24 August 2010 - letter

A lot of things happened this week. Our district made a goal to practice contacting people, so we started a contact-o-rama. It was more about practice than a real competitions, but it was so much fun. We got a lot of practice and I felt really good about our preparation.

We went out on Friday and gave out copies of the Book of Mormon to people in the historic downtown of São Paulo. First, there was no one we could get to listen to us. But after a while we started to get more people to listen. Probably the best story was when we were talking to this woman and we found out that she had been investigating the church a few years ago and then she had joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But now she no longer attends the church and she wants to know more. So while we were talking about the Book of Mormon, a man ran up shouting “Elders! Elders! Vocês têm um Livro de Mórmon?” It turned out that he was inactive and wanted to go back to church, but he had moved and didn’t know where the chapel was. We gave him all the information we had and a Book of Mormon.

Not long after that, we ran into two Americans studying abroad. They had a returned missionary friend so they wanted to take pictures with us to send home. We gave them a Book of Mormon and promised that if they read it, they would both understand the Portuguese language and Jesus Christ better. It was really weird to be speaking English to people on the street in Brazil.

I love you all!

Historic downtown São Paulo (not taken by David)