This week was "Bleh"

So yeah, this week was kind of... bleh.

I headed to Goiania for a few days for another leadership conference, always fun to sit around and listen and learn, President was sick, so it was his son and the assistants that gave all the instructions. still good stuff. It´s nice to hang out a bit with the leaders. Pretty much in a nutshell what I learned: I need to pray better/more often/more fervently/with more heart, and do better cuz I´m a sinner. I liked it :D learned a lot

I also found a page from a talk given by Spencer W. Kimball...... it was about missionary work so I was surprised I hadn´t heard about it before....that is until I read it.... he gave 15 points about what makes a missionary of success and what should happen on the mission... if I had read it before the mission I would have felt VERY overwhelmed... and now that I´ve read it with under a year left.. I realize I need to step things up.... it made me feel bad about how much I´m NOT doing... so I copied it down and read it regularly. Maybe I´ll send a copy home sometime, we´ll see how it goes.

One of the points ( I can´t remember exactly what it says, and the my translation to English will make it worse) goes like this:
*if you have never cured the sick... cast out demons...seen a grown man cry because he was overwhelmed with the spirit...you have gone out and come home in vain*
or another:
*if, during the sacrament, you have never had tears well up in your eyes because of the sacredness of this ordinance... you still have the need to renew your covenants*

or.... everything can pretty much be summed up in the words of President Tobias: REPENT QUICKLY!

Anyways, my visa expired the other day.... so I´m an illegal alien in Brazil.... I don´t think they´ll complain too much. So I´m just waiting for the phone call from the secretaries telling me to go to Goiania AGAIN to take care of it. ugh, what a hassle.

And yes, Goiania was VERY hot, I didn´t like it at all, the bus is way more expensive, there´s too many people.. and so on. So it was kind of relief to come back to Anapolis with all the nut-jobs. It´s funny to think that pretty much everything I know about the mission is here in this city... I´ve only had one transfer away from it... they say that this is the hardest city to baptize in.. but I have no idea, cuz it´s all I know, give me a chance to be in a different city and maybe i can make some comparisons, but for now... I´m a guy born without thumbs... I have no idea what it feels like to lack something I´ve never had. either way, the work is getting done boldly, nobly, and independent under my mighty shoes of doom, until the Lord shall say *the work is done*

We taught a family the other day, and as usual I invited the dad to do the closing prayer, he accepted (which is rare). and it started out like this:
*oh dear Joseph Smith.....*
and so on, I was so tired that day so I just let him roll with it and said *great prayer!* after.
When we went back we were talking at first about their religious culture and so on and he said *we, here, are catholic, and as you can probably see (he points to the giant painting of Our Lady Aparecida) us Brazilians LOVE our idols, we worship statues. aint it great?*
yeeeeaaaah.
Personally, any picture Our Lady Aparecida gives me the ibby jibbys.

And yesterday, I guess I much have spent too much time with these believers here in Annapolis, cuz we taught a guy named Edgar, and he likes to do the prayers standing up, so he did the first one, and Elder Black did the last one, and all during his prayer I couldn´t stop myself from saying *AMEN brother* *mmmhmmm!* *amen* it felt like second-nature to me.... it´s gonna be interesting doing prayers again when I go home...

In closing, we lived through an electrical storm the other day, the power kept cutting out, then surging back on, lightning striking all the houses around us, it even shook my deodorant off the dresser, it woke me up during the middle of the night, or... shook me out of bed, then I curled under the covers like a little girl and went to sleep. No rain, just thunder and lighting, good times, good times.

So yeah, I love you all, until next week,

Slow down there tubby, you aint on the moon yet
Elder Webber