He Speaks

I hope all is well. I~ve really relaxed this week. I~m progressing in my ability to understand and my ability to teach in Portuguese. I have one of the best teachers in the mission and he teaching me how to teach people not lessons. This is something I need to work on. In reality I love people and love the people I get to teach but sometimes I~m too objective oriented. For example mission rules is 1 hour for lunch. In my opinion that means you get to the house, start the clock and in 1 hour you leave.

In Brasil this is what happens, you get to the house they start making lunch, you finish you share a message and you leave. Sometimes lunch is over 2 hours. (usually close to an hour this is an exaggeration) my first week I freaked out. I couldn’t say anything and I couldn’t leave so I just stressed. This week I took off my watch. Because I was looking at it all the time so I just put it in my bag. It makes life a lot easier. I can check time when we need to but in general I can just listen to people.

Missionaries and return missionaries tell me that I just need to relax. That the rules are there to help me focus and so If you~re not being lazy it is ok to break rules like be home by 9 30. But i~ve learned that the `higher law´ means understand purposes of rules as well as the rules themselves. It is a hard balance. I don~t want to be someone who doesn~t follow the rules but I also don’t want to be a Pharisee. So i~m learning, watching my companion and learning from him.

Even in English I don~t really like talking to people for a long time (he loves it) so he is teaching me how to be people oriented. It’s something I really need to work on so this is a good place for me right now. It is hard not being able to do much. Generally I just start street contacts and my companion finishes them. People here are really nice (generally) and enjoy talking (which is frustrating because I enjoy getting to the point and leaving the house. I~m learning so much.

When I study about faith and about grace and about the atonement, I think, I can do this. My God loves me and My savior knows me. To me I would rather study for 7 hours on the atonement then think for one hour on the eternities. I don~t know if that is right or not but it comforts me.

I have attatched some pictures of our cooking adventure today haha super good :)

Its crazy that after this mission i~ll be cooking for myself forever haha and someday for a wife as well. haha crazy how fast life moves. President Mgarachi talked about how fast things move. And they really do fly.