Padre Bernardo Week 18

New companion

Well, this week was all over the place as far as emotions go. The week overall was just great, but some of the saddest things in my mission also aconteceu (happened).

First of all about my new companion, he is just the best, he works so hard, we get a ton of work done and he is a way cool guy in general. He is from Curitiba, he only joined the church 2 years ago, and he's been on a mission for a year. He is also a rubiks cube master (seriously he has like 6 different types of rubiks cubes) all and all I'm really enjoying him.

So we set out to work this week with high hopes, getting him introduced to the area, and teaching tons of people. Overall we had some great success. Uiterson is progressing well, he just left for several days this week though.

This week Ester (the mother of our recent converts Juliana, Aline, and Estefany) did something awful. We arrived at their house and the mother simply told us that she will not take her kids to church anymore, she will not let them go alone, and she will not allow us to return to visit the kids either. Nothing that we said was changing anything. We ended up sharing a final message with the girls about studying the scriptures and praying, and we had to leave. That was easily the saddest moment of my mission. It's really hard how sometimes the people that want to go to church most, have something that won't let them go, and those that live nearby and have nothing stopping them, don't want to go. It is incredibly frustrating. But we know that God helps those that seek for it and he always opens up a way for his children to obey his commandments, so things will change here in the future, we just have to wait.

But after that detrimental experience I'm pretty sure that God tried to cheer me up by sending two hilarious drunk guys our way who were just way way gone. One of them was a really big and really sweaty guy who grabbed me and gave me a strong hug talking about how I was a man of God and just rambling, and in the meantime my companion was openly laughing his head off because he just thought my predicament was hilarious. The best part was that a family was watching us from their house and laughing as well, so we ended up walking up to them afterwards and one thing led to another and they are letting us come back to teach them! So God works in mysterious ways sometimes.

Anyways, that's it for this week. It looks like we have a good district here and I promise to get a picture of the new district next week, sorry about having two weeks in a row without pictures. In any case, Merry Christmas! and Merry Star Wars watching to everyone!! (I'm way jealous)

Love,
Elder Hyer