Cake Night

Hey mom, glad to hear you guys had a good Thanksgiving, and I hope things dealing with Grandma's estate get better. This week certainly had its ups and its downs for me. We had a mission conference and I received mail there, just a letter from Sage Johns and one from Grandma G, sent October 9th. But I should receive more mail from the mission home a week or two before Christmas so we´ll see what is waiting for me then. It´s really tough reading these letters from Grandma, its clear she didn't know what was gonna happen. It is still so hard to think that she is gone when I am so far away, my mind is having trouble grasping the fact that such a big part of me is gone and wont be there when I come home. This week I also got hit pretty hard with home sickness. Up until now a lot of my problems were really language based, all my doubts and negative thoughts and things, but now with Thanksgiving passing and Christmas on its way I´m getting hit on the other side with some REAL homesickness.  This is the first time I have ever really experienced this. SO that kinda sucks a lot. I´ll explain my week really quick and then try to respond a little bit to your questions.

The scenery in Joao Pessoa

Circa, our investigator, was progressing great - she accepted Word of Wisdom, let us take the last of her coffee out of the house but then we couldn't get in contact with her the rest of the week. Just yesterday we finally caught her in her house, she didn't go to church, apparently a Pasteur from her previous church has been talking bad about us ´´Mormons,´´ as well as her catholic mom.We are trying to overcome these influences and get her to go to church to feel the spirit there, but we´ll see. Her baptism has been put on the back burner.

I got a backpack because it was more comfortable than a shoulder strap bag to carry all my supplies in, but this week in doing laundry I discovered that with my sweat, and the friction, the backpack has caused dark grey stains on the backs of 7 of my white shirts... so that made me pretty angry. And I forgot my stain stick in my first area, so now all my shirts are stained! :(((

The day before Thanksgiving we had ´´pie night´´ They don't sell pies here so it was really cake night, because Elder K´s family always has pie night the night before Thanksgiving. That was a nice little relaxing evening. Thanksgiving itself was a bust, we had a mission conference with the area president of Brazil, a member of the 70, Marcos Aidukaitis, and he quiemou (´´burned´´) the Elders here for being disobedient, irreverent, and a lot of other things. I didn't really understand much at all during the conference which was disheartening. We didn't have lunch because of the conference and no members were able to feed us dinner so we didn't even have a meal on thanksgiving. :(

Every Saturday Elder K does an English Class in the chapel, and very week no one shows up... but this week was a surprise and we had 10 people, both members and non members, there! It made me long for English.  I could do so much more as an English speaking missionary I feel like. It is so frustrating.

It's always a struggle to get pesquisdores to church but this week we fasted and had 7 investigators attend church! We are hoping for some baptisms both this wek and the next. Vamos ver!

Quick thought for this week, in Mosiah 2:18 (we always focus on verse 17 but I liked verse 18 in my studies this week)

I don't have the English translation but you can look it up later, this is my best shot at it: ´´Behold you have called me your king, and if I, who you call your king, work to serve you, should you not work to serve one another?´´ 

I like this scripture because it shows the power of teaching by example, and I related it to missionary work in my study. We can preach all day long, but it is just important to be living what we are teaching, to SHOW people what they need to do as representatives of Christ. This is super important for missionaries! And King Benjamin was awesome at this, at being a good example to his people, AND his son. If you read in Mosiah 6:7 you can see how King Mosiah learned from his Dad the importance of being an example, in that he worked along side the people of his kingdom to show them that what he was asking of them was just as important to him. 

I love you all, have a good week!

Your son, 

Elder Sork