Elder Lawrence and Elder Santos. Blake (Seth’s brother) baptized Elder Santos, and now Elder Santos is serving in the same mission as Seth).
Merry Christmas everyone!! I hope you guys are enjoying the Christmas season, it is the best time of year!! Enjoy the snow for me haha.
So not a ton to say this week. I am super excited for Christmas because I get to skype my family!! (Chirstmas and Mother’s day)
Hmmm so I guess there were two things this week that were kind of funny. So we were teaching a man and I had to duck under this cement/brick wall inside his house and after we were teaching I forgot about it. So I smacked my head on it pretty good. When we were walking away from the house I turned to my companion and was going to say “well that hit me like a brick wall” but then I realized I dont know how to say brick, or wall, and that probably isn’t a saying here anyways. So I just started laughing to myself. hahah I think he thinks I’m crazy because I do that sometimes when I think of things that I can’t say. Little things are funny while serving a mission.. I love it! The smallest things make you happy and laugh 🙂
The other one, idk if this will make sense to you guys, but we have this thing called an area book and it basically helps out new missionaries when the come to the area after we leave. So you just write what you’ve taught them and things about them basically. While one day we were going through the book trying to find people that we thought we should go visit and one the missionary had wrote all these awesome things about this investigator and and had gone to church and really was accepting everything. So theres a section at the bottom that you fill out why you stopped teaching them. Usually there’s a long(ish) explanation and for the man, all it said was “Foi prisão” we couldnt laughing because of it.
Hmm so language update I guess. Theres kind of three different things that can happen when Im trying to understand Portuguese. The first is the person speaks really clearly and relatively slow. If that happens then I can hear all the words and I understand most of the words, but still have a hard time piecing together what they are saying. The second thing is they don’t talk very cleary and talk very fast. It sounds like “asdkfljasdlkjfahsljf(insert a word I know)adflkjasdhjlksa(insert and word I know)asdkfj” and the third is in the middle of the two! I am learning, but it comes slow for me!
This week I want to share a scripture from Ether 12. Sorry if I have shared it before, I love it! “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if the humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” Learning Portuguese is definitely humbling for me! I just want to be fluent already. But I know that if it was that easy, I wouldnt grow from it and I wouldnt appreciate it when it eventually comes. We all go through hard things in our lives, but it is important to have have and be humble. When we do this God will make our weak things become strong! But it doesn’t come all at once, there is a process of learning we have to go through.
I almost forgot! This week I met Elder Santos. My brother baptized him during his mission and now he is serving here, in fortaleza!! How cool is that!?! He is the man.
Well sorry for the grammar and spelling… but it’s only going to get worse, I realize it is bad as I’m typing, so sorry!
FELIZ NATAL
Elder Lawrence
eldersethlawrence 