminary there, and made appointments with the visitors to teach them. There are about 8 kids there, but it is an after school thing, so maybe about half of the member boys attend. Its kinda just like sunday school for them, just every day of the week.
There really wasn´t a whole lot else that happened this week. We mainly just taught, taught, studied and slept this week. The Bishop had a meeting with priesthood leaders after church about how to strengthen the ward. Its tough for them because they keep on getting split, so their numbers are small. They wanted to focus more on the inactive members rather than finding more. In Ceará, there are 65,000 members, and 15,000 are active. They wanted ways to bring these people back and my companion added that all the other churches around tell their members to go visit all the other members. Elder Bednar said during his talk that we shouldn´t pray for people who weren´t at church to be there next week, and then expect them to come. The way he did it was he said ´´Now, I know that the bishop has the authority, and he can stop me whenever I want, but I want to help those who didn´t come to church today, come to church next week, and this is what we are going to do...´´ and he proceeded to list off what he and the members of the ward were going to do. The only thing he asked was that the members of the ward didn´t go to the same house. After the meeting, they asked me how the missionary work was going in my home ward and I told them about how integrated the Missionaries, Ward Missionaries, Ward Council and members were and the Brother who asked me said. ´´That was the absolute opposite vision that the last missionaries had, and that is exactly what we want to be doing´´. So a big thumbs up to Brother Clements and Bishop Bird, they´re doing it right!
I don't have any other events, but as for news, We have another Zone meeting with Elder Claudio Costa (I have to specify here because there are about 20 Elder Costa´s) this week and other than that, it is still hot! I don´t have any other fabulous stories to recount so I´ll close with that!
Love you all!
Elder Cornwell
I took this photo off of Elder Branden Heath's page, since Kyle doesn't send photos! I put a little white arrow over Kyle's head so you are able to find him better. His is in the middle of the mass of missionaries. Click on the picture or a full-sized image.
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