sleeping on the keys...

(Letter from 2-27-08)

remember the story about the prince and the pea? well, the last 5 days i have been sleeping on the keys to our apartment... training is a blast...

so, the day after elder soares arrived he got all depressed and wanted to go home. i walked into our bedroom after my shower and he said that he needed to call president. of course i let him. since that conversation he has been up and down and all around with his desire to stay on the mission. we call the president regularly, and i have given every training possible to him to try and help him, but he has stayed sad- even after the baptisms of jonathan and felipe (i will tell that story further down). and so it was that i began to lock the door at night and sleep on the keys. for good reason. yesterday i woke up at 5:30 am and looked around and... he was in the other room packing. i asked what was going on and he said he had decided to go home. (note to the reader: STOP- don’t panic yet, the story doesn’t end how you think). i got him to calm down and we went to the other room and prayed together. and then we prayed some more. then i talked with him for a LONG time. then i called president.

let it suffice to say that yesterday was quite easily the longest day of the mission (except for the plane ride to sao paulo probably)

so he talked to president on the phone FOREVER, and i was in the other room praying like i have never prayed before. in that room, i felt the peace and love of the Lord overwhelm me. i grew closer and stronger with the Lord. then president talked with ME. president expressed his gratitude, appreciation and trust in me, and explained a few things that i could do to help e. soares. all this happened before 7am. the rest of the day e. soares was not doing good. he wanted to call home and other stuff, so we went back to the apartment and called president again. we sat there and talked for a long time. he didn’t want to go out, and i was afraid of him running away if we left, so we passed most of the day in our room talking and calming him down. his stake president called and talked to him at night and then president talked with us again. the plan now is that e. soares will be emergency transferred to an area close to the mission home and i will get another greenie to train that is in rio now.

sigh...
pray for me... i don’t remember being THIS hard to train...:)

in other news,
sunday we baptized felipe and jonathan, and felipe´s family came to see, and they LOVED IT. His mom is SUPER interested and we are teaching her now. also, and you can see, i got to get my "feet wet" as well. let me tell you, the water was cold. it was really neat (i need to practice the baptismal ... words? in portuguese, because i fumbled a bunch to remember what to say). now jonathan has bought a suit for church and is thinking about going on a mission one day. LO00000000OOVVEE IITTT! (to be read like the one dragon from dragon tails :) )

ooh, ooh, i almost forgot, i gave my first training as district leader in district meeting. (we have one every monday before lunch) i was a little nervous because i would have to teach missionaries, IN PORTUGUESE, and the zone leaders are in my district! but, it all turned out good, or at least i didn’t get any complaints... :) no, really, i did good.

alyce- HERE ctr is still ctr. i forgot how they swing that, but it is cool. it was like " C-(some verb here!?? that starts with C)Todo o Rumo" or "something something Reto ", i forgot sorry. and PROM, hmmm, well have a blast, i know you will.

mom- thanks for the pics, they were great. the valentines package got here super fast. the mutual lesson i gave was pretty awesome, but i didn’t get around to the brownie part. (mostly because they don’t have brownies here, and also because i am too cheap to buy pudim for everyone) but we watched a cool video and then told funny mission stories. then i gave a training to everyone about how to make a street contact with pass-a-long cards. AND THEN, we went and made street contacts. the kids split up and we started helping them talk to people on the street. they LOVED it. i was with one group helping and this young woman went to make a contact. she got nervous and instead of telling the woman to CALL this number 1-800, ( ligar 0-800), she said (gritar 0800). or in other words she told the woman to scream the number. everyone laughed and so did the woman. she accepted the card and said she´d call. also, we had a few investigators at the mutual activity, and it was need to see our investigators having fun sharing the gospel. Lucas loved it. he was inviting people to come to church on sunday and everything. “sharing brownies” is hard because we are afraid that other people won’t like the brownie as much as we did. but this in know way affects the brownie. the brownie is delicious to ALL that eat it 1Ne 8:10,15. the truth is that there is SO MUCH BROWNIE, that we have to share, or we´ll get sick. ps i loved the story about the dogs and the ditch.

dad- new car, huh! cool. good luck with that. ps don’t worry too much about shaq, he´s a big boy and can take care of himself :) he he

this friday is zone conference and i will probably switch companions then. my new greenie will be e. ronaldo from menaus.

love elder helland