October 31, 2008

Let me tell you a little bit about The Best Sunday Ever. I woke up, went to church, ate a fantastic lunch, and then because it was my day to stay with Elder Dantas, we took a bus home and I took a two hour Sunday Afternoon Nap. I believe that I will never again have the opportunity to do this. At least not for another 13 months.
That night, we took a bus to the chapel where we had a baptism. Debora, Bahia's daughter, was baptized by the Bishop. It was an awesome meeting. Also, I sat next to our new Ward Mission Leader who is 80 years old. He was baptized 36 years ago, when the church was just getting it's roots down here in Brazil, and he was confirmed a new member by Elder Howard W. Hunter of the quorum of the twelve at the time. Sweet, huh? He showed me an old Aaronic Priesthood manual that has a story about him in it. Y'know how whenever they read those example stories with morals in them you always wonder if they're actually true? Well this one used his name and everything.
It talked about one time while he was a taxi driver in São Paulo and he rear-ended someone and he got out of the taxi and was like, "I'm sorry, this is completely my fault, I'll take care of everything. Now, I know that everything happens for a reason, so I'd like to take this opportunity to share a message with you about the gospel of Jesus Christ." The guy was baptized two weeks later. When I was done reading the story in the manual he leaned over and said, "that guy is a Patriarch now in São Paulo." Pretty crazy, huh? He's been a missionary for a very, very long time, and has had a lot of success.
The other day we ran into this guy who seemed to know the missionaries, so we asked if we could go to his house. Turns out his whole family, minus him, was baptized in the church but now are inactive. They go to some evangelical church now. We asked his wife (who is a member of the church. Or was.) if she could pray and she was like "sure, but I'm going to do it my way" and then she started praying really loudly and saying a lot of hallelujah's and Praise Jesus's and up until then I was thinking "this is the most horrible irreverant thing I've ever heard."
But she quickly outdid herself and started speaking with her "Gift of Tongues."
It went something like this: "chamalamahamawama oohwee oh chamahamahama (about a minute of this, coupled with a lot of rolling of the tongue. we had trouble controlling ourselves). Amen."
I was unable to identify the language.