Well... another week gone. AND... it’s transfers
next week!!! CRAZY!! Time is going by way too fast! But that’s ok I guess... I
am still with Brodie for at least one more week... but we’ve already decided we
are serving at least three together. If only it were up to us... Good news
though, we are getting another Canadian next week!!! We are pretty pumped and he’s
from Lethbridge. Pretty sure I don’t know him but it’s still pretty awesome.
Also, he’s younger than me so I will no longer be the youngest missionary in
the field!!!! (I don’t know if there is anyone younger than me here or not but that’s
ok). We don’t shop in the market because I don’t know if Praia has one or not.
But we eat at a member’s house twice a week, which is pretty good. She usually
makes some fish or some sort of Caboverdean dish. I love the food here!!!
This week was good but at the same time it wasn’t
so good... All three of our baptisms fell, two didn’t come to church and one used
drugs, so we were a little bummed about that. Then we went to teach this guy on
Tuesday whom we have been teaching for quite awhile. He was in church and
really the only thing that was keeping him from being baptized was the Law of
Chastity. He had a date for the 28 of July and we were going to see how he was
doing. When we asked him about the law of chastity, he said: "Well I’m
basically already living it." We were stunned and he said he hadn’t been
going over to his girlfriends house for about a month and that she was moving
to the States at the end of the week. He told us that after he started coming
to church and studying with us he just lost that desire to break the
commandment. So we asked him if he would be baptized on Saturday and he
agreed!!! MIRACLE!!!! Man, this guy is awesome and he sacrificed a lot to get
everything ready. He told us that he just decided it wasn’t worth waiting
another week so he got baptized. Needless to say, it was a pretty great
blessing for us and we had a really good baptism on Saturday.
We’re having some problems with getting people
to church though... they moved church to 3:00 and we thought that it was going
to be way easier because they would have way more time to prepare before
church. WRONG!!! Apparently, with more time they become further behind schedule
or they forget. Not cool... so we’ve got to change some things and start
getting these people to church. Our whole zone has been struggling with this
all transfer and we don’t know how to fix it! One bright spot in our week
though was our investigator who is fighting the drug problem. He fell again
last week and so we passed him and set up a plan to help him quit. This guy is
awesome!! He started going to institute this week, comes to church every Sunday
AND is half way through 2 Nephi... in one week!!! Also, he doesn’t just read
it, he’s been using the footnotes and everything. He basically gave us a
rundown of 1 Nephi during one of our lessons and is loving it! Today marks a
week that he hasn’t used drugs and he is preparing to be baptized next week. He’s
super pumped and is doing awesome!
Not much else to report... the power situation
has been kind of haywire this week and we haven’t had power almost all week.
Just little spurts during the night. It rained a little bit last night so it is
super humid today. I can’t believe how fast this transfer has gone but I’ve
learned so much and I’m excited to continue. Say hello to everyone for me at
grandma and grandpa’s anniversary and I love you all!!
Elder Dola
