March 2, 2014 - Carnaval and Power of the Priesthood

March 3, 2014

Sao Paulo Carnaval (photo from internet)

Hello, Mom and Dad!  This week has been pretty eventful in Brazil, but uneventful for missionaries who serve in Brazil!  This week is Carnaval which basically gives the right for Brazilians to party literally all night long drinking and dancing with out having any problems.  Of course, my area is the center of it all so it's even worse here!  No one wanted us in their house because of Carnaval so it was pretty boring as a missionary.  President Cabral had all the missionaries in their house by 5 because past this you're going to see naked women walking on the streets.Yeah, you read right; it's terrible. 

McKaylee told me about ball. That's too bad about the boys. I'm sure they were pretty devastated; they were good.  That's so awesome though that McKaylee had her two best games the last two games of her career.  She definitely went out with a bang!  

Dad, I'm thinking that when you leave town on business there's a curse of some sort that something bad will happen. It's just the luck of our family though for sure ha ha.  

This week we didn't have a lot of opportunities to teach, but me and another Elder had an opportunity to give a blessing yesterday to a 19 year old girl in the ward.  First, background: in Brazil, all the young men and young women during Carnaval try to avoid it. They go to something that is basically like EFY and stay there so that they have better options. This girl had to work so she couldn't go, but everyone else had already left so she was literally the only person close to her age group around.  Also she has a boyfriend that's serving a mission which makes it more difficult.  She said that she was feeling alone and that she was always getting upset really quick and annoyed.  We try to focus the blessing on these things so it can make it more powerful.  The elder gave the blessing and said things completely different than what she said was wrong, but things that were very deep and profound. When he finished the blessing and we took our hands off her head, her face was filled with tears falling from her eyes.   She told us that she said only a little bit about what was wrong, but that the elder I was with said everything that was really the matter.  He said things that were in her patriarchal blessing word for word.  It was such a cool experience because you knew that the spirit was testifying to each one of us in that moment.  I also found it significant that the power of the priesthood is the same for anyone.  It doesn't matter who is giving the blessing whether it's a mission president, a patriarch or an elder.  The power of the priesthood is the same.

I'm getting transferred tomorrow. I don't know where or if I will train or who my companion will be yet but I know that I'm leaving this area.  I'm honestly really nervous about transfers because I just feel inadequate to train right now, but I'm still excited to get a new companion.  

For your information, my legs are about twice the size they were before. I weigh 195..yeah shocked me too. In two weeks it will be 6 months.

I'm going to try to send you a talk that my mission president gave us. It's in Portuguese, but maybe putting it in Google translator will do the trick!

love you guys