Just kidding, I would never starve y’all these awesome experiences.
Night At The ER
Well, I was back at the good ol Hospital but dont worry this time inwas just there to double check on the recovery and make sure the internals were recovering from the stabbings ;). As any good ER visit I arrived waited, and waited, and waited. and left in the mid of night. Of course my new best friend uber decided he was tired and didn’t want to take us all the way back from the city in the middle of the night to the other side of the mission. This left my comp and I in pickle, we were on the city streets homeless for the night. I found a nice spot to sleep on a bench and my comp slept underneath. Just kidding we called up the good ol assistants to president and stayed at their high-rise apartment with AC (nice).
Also forgot to mention as I was in the hospital they were like “we have to put an IV in and draw your blood to do some tests” (I am deathly afraid of needles) and as I started to protest and beg for mercy from another brutal stabbing bro grabbed my arm and extracted my blood, to “help me” saying they had to do the test to “make sure I wouldn’t die” what a jerk. (Sarcasm) I wanted to ask them to test my testosterone levels at least, but I couldn’t remember of the word for testosterone.
Did Someone Say Beach?
How fortunate once again we visited the beach, this time we went to the big beach :). To give a quick recap we got on a bus full of missionaries at 9. Picked up all the missionaries as we passed their cities and made our way to the beach. President was nice to put the coconut water on his tab, as well as pizza, and acai, and snacks, and brownies. We attempted a sad attempt at a sand castle and chilled all day. As we looked in the distance we saw a large storm approaching, so we prayed that we would get to enjoy the day at the beach without getting interrupted. It was like Moses parted the red Sea but the storm split and half and it rained on our left and right a ways down the beach but our area stayed sunny until we had planned to go at 6pm and almost immediately is started pouring right as everyone was leaving.
Wake You Up? (Special Ops) ft. Michael Jackson
One of the families we are currently have troubles waking up, so the asked us to come to their condominium and wake the up to go to church. Of course thats exactly what we did, we arrived 3 minutes before their alarms were supposed to go off, and we waited outside the gate of the houses and as the time for their alarms approached we went in the gate and waited outside their house to wake them up after their alarm played. Like a swat team I positioned myself outside on of the windows and my comp positioned himself at the door and as the hour hit coordinated like a drug bust we began to clap and yell for our friend and his family to wake up like planned. Unfortunately unplanned his neighbors came out and cussed us off the property, I was sure that at least their yelling would wake our friend (a Michael Jackson impersonator) up but it didn’t work. As we saw later on his story bro was out being the star of some show at some party all night.
Reflections From An Non-Verbal Encounter
Visiting a newly baptized member he told us of the recent heqlth struggles his mom, an elderly woman, was facing. She had recently lost her hearing suddenly and was suffering a lot with other challenges physically and mentally. As we went in to the house we shook her hand and we showed her the pictures we had of Jesus and prayer and other gospel related topics with images. We slowly helped her comprehend our message without using a single word. When we arrived she seemed very on edge but as we left with a prayed and gave her the pictures she seemed so happy and gave us a look that I can only describe as a the most grateful and appreciative look and peace had filled the room as we left with prayer.
I spent a lot of time trying to write a well thought out reflection that was coherent but nothing came to mind. All I can say is I’m humbled to call Brazil my home. If ive learned anything that I can share, is my plea for you guys to just show and share love and the light of Christ, there are too many people suffering in this world for us to add to it because of disputes over first world problems, and preferences. Here is a talk that I suggest you all take a listen to while you do something today. The message is the same.
Alive in Christ
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2026/04/49oaks?lang=eng
Love Y’all
Elder Gist