is he ok? DON´T TELL ME THESE THINGS!
But i´m sure he´ll be fine. After all, you´re looking after him. (and everyone knows that drunk Asians are horrible)
But anyway, the life here is going really well. My companion and I made a new program here to get the members more involved. That´s the hard part about Brasil. The members love us, we have luch every day, but they don´t feel that the missionary work is very important, even though 70% of them are converts. So I took a couple Ideas from back home, the things I saw our Elders do, a couple things we did in Tennessee, and we made a plan. We´re gonna start with the Leadership of the Stake (My companion and I are over the missionaries in the Guarapiranga Stake) and work down. We´re going to form Ward mission Plans together with the Ward councils (many wards don´t have one). After that, the Bishop will present the plan to the ward during Sacrament meeting. The leaders in the ward will be the examples, starting by bringing their friends to church. When the ward sees their example, we´re going to go to each house, and help the families set up Family Mission Plans, with a Vision, goals, and plans with specific names. Then, we´re just gonna be here to help teach their friends. In the past, the missionaries here have been finding, teaching, and baptizing alone, and then dumping the new recent converts on the ward, many times without the bishop knowing that this person was ever even investigating the church. So it was a huge fault on the side of the m issionaries. So E. Gillespie and I are training the Zone how to work with the Leadership of the ward, in preparation for this new program to take effect. A
And L]last night, we kicked it off with a Stake Fireside we planned a few weeks ago. The fireside was focused on the new Mission Program, Famílias de Sião (Families of Zion). We were expecting around 50 people (the usual turnout for stake firesides here), but about 200 showed up. The chapel and Cultural Hall were completely full. We didn´t have enough space for everyone to even stand. It was incredible. elder Gillshper (my nickname for him) and I gave a 20 minute training on the Family Mission Plan, and then President Pinho spoke. Needless to say, after his talk every single member was excited as can be. Then, President Pereira (stake pres.) gave an awesome talk, driving it home.
Once the fireside was over, a little old lady walked up to me, thanked me for the meeting, and told me she had 3 families already in mind for us to teach. Unfortunately, it´s another ward. But, everyone´s really excited. Now, the tough part´s gonna be getting the missionaries to change the ineffective form of working we´ve been doing. Literally, this program My companion and I made is going to change the whole mission. President told us afterward that he was really pleased with what we´re doing, and he´s gonna get it going in the whole mission. So that was a pretty cool experience.
Other than that, our area is awesome. I only spend about 3 days a week with my companion, we´re always on splits. But, that´s life now. The phone never stops ringing, we´re always in a hurry, and someone ALWAYS has a problem for us to work out. I LOVE IT. I get to serve the missionaries in the Zone every single day. I´ve never been so tired (it´s funny how often I say that), but never so happy either. I´ve really gained a testimony of hard work.
But anyway, that´s a little taste of my world right now. Just in Portuguese.
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