Laranjeiras

Hey Guys.
It's really HOT!
We took a pic to prove that's is over 120* F. My comps' thermometer didn't go high enough to register the temp the other day.


Well, another week in the life. It's already November! Time goes by so fast. It still is surprising to me....But we had a pretty good week. We are finally getting this area baptizing again. We marked a good/firm baptismal date of a 23ish year old guy who was dating a church member. His mom is a pastor of a church, and at first he was a little hesitant. But we taught him last week, and I asked him to get baptized, and he accepted. The baptism will be in 2 weeks. We also have 3 weddings/baptisms we are working with. At least 2 of them will be in December. We are teaching some good people who all want to get baptized. I think one of the things that I enjoy the most on the mission is teaching people that actually want to listen and learn about the gospel. They just open up to us and really let us fulfill the best of the mission, the teaching. But, the work is going along well. These past few weeks we haven't had tons of great results, but it now looks like all the hard work is going to pay off and the baptisms are coming.

We made a district goal to mark a baptismal date every week and it's been going well. My district has the most baptismal dates of the zone, so we are getting this side of the town baptizing again. Also, in a meeting with the zone leaders, we made a goal to invite one person every day to be baptized. After inviting people for a week, I've been impressed that nobody has turned down the invite. Yes, not all the people are prepared or ready to set a date, but I've been impressed by some of these people, and we are enjoying the daily baptismal invite...

District and Zone Leaders at Leadership Training
Yesterday I had a leadership meeting. President talked about how we need to teach the people and not just the "lessons", and what we need to do to help investigators keep their commitments. I enjoyed it. There were some world-wide changes with the structure of the missions, and one of them is that we have monthly leadership meetings. But I always like learning from President and Sister Jayme.

On Saturday, we had a devotional with the members and talked about how they could help in missionary work. It went pretty well and was well attended. We shared an article from the Ensign (we had to translate) talking about 6 ways that members could help the investigators feel the Spirit at church. It worked and on Sunday, more of the members greeted the visitors than the last few Sundays....so, I guess it was a success.

Today, we played some frisbee and American football. It was so much fun...I'm a little sunburned, but it was a lot of fun. Manaus actually has 3 or 4 amateur Americana football teams. And I guess one of them wants to play us (the missionaries) sometime. I'm not sure if it will actually happen, but it`d be fun. We are having the terere bowl next week, and have already put together a few teams. We`re going to have a tournament. I'm stoked...

I made triple chocolate cookies this week and gave them to some Brazillians. One of the ladies said that "I'm the most marriageable material."

But anyways, hope everything is going well with you guys! Have a great week!

Love,
-Elder Eric Stapley