July 23, 2018 - Another Busy Week in Teofilo Otoni

It was another super busy week in Teófilo Otoni! (I don't usually brag, but we got an email from President Mazzagardi just to our zone this week congratulating us for continuing to top the mission). We taught tons and tons of people this week, but I'm gonna focus on the most important ones.

Mauro (I think I called him Fernando last week, which is what he prefers, but his name is Mauro) was baptized yesterday! We've only been teaching him for a week, but he was so ready, and SOO excited! He invited 30 people! Only 8 of them showed up, so he was a little bit disappointed, but it was awesome for us! Well, awesome and stressful haha. The members also brought friends (for a total of 16 visitors!!!), so we were running back and forth the whole day trying to greet everyone and make sure they had a friend and knew how to read the hymn book and writing down their addresses so we could go visit.

On a bit of a sad note, Rodrigo isn't progressing as well as he could be, and also didn't come to church, but we're hoping that he'll participate in seminary when it starts and that that will help him out. He was even interviewed this week, and can be baptized whenever he wants, but he doesn't quite want it yet. But the interview helped us understand a lot better, cause he doesn't open up to us quite as well as he did to the elder.

We've also been working a ton with Eunice. We brought her cevada (which is basically coffee except it's made from barley and a lot healthier. I still think it's gross--even tried it again to make sure haha--but she loved it!!) and took her coffee away, which is the last step she needed to make. In the beginning, she had been having trouble with keeping her promise to pray and ask God if everything that we're teaching is true. We even prayed with her a couple of times, but she didn't ask a specific question, which makes it hard to get an answer. But! one day this week (don't even remember which) we went there and read in the Book of Mormon about the Holy spirit and we asked her if she prayed and she said YES and that she got an answer!!!!!! AND she came to church yesterday! All 3 hours!! She's going to be interviewed on Wednesday before we all leave haha and baptized on Sunday!

The only other person that I want to mention is Pedro, who came to church yesterday. We went to teach him yesterday, and he is literally what I would be like if I were being taught by the missionaries! It was fun haha. I'll let you all think about that one and then tell you more about him next week :P

In other random news, we made this amazing potato/chicken/bacon casserole this week! We were trying to imitate this famous potato dish that Sister Mazzagardi makes every special Almoço. You'd think you'd get sick of it, but it's so good that you want to be called to train just so you can eat it! Anyways, ours didn't turn out quite the same, but it was good :P Also, we went through an entire kilo of flour in like 2 days, but I can't remember what we made haha.

Also, we found out Friday night that we've been knocking doors on the wrong street the entire week! I mean we were close, but the street doesn't actually continue straight like we thought it did--it doubles back on itself and climbs a mountain. Don't know how we were supposed to figure that out haha. We're planning on going back and finishing the street (I'll tell you why when we get there) but we're going to be gone half this week for Zone Conference, so we'll see!

Gotta go (gonna send lots of pics!) but love you all!!! Have an awesome week!

-Sister Kirkham