Hey!
I have used that scripture (2 Nephi 31:14) in a lot of practice lessons and also while proselyting and I love it.
I couldn´t believe that Wads and Yuma know each other. It was just crazy. It was so random! We were just talking in church and I mentioned Adam Wadsworth and Yuma was like WHAT?! It was nuts. I hope I can get a trainer like Wads. Him and Blake were such awesome comps! Buttttt I think Yuma and I are a little better :)
I have some bad news and some good news. Ok so the whole group that I arrived with leaves Friday Morning, the 23rd. Elder Scott gets here Friday afternoon. Therefore the group I got here with doesn´t get to see him. However, we aren´t part of that group. Every missionary that got here with us will leave, including two guys from our district going to Porto Alegre North. But the 10 of us that are going to Londrina have to stay till the 30th. They screwed up on the planning. So, even though we have to stay longer, we still get to see Elder Scott.
I got the package! Oh my goodness it was amazing. Those vitamins will save my life...oh and the oreos, peanut butter, twix, and butterfingers were nothing short of amazing. haha but i wouldn´t try milk duds again...you see they kinda just solidified and used the caramel as some kind of super glue. so now i have a huge chunk of milk dud instead of milk dudS. thanks for Jesus the Christ. I needed it. Unfortunately, i already had a missionary pal and a true to the faith. but i think i might give the missionary pal to elder yuma. he doesn´t have one. thank you so so so so much though. i love it. and so does yuma. he is rather fond of candy...who woulda known? oh and for future reference...tape a pass along card to the outside of the box or put jesus and mary stickers all over boxes...that way they won´t get searched. it says it was sent on the 15th of september and it got here the 19th of october. but if it doesn´t get searched, it can get here quicker.
the last few days yuma was pretty sick and i was getting a bit of a cold. i think it was something from when we went proselyting and shaking so many hands. we went to the doctor and he may need antibiotics. i spent most of saturday and monday just helping him out and he slept a lot. the doctor told me that the amoxicillin that i have been taking every day is probably what saved me from getting way sick. so, if it is at all possible to get a large prescription from doctor shockey of amoxicillin (500mg, twice a day) then that may be something that keeps me healthy for the time that i am here. otherwise, i will just keep taking vitamins. but i figure if it was at all possible to send that if you send another package, then that would be awesome.
i hope those pictures are good...i will send some better ones via email when i get to the field. and I AM technologically advanced. but you see, the technology has to BE advanced in order for that talent to be useful. when i am working with something that Benjamin Franklin designed it is kinda tough..
proselyting was amazing. i wish i had brought my journal so i could just give you a word for word copy of how i felt and everything that happened but i will do my best now. we went into the middle of Centro São Paulo. the city is HUGE! i guess it is the 3rd biggest city in the world, so that makes sense. anyway. they just dropped us off in this huge park in the middle of the city and said be back by 3:45. oh, and they forgot to mention that the day we were going proselyting happened to be "Dia da Universidade" or "University Day." This is apparently their equivalent of our thanksgiving day. oh, and i almost forgot to tell you...their University Day parade is bigger than our Thanksgiving day parade. so that was splendid. anyway. we were only given 2 books of mormon. we said a prayer in a pretty quiet part and then started. about 10 minutes in, i placed my BoM with this girl who was sitting on these big stone steps. i was a little cold on the portuguese, but she understood everything i said and that was what mattered. as we were walking away i looked back and she was just sitting on the steps reading. that was really tight. so then we go into the middle of this huge courtyard looking area. We sat down so Yuma could write his testimony in his BoM. this bum came up to us and started talking to me while yuma was writing. he smelled nothing short of disgusting. i was struggling not to cover my nose...or push him away. but he kept going on about something but we couldn´t understand him because he was mumbling a lot. i told him we had to go. on our way towards the other end of the courtyard, this skater shouted out to us. at first we were just gunna say hi and keep going, but we both had a feeling that we should keep talking to him. so i was talking to him about religion and just asking what kinda background he had and stuff and then we basically just headed into the first lesson. i was talking about how we believe that we are God´s children and that he loves all of us and how Christ died for us and he seemed really into it. then i went into prophets and i thought for a moment we were going to lose him because i was talking to him about prophets in the bible and taking it towards Joseph Smith and modern prophets and he told me he thought he was a prophet. so i was like ummmm uh oh. but i told him that we believe we can all receive revelation for our personal lives from God, normally through the Holy Ghost. and after i explained that, he agreed and he seemed to be back into it! so that was awesome. then we took it to the book of mormon. we had him read the first paragraph and then the eighth paragraph in the introduction. and he seemed way into it. then yuma bore his testimony and he was way excited. we told him to read in Moroni chapter 10 and then james 1:5 and to pray about what he read just like Joseph Smith did and he was writing it all down and saying how he was going to do it as soon as he could. after that, he told us how amazing we were. he said that he could see our peace and happiness as we were walking and that he could see and feel a spirit about us. he said that something told him that he needed to talk to us. it was so awesome. he said that he knew everyone had to hear what we had to say and that everyone needed to feel the spirit we had. it was way tight. after that, he rode over with his BoM and then just sat down with this lady in the courtyard and started talking to her about the BoM. it was so crazy. when we went back a little later, he was still talking to her about it but there was another kid on the ground just listening to him. we were so psyched! after that, we went and got another BoM because the