Elder Devin Harris' Mission in Natal Brazil: Have a wonderful New Year!

So I hope you all had a wonderful and a Merry Christmas. My Christmas was a different experience that´s for sure. I´m not used celebrating Christmas in July yet haha. But other than that it was awesome! On Christmas eve we went to a member's house and they had all sorts of fancy looking food. I couldn´t tell you what any of it was but all I know is there were no rice nor beans so I was happy! ;) On Christmas we had breakfast as a district and the Brazilians wanted the Americans to cook so we made french toast and homemade syrup cuz Brazil doesn´t have syrup. And a bunch of fruit. and I finally used that peanut butter I brought with me. Haha it was so bomb if I do say so myself ;) Anyways then we went to lunch at a member's house who lives forever and a day away so we started walking and a member who was going to the same place pulled up and took pity on us and gave us a ride! Yes, you read that right, I rode in a car! I´ve never been so excited about such a thing! It was amazing, we made it there in a little under 10 minutes! I´m so used to walking 30 minutes to an hour everywhere we go. I felt like a little kid going to Disneyland for the first time! I had my face and hands pressed up against the windows watching all of the buildings fly by... at about 30 miles per hour. I´ll tell you what, that was incredible. For sure a Christmas miracle ;) Haha we had another good lunch there where I once again am not sure what I ate. It looked pretty much like thick stew on rice and it wasn´t too bad haha. We then killed a chicken and threw it in a box and took it back to town with us to give to a member haha. Haha the gifts people give are a little different here but it´s the thought that counts right? ;) It was great to see all of my family on Christmas! The Brazilians were absolutely amazed that the kids could speak perfect English. They couldn´t even fathom it. haha I was like, what did you think happens, we learn Portuguese until we turn 15 and then switch to English or what? Haha

Anyways so this week has been awesome! Me and my comp have actually been working super hard! Haha on Christmas Eve and on Christmas my comp and I wore our Santa Claus hats (Because it wasn´t quite hot enough) Haha and every little kid that saw us was like "Papai Noel! Papai Noel!!" The kids here are so easy to please, throw on a hat and BAM! you´re Santa Claus... Haha so I said we´ve been working hard, we´ve been having about 5-6 lessons per day. We have 15 investigators right now on top of our recent converts and less actives. So we´ve been working our tails off trying to get them all what they need but it has been awesome! We started teaching a girl named B. She is 16 years old and she is the daughter of U. who is the one who was having car troubles awhile ago. Well he´s been progressing really really slowly and wont come to church with us and he says he can´t read the Book of Mormon because he has bad eyes and needs new glasses so we´ve thought about maybe having to drop him but we´ve stuck with him. Well his daughter B. always walks by when we´re over there but she goes really fast and would never look at us or anything. So one day we go and his daughter is the only one home so we ask if we could just talk to her. We kept it pretty simple and gave her a Book of Mormon and invited her to read and by the end of the lesson she promised us she would come to church with us on Sunday but everyone always says they will so we didn´t get our hopes up too high. Well anyways we came back the next day which was Saturday and she comes out to meet us and was really excited and said she read in the Book of Mormon and loved it and wanted to come to church so we picked her up yesterday and took her to church and while we were there we were just kind of asking her how she was liking it and she asked to see one of our planners so she took my companion´s and started writing in it. Then she handed it to us and we read and it said how she said she was happy before but she feels true joy now being at church and how thankful she was to be there and so on and so forth. This was only two days after we first talked to her. It was so cool! We invited her to mutual and she was really excited about that too. So I´m excited to see how she progresses and hopefully that will speed up the progression of U. too.

We also started teaching an 88 year old lady M. She is wonderful. Her husband died so she lives alone so she loves the company. She´s Catholic so she loves the bible and Jesus and all that stuff but more than anything, she loves to talk. She talks so much! Haha we could hardly get through the first lesson without her going off about her kids that live in other parts of Brazil and she speaks so fast so it´s super hard to understand her. We talked about faith and that apparently reminded her of a hymn so she just went off singing this whole hymn about faith. Then when we were saying the closing prayer she started mumbling her own prayer and praising Jesus and then we said amen and she stands up with arms stretched high saying "Louvor a Deus! Meu pastor é Jesus! Aleluja!" Which means "Praise God, My shepherd is Jesus! Hallelujah!" Haha if nothing else it was extremely entertaining. Anyways, The church is true, I hope you all have a wonderful New Years. I love you guys! Talk to you next year!

Elder Harris #2