Hey mom,
As you know my new companion is Elder Antunes. This is
his last transfer so he isn’t super motivated to work. We spend a lot of time
´´chilling´´ so I have had a lot of time to exercise and to study. My pants are
fitting a little bit better. I am trying
to stay healthy. I don’t know if Elder Antunes hates me or likes me. He´s
really hot and cold and really, really impatient with my language
struggles. When I have to ask him to
repeat things a few times he gets really grumpy. He is also impatient with
investigators. There are still things I am learning from him. He’s giving me more responsibility because he
doesn’t want to do much. Another thing that’s been tough with Antunes is he
really likes to listen to music, American music. I already asked him to stop. There is no way he will stop so after that, I
at the least asked him to use headphones so I don’t have to listen to it, but
he only uses headphones half the time. I have found that music is the FASTEST
way to make me homesick. It made this week really tough. The music brought back
lots of memories and longings for home. Today I am hoping to spend a little
extra time on the computer to download a bunch of church music and piano guys
music that I hope to use to drowned out the music my companion listens to.
Hopefully I can leave this transfer a better missionary. Antunes has a goal to
baptize every week during his last transfer. We had a baptism this last week
and have another marked for conference weekend.
I am excited for conference but also nervous because
it’s all going to be in Portuguese. I won’t
have it in English like in the CTM. I know I am gonna miss a lot of the
messages. General Conference was a super spiritual experience in the CTM, but I
am worried I am not gonna get much out of it because I won’t understand so much.
We´ll see.
This week the power company or something in the
government was under investigation and power to the entire state of Paraíba was
off for about 10 hours. We had a lesson with an investigator (Maria Nilta and
her 2 daughters) that night. We taught the restoration by candlelight. Elder
Antunes was really impatient with them because they haven’t accepted baptism
yet, and he didn’t want to teach the lesson so I taught the whole restoration.
I gave him time to talk but he wouldn’t say anything and during the lesson he was
huffing and puffing and sighing, totally distracting from the message. I got
really frustrated. In the end the spirit was there and he shared his testimony.
It was a powerful experience. I hope to baptize this family during this transfer.
I had another funny language experience. One night this
week we ordered pizza to be delivered.
While we were waiting for the delivery Antunes went to take a shower.
While he was in the shower, the pizza guy called to confirm the address. It was a disaster because I couldn’t
understand what he was saying and I don’t know our address or how to describe
where we live in the area, so I just ran out into the street (almost forgot to
put on a shirt) and yelled a lot as the pizza guy was passing by. I think for
people watching it was pretty funny. The pizza was great so it was worth it.
I am trying to get a video that a recent convert took
of me on his phone, but they have problems sending videos here. I don’t know if
the cellphone companies don’t support it or what, but hopefully this next week
I will have it. The uncle of this young man trains dogs, and so we put on an
arm brace thing and the uncle loosed a German shepherd that ´´attacked´´ us (is
trained to bite on the arm brace). It was really cool.
That was my week this week. I heard about Chad, man I
thought I had it tough! He is a trooper. I will keep him in my prayers.
I have been thinking a lot about the atonement and
Jesus Christ. With the extra study time I have, I have started reading Jesus
the Christ again. I am trying to understand better the Savior as a person and
someone I can really learn to relate to and love. I know that my faith needs to be
based on Him. This last week I did personal study on faith as an attribute of
Christ and it was edifying. I didn’t have a very good understanding of faith. I
was thinking that because I hadn’t felt the spirit really strong or had big
spiritual experiences, I didn’t have faith. But now I know that when we feel
the spirit or have spiritual experiences, this is when faith turns into
knowledge. Faith really is BLIND. It’s the actions we take, the things we do,
WITHOUT a strong confirmation of the spirit or spiritual experiences. Its
acting, with hope and confidence, that through our actions we WILL receive the
influence of the spirit and have those spiritual experiences (when that faith,
becomes a knowledge). I know that faith in Jesus Christ is very important so I
am working to improve my ´´why´´ (the reasons I act and do the things I do) so
I can have confidence and hope. I hope
that through my actions I will receive those spiritual experiences and gain a
knowledge of Jesus as my Savior, that my mission is exactly where I need to be,
etc.
Love you guys,
Elder Sork