Enthropy

Is it warm where you are?

Extremely. Just sitting draws a sweat. :/

What do you want us to write about you in our Christmas letter?

- Write what you want about me, as long as you use ridiculously cheesy comments like "Jess is still rotting away in Brazil," or "Jess has yet to be Exiled from Brazil." We can't let anyone take me seriously. ;P Just Kidding, say whatever you want.

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Laws of nature show that everything will naturaly flow from order to disorder. This week was a living proof of that. However, our focus has been completely steady: Baptism. 

Something my companion says a lot that's super contagious is "Está Animado!!?" (are you excited!!?) Whenever we teach or help somebody, he tries pumping up so much excitement and happiness they almost explode. I laugh so hard at the little displays he does, but in the end, it is helping out a lot.  His contagious attitude has spread to the ward members. The branch president, Pres. Chiaki, is really animated to help us every day, wanting to visit as many people as possible within the short time he can spend with us, and even showing off his own little displays to animate our investigators. 

But what's better than animated missionaries, and animated members, is the animated investigators. Parents that didn't want anything to do with us are opening more doors, and people that were near impossible to help, have begun helping themselves. This week we had two baptisms, one on Saturday and the other on Sunday. Wesley is João Batista's brother. We actually have little time to talk with him as he's always on the street playing on his skateboard, but with what little time we had, we saw he really wanted to become better. This week, we invited him to be baptized, and he accepted. Then we fought off the doubts, the false comments, small slip-ups and bad comments every day until we finally helped him finish what he started. Now he feels truly happy, and is already helping the young men out a lot. 

However, I think an even better example is that of Adinam. We found him almost two months ago, just knocking on doors (...well, gates) When we arrived at his house, we knocked once and he already started calling us in. He was elect! He had already received the missionaries before, and he was living all of the commandments and reading the scriptures every day. Everything we taught, he remembered and easily accepted it all. But, he never went to church. Every week he'd promise to be there, but he never went, something that makes you want to rip your tie apart. We'd tried picking him up, giving him responsibilities, and even calling him six times to remind him and wake him up. Nothing, but we weren't out of ideas yet. Finally, we took Pres. Chiaki with us and told him to invite Adinam to be baptized immediately after the church meeting. So, with all the effort and  animation he had, Pres. gave one of the funniest baptismal invitations I've seen, but it worked! He not only appeared this week in church, but he even followed through and was baptized in the end!

This week was really rewarding, but not without a huge mess of problems and strange situations. However, like the sky diver, crazy experiences like these make me even more excited to do this marvelous work. I hope that all of us might unite in such a work and a wonder.

Elder Angus

Oh, and thanks for everything!

Word of the Week:

Bagunça (Bah-GOON-suh) Mess, in all meanings of the world. For example, esta semana fui uma bagunça, de mais!

Photos:

- Christmas Lights in Osório

- Baptism of Wesley

(I'll send photos of Adinam's baptism when I get them)