Week 58: Baptism & A Huge Tub of Ice Cream

So exciting thing that happened this week, we had our 3rd miracle baptism of the month! His name is Lessio, he's 16 and Keven's younger brother (the one who got baptized 4 weeks ago). Man, this kid did some MAJOR changes in his life. He hated talking to us and wanted nothing to do with the church. He was always hanging out in the streets with his gang of little thugs and even dropped out of school when he was 13. But after Keven was baptized he started wanting to talk to us again, even showed up to church 4 Sundays ago all on his own. He has changed so much, he's keeping the law of chastity, studying the scriptures and praying every day, and hasn't missed a Sunday so far. He just seems way happier.
And thankfully, nothing crazy happened to my son during this baptism, haha. But the water was FREEZING cold, the coldest baptism I've had so far.

I do make sure something happens every day to Elder McMullin, just to keep him happy and his mission interesting. I don't pick on him, I just make his life interesting. He seems like he's a lot more at home now, and the more stuff that happens, the less he things of home. That's something I SUCKED at when I was a greenie. I would think of home ever spare second I had. 

Two days ago we were wrestling in the house with Chevy (Elder Chevalier) and we broke his bed haha. The frame fell apart but we put it back together, we didn't take a picture of it but it looked hilarious. I also volunteered him to give a talk next Sunday, he's excited (not really) but it'll be good practice for him. 

And we bought a huge tub of ice cream! It's totally worth eating just beans and rice at the end of the month for this, haha. It's "Ceu" flavored, which means heaven. The name fits cuz it really tastes heavenly. The white stuff are bits of white chocolate.

Also, have I mentioned that people here just pee and poop everywhere in the middle of the day, especially kids. McMullin isn't a fan of that, so he made a goal to not see any naked people during the day. Naturally, I now always point out when a kid is peeing or something. So far, he hasn't made it past lunchtime without  breaking his goal, haha it's hilarious. 

Week 44

We had another week full of tiny miracles. We hit frequency of 50 again in church! It's crazy how much this branch has grown, I remember my first few Sundays only having 25ish people at sacrament. We owe all this growth to the members here. I would honestly put my money on them if we were looking for the hardest working members in the world.
The volcano in Fogo erupted!!! Haha Elder Olsen had to move out of his area cuz he was right under it.

Week 33

So man, this past week was probably the best week I've had on the mission so far. Especially cuz of this man and his daughter right here, John and Jasmyn. Everything about them is a total miracle. Guess how many times we sat down with them to teach them before baptism?? Only 5 times. We have only known them for 2 and a half weeks. It's insane! Dad was an investigator for like 6 months, lol.
So let's start from the beginning... About 3 weeks ago Elder Burch and I were having a tough couple of days. Everyone was cancelling lessons with us, nobody was home because of stupid parties everywhere, we were super tired from walking around ALL day. We were feeling way frustrated. We decided we needed to stop and say a prayer and ask God to lead us to someone, so we did and after a couple of minutes we talked about it and decided to go to a zone called "Ladeira". We have only visited that zone once before cuz we don't know anyone from there. So we walked down this area for like 5 minutes and we heard someone whistling at us. We turned around and saw this man walking out of his house with his bike and workout clothes and gloves and stuff. We started talking and this man had so many questions about God such as "what does God look like?" "I heard there is other people in the universe, does he look like an alien?" and "Why did God abandon his children here on earth?" and stuff like that.
After a few minutes we asked if he had time to talk and he said no because he was going to work out, so we invited him to church the next day (this was Saturday) and he said "Alright, I'll think about it". So the next morning he showed up with 2 of his daughters, and during one of the hours a member was teaching a lesson about Job and all he went through. It turns out that was just what John needed. After the class, he even stood up and shook the member's hand and thanked him for giving a good lesson and said he'd never heard a story like that in his life before.
We visited him the next day and he just absorbed information like a sponge. We taught him the law of chastity and word of wisdom and he said that he's not into that life anymore, and that he's old now and is looking for someone to spend the rest of his life with and not just a one night stand sort of deal. That was a miracle in itself cuz 99% of Cape Verdeans only want to party and have sex. I'm not even exaggerating.

I know it's hard to see because he's wearing a super huge baptism robe, but this guys arms are like the size of my thighs, lol. He's super buff. He wanted to get baptized in the ocean, not in the little pools as usual. It was way cool but we didn't have any white clothes so we weren't witnesses :( only from the beach. 

One of the members drew my name in the sand. With a backwards "g". 

We also spent a few days in Sao Vincent this week for a District Leader Meeting with Elder Moreira, remember him?? The 70? He's a total boss, it was way spiritual and cool, but I forgot my camera so I have no pics of that :/