Welcome to the week of mercy in a month of justice. 🙏
This week was one of the best weeks of the transfer, all the hard work, and dilligence has finally been paying off after some long weeks of drought.
African Warriors?
One of the most interesting things I’ve seen/heard is the clank of cow bells in a rhythmic cadence after the setting of the sun. It’ll start far off in the distance quietly but gradually it increases until the sound disrupts your activities, this means there Warriors are near. What started as an African symbol of strength in a time of war molded into the tradition rooted in Brazils finest cultural practice, Carnival. As part of this tradition Brazilians mesh the craziest cultures and traditions all into one creating the craziest experience that is known as CarnivalThis includes the African Warrior part. As part of this tradition, starting long before Carnival arrives these guys will dress in their “festival clothes” and put on these back pack Monstors Inc type thing with cow bells attached to the bottom. They will don spears throw them on their shoulder and march around the whole city clanking there “back packs” to a cadence for hours. I dont really understand why, I’ve only seen one guy or two people together never more, it’s very unique. (The spears are real and not gonna lie its a little intimidating almost like the Joshua and his armies marching around jericho playing all their trumpets and stuff, waiting for the wall to fall).
Zone Confrence
The best time of the transfer (the 6 weeks we have assigned in each area we live in (most of the time we stay for 2-4 transfers or 3-6 months)). This zone Confrence President Smith dropped some wisdom on marrige ☝🏾, it was pretty fire. Towards the end Elder Olson my house mate (this guy is a troll) jumped up in on of the biggest guys arms like a baby, very fitting. We call him Baby Olson because hes about 5,2 and 100lbs. Till this day I still wonder why he did it. Beats me, but enjoy the photo.
I almost forgot I took some fire notes, they’re in Portuguese so good luck reading but if you want give it a shot. The doodles I had to highlight.
Baptism By Fire or Liar?
One of the “best” churches here is the Universal church. One of my favorite doctrines from there church is that Jesus said if you dont pay 1,000$ each month you cant be saved, also if you dont have the money better sell your car, or your house, that’ll work. (One of our friends wife sold his house to pay them… safe to say they got divorced) anyway this church is very interesting to say the least. One of our friends also told us about story of how they paid her best friend to go in and act like she got healed from being crippled. What an awesome Jesus centered church.
Anyways as we walked past one day my curiosity killed my cat (I know I used the saying wrong) and I asked one of the guys passing out flyers if I could have one. This immediately triggered the whole group of pastors to come running and surround us, as the head one began to treat us like kings telling us to come get a tour, and to take whatever we wanted. Lets just say he was one of the only enthusiastic ones the other were acting very strange. The main guy grabbed me and bassically dragged me in to get a tour, when I was like “bro what are you doing grabbing me” he took his sunglasses off and said he was bassically blind and was using me as a guide. I believed him because his eyes looked all white and glossed over but he definitely could see something because he was guiding me not the other way around, and he crossed the street to talk to us in the first place.
He then asked to pray for us and of course we accepted but when we closed our eyes I felt a hand get placed on my head, as I looked up I saw bro was in the double hand on both of our heads pose and all the others were in the double hands up cops are coming looking to the sky pose. I closed listening to bro basically calling down fire from the spirit and the sky to “Baptize” us with the spirit when I heard this I started looking up too, waiting for some fire or something. I didnt see any :(. Anyways they were chill… ish, they wanted a photo with us but when I asked for one they were very shifty and acted strange but let me take one.
The Lords Time
The biggest thing I’ve learned from this week is that the lords aware of what going on and the effort you’re putting in even if you don’t see the realized output. The last four weeks are what we would call a merda. We’ve been putting in lots of work but seeing little long standing results, part of the things I’m learning is the lords time and the lords provision. One thing about working with people is no matter how hard you try it just depends on their willingness to accept. Some people are ready to progress in their relationship with Jesus Christ and others at the moment are not. As we changed our focused this transfer on helping the people already in the church be more able to support the people we are bringing in to the fold. We at first experienced a dramatic fall in our progress and the amount of new people we were finding and teaching, but we felt sure that this was the right path to choose, the long term impact over the short term. As we worked, and worked, and worked, we experienced little success, but little by little the lord provided. On friday we were almost done with the week and we had fallen short on all our goals and weren’t even close to any of them some of them were even at 0. When we continued with dilligence the lord opened the door and guided us to the people he wanted found, who were ready through the members we were already working with. This showed to me that the lord really is just waiting for the right moment. This week was the most successful week I’ve had this transfer but started off as the least. I really only have one thing to say, The Lords help will always be there but sometimes he just wants to see how dedicated you are. Keep going strong, love yall
Notable Events
– We had the best dinner I’ve had here along with the best lesson after.
– I got a haircut, its been a while
– I got a mani pedi 🤨very interesting
– We are more or less out of the favela now
– A drug dealer pulled up to a church activity but bro was chill
– I wear sunscreen but for some reason im still getting darker
Join the photos to see the more of the action. https://photos.app.goo.gl/cnvNHFLuWEPTfcKj7