Sorry, I know this email is way late in the day. More so than usual. When I email really just depends on how we have scheduled our day. So if you want me to read your email, probably gotta to get it in by Sunday ha, or it can wait until next week. Speaking of which, I don't know if everyone knows this, but everyone is allowed to email me, not just family, however I can only send hand written letters back, so if you email me, give me your home address too and I will be sure to write back. ( I should note that this doesn´t relieve anybody from written letter duty :p)
I hope you all enjoyed the picture I sent. Ha we snapped the photo of Elder Gramosa and me while we were running out the door to email, so sorry it kind of stinks. There is also one of him at his desk, he is fixing a shaver. When I found out he would be my companion another elder told me ´he is always creating things´I didn't really know what that meant. I do now. Most people when they don't have something, they buy it or do without. He just makes it. For example, our MP3 player broke. So using a plastic can and some spare parts, he made us a new one, with a sub. and everything. He made rope out of a tie, and the other day we were making pancakes, but we don't have a spatula, so he made one out of a tin can. Pretty much I feel very blessed to have him as my companion, I am really going to miss him once he goes home, what a stud.
We had a good week, but I did manage to acquire another injury. I wish I had a better story, but truth is, I was opening a door while E. Lopes was closing (trying to rope the door closed) and the door handle broke and sliced my hand pretty good. I think it looked worse than it actually is, but it was pretty nasty, ha E. Amaral got sick when he saw it.
So we had a really good week, we had four of our investigators at church! and we have a really great teaching pool right now. Ha get this, Sunday morning those young men we are teaching, actually called us at like eight in the morning wondering if we were coming. Gosh they are awesome. We played soccer and some football with them today. That was an up, but as far as everything else, this week was pretty slow. We had to go on a lot of splits and it was really crazy. We also had a big bummer, we had two baptisms set for our district this weekend and both of them backed out. We are going to keep working with them, but we were still bummed.
So as some of you may know, I talk in my sleep. I am just putting that out there. My first day in the CTM I told E. Goldsberry that I do, and was giving him fair warning, I told the Elders in my district the same thing when I arrived here in Pelotas. Ha so apparently I usually talk in English, but last night they told me I was speaking in Portuguese in my sleep, and that I didn't have an American accent. I was pretty pumped, its like getting extra practice while I sleep!
Ha speaking of the language, I was on splits with another Elder, an american and we were walking back to our house at night and he told me. Okay Elder, we have to speak only in Portuguse now, people think that Americans are rich and they might try to rob us. Ha I would only have a few bucks to give them if they did, plus I am pretty sure people can tell we are Americans even if we are speaking Portuguese or not. Our area is way safe I think, I have never felt in danger, ha Elder Gramosa told me later that he is a little afraid of our area. Don't worry mom, our area is totally fine.
So for something a little more serious. Elder Bednar said once that the purpose of the Gospel is to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable. I definitely saw both sides of that this week. When I was way bummed about our baptism this week, I found comfort in the scriptures, and council for the work that I am doing. I also had the pleasure to comfort the afflicted this week with our message. We started teaching some people that are really receptive and I could tell the Gospel message spoke peace to them. Ha and I also had to afflict some comfortable people this week too. I taught a lesson last night with Elder Amaral to a woman and her son. She was so receptive and really is a sincere seeker of truth. He was rocked to his core. I don't mean to sound like we were being mean, we taught the same message we always do, and the Gospel is also to comfort those people who have been afflicted by it, if they will accept it. I could tell that The Lord was really with us as we taught, he really was interested and said he would pray about it, but he was also very up in arms and kind of wanted to argue with us. We just calmly explained our message like we always do, we invite people to come to Christ, but we can force anybody, and arguing never helped anything. Elder Amaral said he was the same way when the missionaries first taught him when he was fourteen, so I have hope for him.
Well, I am glad to hear about how everything is going on back home. Sounds like there is a lot of change going on, but a lot of good things. I appreciate the shout out from the people from C/TMTO and to hear about how everyone is. Please keep it coming. Thanks for everybody's support, thoughts, and prayers. It is a great strength to me. I think that is all for now. I love you all. I read about charity this week, about loving people just for being them, because they are children of God. I have been trying to work on that, I am not there yet, but I am trying. We refer to charity as ´The Pure Love of Christ´ but what does that really mean? I can really only put it like this. I think it is when we are finally able to love others more than we love ourselves. Just something I thought about this last week.
Take care, much love. Seu Filho, Irmão, e amigo.
Elder David F. Morgan
p.s. I learned how to do a ´rainbow´ with a soccerball this week. I feel pretty cool.
Luckily our soccer sister Krista was able to give us an explanation of the "rainbow": It's when you flick the ball over your shoulder. Basically you take the ball with your right leg lets say, and hook it up to your left heal. Then you use your left heal to actually flick the ball up your backside and over your shoulder and then you catch it on the other side with your foot. It's a pretty difficult trick, one that I definitely don't know how to do.
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