Today was transfers. I am staying in my area here in Sete Lagoas with the same companion, Elder Martinez, but we had to go to Belo Horizonte to watch the transfer meeting because I had a District Leader meeting afterwards. It's always fun to travel a little bit, even if it's only an hour away. And it's good to see friends that you haven't seen in a long time.
On Sunday we baptized two people. Rosa, the mom of a missionary (Felipe) who left from our ward three weeks ago and is now in the São Paulo South Mision and Fred, that kid (22 years old) who appeared out of nowhere last Sunday. Hopefuly Rosa's husband will go soon as well. We had marked a date with him for this Sunday, but he decided he didn't want to on Friday.
Everyone in the ward was very happy. Or rather, very happy with the baptisms, but not so enthusiastic about the fact that during church on Sunday I forgot to fill up the baptismal font, so everyone had to wait 45 minutes in the chapel for it to fill up after church ended, and that my companion forgot the baptismal clothing at our house so he had to go home with one of the Bishop's counselors to get it. During all the post-church/pre-baptism confusion the bishop came up to me and, in english, said "I want to kill you." He was kidding, though. I think.
Every wednesday night our ward has an activity, and last wednesday when we went there Fred gave us a scare. One of the members came up to us in the chapel and said "Fred is on the corner, run there!" So we ran. He was sitting on the curb of the sidewalk cradling his head in his arms and crying and rocking back and forth.
I thought he was having some sort of seizure or something. We ran over to him and starting talking to him. He understood everything we said, but couldn't communicate very well. I started telling him to focus on breathing, and when he did that he fell over on his back. I told my comp to call an ambulance, but Fred was coherent enough to tell us (or at least signal to us) that he didn't want that.
We finally got him up on his feet and into the church and he calmed down a bit. We sat down and tried to talk to him, but he ended up storming out of the room and back into the street where he stayed pacing on the other side of the street in front of the church.
This whole scene lasted about an hour. Finally, one of his friends came, talked to him and got him to calm down. He later came and apologized for the event. He apparently had had some kind of nervous breakdown. He said that he's having a lot of difficulties at home, and he has been searching for a job and he's not finding anything, and his love life is a mess, etc. and it all built up and he never let anything out, and so it just exploded all at once inside of him. But by the end of the night he was back to normal and we even got to teach him a few gospel principles. He was interviewed the next night and baptized on Sunday.
We have an investigator named Wilson who was interviewed yesterday and will be baptized on Sunday. I think he's the investigator that I've most made friends with of all the people that I've taught here in a year and a half. He's an unemployed paramedic from São Paulo that moved here to live with his family. He lives with his Mom, Dad and one younger brother. He's 34 years old. He loves us. Every time we go to his house, we plan to stay for no more than 45 minutes and end up staying for an hour and a half. It's impossible to leave. I always try to bring the subject back to what we're teaching him, but I always get lost in what he's talking about because he's so interesting. He also served in the army when he was younger. In 1999, he ran head on into a Semi-Truck going 105 MPH. He almost died. Lots of his insides came out. He showed us all the scars that he has where they grafted skin over where he had lost it. He spent nearly three years recovering in the hospital, and then quite a bit more recovering at home. He wants me to bring him to the United States and wants to meet my family. I told him Mom would make dinner for him if he wanted to come over and stay for a night, but that I couldn't promise much more than that.
That's all the news I've got for now. Love you all, and am looking forward to next week!
Elder Sisco