people who gave out their books could come get one of the extra 3 we had. so we got one and went to work again. we saw this old guy who was walking really slow and off-balance, so we asked him if he needed help and he said yeah. he was kinda drunk. and by kinda i mean he couldn´t get one straight sentence out. so we helped him over to a bench and talked to him for a bit and i gave him a little card telling him about the church and that he could learn more about it if he followed the instructions. just as we were about to leave, two guys came up to us and asked us who we were and what we were doing. one of the guys was drunk. he was british and knew english. his name was kevin and, unfortuantely, he distracted yuma pretty bad. he wouldn´t shut up! he had gotten out of jail the day before because he had gotten caught dealing drugs. so he kept asking Yuma if he wanted to be rich and that he could make 50,000 dollars for delivering a kilo of cocaine for him. he kept telling him that he should want a ferrari, not a mission. so yuma was just kinda like uhhhh?? that was interesting. it didn´t help that the guy had mastered the use of some wonderfully awful language. it was pretty bad. but while yuma was being held up by this guy, i was talking to the other guy. his name was christiano. he had a pretty religious background and he was telling me about how he was christian and believed in God and Jesus Christ and that he read and believed the Bible. So that was just perfect for me. I took basically the same route as before. I explained that God loves us all and that because of that, he gave us prophets. i told him about the Bible prophets and he knew all about them. but then i went into Joseph Smith and modern prophets. he was really interested. I asked him if he ever heard of the Book of Mormon. He said no. So i described it and had him read the 1st, 8th, and 9th paragraphs of the Intro. he was way into it. i kept talking to him about it and then i asked him to read 3rd Nephi about Christ coming to the Americas. after that i didn´t really know what to say and so i just kinda had an impression to bear my testimony to him. even though his british friend kevin was over to the side cussing up a storm and going on about drug dealing, i could just feel something change. he just went quiet reading in 3rd nephi. after a minute or so i showed him Moroni´s promise in chapter 10. he told me that he would read the BoM and pray about it. it was such an awesome feeling and experience. I can´t believe that I was able to do that after only 7 weeks here. i was so blessed during proselyting, because now that i think back, i realize that i understood everything, even though i didn´t even really know some of the words and stuff. such an awesome experience.
after that we were just feeling awesome. this is when the whole parade thing came into play. we had finished proselyting and were waiting for the bus, but the bus passed us because apparently 12 missionaries on the sidewalk is a very common thing, so he didn´t see us. he drove around and got caught in the parade. while we were waiting for the bus to come back around, a 50 year old gay guy comes up to us. and this wasn´t something we could handle. you see, he kinda waddled up, throwing his butt in every direction that could be considered possible. oh, and he also didn´t have a shirt on; he was wearing skin tight, shiny silver pants; he was sporting a dennis rodman hair style; and he happened to be pulling his nipples out about 6 inches from his body. Do you have that image in your head yet? anyway, so he comes up and starts rubbing up on elder jensen. literally. like he rubbed his nipples on the back of elder jensen´s shirt. we all kinda freaked. then he did the same thing to Burt. i am pretty sure the only reason the guy isn´t in the hospital right now is because we all had our elder tags on and we aren´t supposed to become involved in legal matters. and i dunno what you guys thing, but attempting to kill this guy could have put a damper on our day/mission. but we kinda just ignored this...thing/person...as best as we could until he gave up. anyway. after waiting to see if the bus would make it through for about 30 minutes, we had to book it across the park to see if we could run into him. on our way, there were 4 girls (2 very cute ones, surprisingly) that stopped yuma and i and asked who we were and what we were doing. we told them that we were missionaries and that we were in the city to teach and stuff. they asked us why we weren´t joining in the party and the parade and then asked us if we wanted some of their beers. naturally, we accepted and got absolutely hammered...or maybe we just said we don´t drink alcohol because we believe we aren´t supposed to. you can draw your own conclusion on that one. after running through a lot more of the parade and seeing a lot of things that i would have preferred not to see, we ran into the other district´s van. so, we had to force 25 guys into this 15 person van. that was spectacular, believe me. we drove for about 10 or 15 minutes that way until we ran into our van that was just parked on the side of some random street. then we just went back to the CTM. basically, it was an awesome day. times a million.
When did Jackson report to Provo?! and why didn´t they send out an email or something to all the families?? oh and what about connors email? can you send that with jacksons? i think i got hyrums already. but i will need his myldsmail one. is connor so psyched to get here? it is seriously so awesome. if he gets to report on the 27th or 28th then i would probably get to see him before i left!! i hope his visa comes through! but if he gets stuck in provo for a week or two, at least he would get all the cereal he wanted...and ice cream...and extra name tags. haha. but i definitely hope he gets to come here! i am glad hyrum is having a great time at ASU. i hope he will be able to last all the way until january!! but he is going to australia...so he has something pretty tight to look forward to!
Thanks for the lesson about the atonement. i can add those to my missionary pal set. after teaching about the atonement so much, i realize how amazing and powerful it really is. it is something that we build our faith around, yet so many people don´t even know what it means and what it provides us with. it really is amazing what Christ did for us.
well thank you all so much. it is amazing here. i can hardly describe it. we went to the temple again today. a few pictures were sent home. i love being a missionary. i love you all and miss you!
Elder Ghormley
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