Bringing the Gospel to Brazil: Back to Porto Alegre

Let me tell you about one of the craziest weeks of my mish: Why was it crazy? Because nothing went right. Overall, my comp, Elder Tate, and I laughed cause of how everything spun out of control. Yup, it was one of those weeks. But these weeks help us grow. So overall, I’m trying to be positive. Let me tell you about the main event: Jose and Santina. Jose and Santina are a couple I’ve been teaching with Elder Tate since January. They’ve been wanting to get baptized for awhile, but some wedding documents have been making the whole process tricky. Finally we got everything resolved, and the baptism was marked for Saturday. One rule of missionaries is on the week of the baptism, you need to follow up your investigator everyday. So on Monday we headed to their house. Everything was great. Santina told us she was praying for everything to go according to plan. Tuesday, we returned and learned that Santina had cut her eye with a brush. She was in incredible pain. We could give her a blessing and make some awesome promises. Wednesday we spent the day in Porto Alegre so on Thursday, we returned. Well, this is when it got fun. Jose and Santina are some of the most loving/serving people I’ve ever met. They are the most popular couple in the neighborhood. So they always have visitors. We got to the house, and Jose greeted us. He simply told us “Santina’s brother from the church is here.” “Don’t talk about baptism.” We were confused. We then met an extremely evangelic couple. At first, there was a awkward silence after a little chit chat. Then the couple said, “Well one of us has to start talking.” And boom they started to anti or criticize everything we had taught. Man, I won’t even tell you what they said, but it was heavy. We tried to defend/testify, but they didn’t let us talk. When I finally got a chance to talk, two more families arrived, one catholic and the other spiritism, and a 4 religion bible bash happened. Man that was a first, and let me tell you it was a bunch of yelling. I left the house confused, so imagine Jose and Santina. We returned on Friday, and Jose was in doubt. We challenged him to read the Book of Mormon and ask God if he needed to be baptized. He accepted. On Saturday, in the spirit of fast, we returned to their house to prep for the baptism. What occurred was unbelievable. We got to their house, and we found 20 people. We entered, Jose was crying, and Santina sat us down. She explained that 30 minutes before we arrived Jose had received a call from his dad that his mom had passed away from a surprise/sudden heart attack. They traveled to the funeral and the baptism was cancelled. Moral of the story: Opposition is real. The enemy wants us to give up on them, but we are determined! We won’t give up. I thought I would be here for the baptism, but last night at 10 pm, I got a call from president saying I’m ending my mish in Porto Alegre! Craziness!!!!

Bodine