Vila Sônia - Week 9

Hey everyone! This week went really well, and really fast! 

A few awesome things that happened this week...we found a really cool family, Valéria, Analise, and João. The first time, we just taught Valéria and one of her friends, and she said we could come back. When we came back, only Analise and João were there (her two kids, 15 and 14) and so we talked to them about the Atonement and repentance, and they agreed to get baptized this coming Sunday! They are really receptive and really interested in the church. They said that they have never let other churches into their house, not because they are against religion, but because we were the first ones they actually believed! So that's always awesome to hear. Valéria even got her work schedule changed to be able to go to church on Sundays, but she still didn't go yesterday, I think because she got in a minor moto accident and got kinda scraped up. I'm not super sure though. So we're hoping right now that they'll be able to make it to at least one of the sessions of Conference, and we can baptize the family this Sunday! There's also a grandma that has been there two times when we've visited them, and she's...interesting to say the least. She has the fullest facial hair I've ever seen on any female, and she is very...active in how she talks about church. Hands in the air, hallelujah and everything. It's funny though. We've been applying a lot of the stuff that we learned from the General Authority this week, and it should be pretty cool!

This Sunday we actually found someone who was willing to go to church! It was an older lady, who was sitting in front of her house kinda crying, and I'm still not really sure why, but I guess we helped her out in some way and she agreed to go to church. And she said she enjoyed it, so I guess we'll be visiting her again sometime this week. 

I'm doing pretty well with no sunglasses, I'm just used to it now. This last week was a lot sunnier than last, which was lame, but it was okay. It's usually cloudy, so I can pretty much look straight forward without squinting too badly :)  

I bought a soap dispenser and soap this week too haha. Laranja[orange]-smelling dish soap, which pretty much works the same. It was for our bathroom, if you can believe that we actually haven't had a soap dispenser in our bathroom until just this week haha. Don't freak out too much :)  

One interesting thing, is that the first counselor here in the branch presidency told me one night as we were leaving a ward activity that he thinks I'm going to be a prophet, because I remind him of President Kimball. I don't really know what exactly that means, but I guess it's a good thing? So if I'm ever a General Authority, he wants me to remember him in Vila Sonia :)  

President Kimball: obviously similar to Elder Bratsman :)

Another interesting, random thing is that I had my first ramen noodles here. Bacon flavored, because why not? It didn't taste a whole lot like bacon, or regular ramen, but it was still not bad, considering. 

Also, we had a family night with Gilson and Josefa (Gilson is actually his name, we were just wrong this whole time, oops) and we made an American dessert to take over there! And, because it sounded like a pretty good idea, we made those cups of dirt or whatever they're called. So we had chocolate pudding (and chocolate flan mix added in, because we didn't quite have enough pudding), crushed up Oreos, chocolate sprinkles, and gummy bears (because they don't really have gummy worms here, the non-sour ones anyways) in a big pan, and all the Brazilians really liked it! Little bit sugary and chocolatey, but I think that's the point. 

Oh, for our ward activity (the ward integration night, which is another time when not very many people showed up) we were talking about missionary work. So we split the people into two groups, gave one half candy, and gave the other half instructions. The instructions were to talk to the people with candy, and to try to get them to share their candy without talking at all about sharing, or candy, or anything like that. They just had to have a normal conversation in an attempt to get the person to feel like sharing their candy. And the people with candy didn't have any other instructions, just that they could do whatever they wanted with the candy. So when they talked for a few minutes, only 2 people shared the candy. The rest ate their candy by themselves or put it in a purse or something like that. So we used that to show how we aren't naturally used to sharing the gospel with the people we come in contact with. Most people just tend to keep the candy to themselves. I think it went pretty well, people seemed to like it. 

Anyways, not much else happened that I can think of right now. We'll definitely have some baptisms in our branch for Easter. Thanks to all of you guys for your prayers and support!

Love,

Elder Bratsman

Here's a picture of what I get to watch Jacob's videos on, it might make you guys laugh, I don't know.
It's the best thing in the world to me, though :)