Hello! It's p-day again!
First of all, Happy Birthday, Pop!
The other day we were walking, and I saw this handcart in the middle of the street and someone walked over and tossed a match on it and it erupted into flames. I guess it had been previously doused with a flammable substance of some sort. Shortly thereafter, a man came running out of this house being chased by a fat woman with a broom, and she was beating him with it! She had no mercy! The broom broke and she started hitting him with both ends. It was his wife and kids all ganging up against him. I don't know what he did to deserve it, but it was sad to see. But really, at the same time, despite the sadness, it was pretty awesome to be there. Or exciting, I'll say. You know how it is. I saw him after all the commotion and he was sitting on the side of the road licking his wounds. He was pretty beaten. He was bleeding in a lot of places. Luckily she didn't stab him with one of the broom ends, that would be bad. The police came after and everything. Way exciting. And as if that wasn't enough for the neighborhood to erupt in a tremor of gossipy excitement, the next day there was a triple homicide on the other side of the city. Unfortunately one of the people was the son of recent convert who lives on this same street. He apparently "knew too much" about some criminals. One of the people that died, since he knew he was going to die, filmed it on his cell phone and hid it from the guys who killed him, and so they know who did it because of him. Clever, eh? It was sad to go to the mom's house though. She was pretty distraught, obviously.
But don't worry, I'm safe. I don't know any drug lords or have any information that anyone would kill me to keep secret. Sete Lagoas is a pretty safe city anyway.
I went to "The Cave of the King of the Wilderness" (a gruta do rei do mato) today, on the outskirts of the city. It was pretty awesome. Reminded me a lot of that Timpanogus cave that we went to in Utah. Way cool. Most of the people in my zone went. Very exciting.
I think I told you this before, but our zone made a new key indicator that we have to mark 2 dates every day. One per person, two per companionship. I've gotten way good at marking baptismal dates, I've even been marking with people in the street, just in regular street contacts. A lot of people used to be afraid of marking dates, so they're trying to get rid of that fear, because that's why we're here. They say that if you don't mark a date by the second lesson, you're wasting time.
We had this guy in church on Sunday who's like, 65. And our church is backwards by the way; priesthood, Sunday school, sacrament. So he's this great investigator. And he was there for the first two hours, and then he disappeared! We lost him the crowd (because there are two wards that meet in the same chapel) and when the dust had settled he was gone. Turns out, he thought it had ended and he went home. Unfortunately, having an investigator in priesthood and gospel principles doesn't count for us. He missed the most important part! Our fault, for not explaining it to him though. Whoops. But he's going again next week, and hopefully he'll be baptized on the next Saturday, which will be conference! I cant wait for conference, it's gonna be sweet. No sleeping for me this time.
Okay, I can't think of what else I need to write, so I'm signing off.
Much love,
Elder Sisco