Heyyy!!!!

Wellllll another week in the books, they are going way toooooo fast! I love writing home, but it seems like I do it a lot more than just once a week! So this week, I don't know where to start... So Last Monday, the Portuguese elders, American elders, and us decided to do a competition to see who could give the other set the most referrals... Well the English elders beat us because they gave us one referral, we only found young single adults, so those referrals went to the sisters... But with the Portuguese, we won haha... We were walking around in an apartment complex and I heard the word "dijiste" which in Spanish means "you said"... so we go over towards the voice and it is a ton of like 18-20 year olds and some little kids. So we talk to them and they turned out to be Portuguese. I can kind of understand Portuguese like the basics, but can't speak it. When I go to speak it, I just slur my Spanish and I think it gets pretty close to the word haha... We talked to one of them and he said he was LDS... He spoke quite a bit of English, but not perfect... We guessed there were about 8 Portuguese people in that area, so we took the Portuguese elders to the area, so they could knock around the area and try to find them. He didn't really give us his address because of the language barrier. It is really hard for the Portuguese elders to find people who aren't on vacation, so we try to help them out as best as we can. So they started knocking doors looking for Portuguese and we knocked doors in another area looking for Spanish. We had no success, so we started walking out towards the street of the apartment complex while the Portuguese elders were still knocking. We see 3 younger people like 20 yrs old, so we talked to them and they were Brazilians. We found out they would be staying in Orlando for 3 months on some universal job exchange thingy. Then within about 3 minutes, 20-30 more young Brazilians started walking towards us, they are really friendly and like to practice their English. They speak really good English and it is their first time in the U.S... Them Brazilians are a smart people. They learn English in Brazil. Some guy spoke like German, Italian, and something else along with English and Portuguese... Luckily the Portuguese elders came out finally and started talking to them, one is from Brazil so they all hit it off really well... So we took that referral battle home!! haha... So we then went to the ward Christmas party together (our ward is a Spanish/Portuguese ward) So the Portuguese elders give us rides a lot because we are on bike and the church is like 7 miles aways from the house uphill both ways and snowing usually... So we were bragging to them about how there was no way they were going to beat us because it was Saturday haha and we got to the church and there was a Venezuelan family there that showed up that the Portuguese elders prayed with and invited to the activity haha.. So it was a pretty sharing night. The family is wayyyyy cool though. We have an appt with them tonight. The ward party was CRAZY!!! Spanish people know how to party. Everyone is dancing and us missionaries just sit there... They always think it is weird that we don't know how to dance the salsa, bachata, mareinga... Us white folk are boring.. Every Spanish person knows how to dance...

 

We are teaching a guy right now who is amazing! He has seen some wonderful miracles. It is amazing to see how people trust us so much and will open up to us and spill out how they feel without even knowing us for that long. It is such a testimony of the reality of our calling as representatives of Jesus Christ. It is truly humbling. He will get baptized, but probably in a couple of months just because of circumstances.

 

We gave a church tour to a lady this week. It was amazing, she felt the spirit so strong. Afterwards she said "I am coming to the relief society activity, the ward party, and church this week! And you have to get my husband to go to the ward activity and church too!" Then the sad part was, she avoided us all that week! She never answered our calls, opened the door, nor came to any of the activities... It just shows me how new investigators must feel about changing. I think they get scared a lot to change their lifestyle. It takes a lot of faith, but I know the end result is always worth all the change!

 

Well love you, talk to you soon familia... We are allowed to skype this time... So let me know what you want to dooo.. Skype or telephone? what's your skype's address if you wanna skype??? I don't know what time we would do it, but I will let you know next week, be on your toes.

 

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Elder Christiansen