Email 3/17/09

From: Bryan Barney
Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 9:12 AM

So I have to move kinda quick. The net's already crashed two or three times, and the power died once this morning, too. It's brief crashes, but when you work with unsaved documents, that means just about everything. I have to apologize for not responding directly to Matt. I tried, I had a good long e-mail and everything, about Nossa Senhora Maria and her 80 various incarnations, but the power died just as I was about to finish, so I just have to go with this.

We have a few good, solid marked baptisms for this Sunday, so we just need to keep on praying really hard. I have to work on my temper a bit still. I was proselyting and this guy started raving on about how we were wrong because of baptisms for the dead, using this wild misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 15, and we're talking really wild, like he was ranting about 2nd and 3rd Adam and I was just "Dude, stop watching Evangelion and let me get back to work" but afterward I was pretty annoyed.

But all in all things are going REALLY well of a sudden here. Mara is still getting ready to go to the temple, we have a couple we've marked to baptize on Sunday (And the guy said, "If I baptize, no, I will baptize, but when I do, is it against the rules to play pool?" So cool!) and we're even doing a tiny bit of work out in Morumbi these days. In fact, the most concrete baptisms are there.

Speaking of Morumbi, I was riding the bus to there, and I saw this woman reading a TJ (Jehovah's Witness) pamphlet about Adam and Eve, and it was ranting about how evil they were, and how God should have destroyed them and started over, and it was pretty horrid, the usual, you are all vile, wretched, and filthy, and therefore you all suffer and darkness, gloom, and doom tal tal tal. So I sat down next to her and just said "Hey, how are you, my name is Elder, I'm a missionary, can I share a brief thought with you? Adam fell that man might be, and men are, that they might have joy. We suffer so we can know what is good. We're here to learn and be happy." And then I gave her a pamphlet about the Plan of Salvation and got her name, number, and address. It was the only contact I did that day, but it was also one of the very best I've ever done.

We live in a rented house. We have a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, an office, and an entrance room, with a wash area, too.

I'm trying to save money, I really am, but I had to make a flip-chart this last week and bought better pants this week. The blue pair I bought turned purple, so there wasn't much to do but replace it. My shirt's'll all be yellow in no time, too.

I got your letter with the tax papers. I hope all you wanted was my John Hancock. I've signed, and will have them in the mail tomorrow, going as fast as I can afford.

Missionaries are responsible for breakfast and dinner, and the members give lunch, which is the principal meal of the day here in Brazil, and is generally very heavy. I weigh 72 kilos, and I hope to make that number go DOWN and not up, but it's gonna be quite the fight.

I'd still like Colin.'s e-mail address, if at all possible. I know he and Megan and Katie are all pretty busy, but it'd be nice to jot him a three minute e-mail every once in a while.

I saw the picture of Grampa and Dad, was this bike trip with Grampa's Webelos?

We don't have more than 2 Aaronic Priesthood holders here, but we're working on it. It isn't easy to get this ward on it's feet, because they're missing a Bishop.

We'll be trying very hard these coming days to prepare a man to baptize his son, so we need everyone to pray hard for us, because at the moment this brother is inactive in the Palavra de Sabedoria sense, which is to say, he doesn't quite realize he could use the money he uses to buy alcohol to pay for a bus ticket. But when we reactivate this man and he baptizes his son, it'll really be something worthwhile accomplished in this ward.

We also had an activity recently. Elder Eliason and I ran it, and we made French Toast with maple. It was crazy! We had to barricade the kitchen, the members were so crazy for the stuff! We only stopped because it was almost our time to return to the house and we were a good half-hour away.

Have I mentioned there is a home-schooled guy in our ward who is a returned missionary american with a brazilian wife? I dunno why it's important, just that an American in our ward sticks out.

I don't know that I know any of the Missionaries in Spanaway Ward, seeing as it's been a good number of transfers, but you can tell them I said sorry for not helping out more if I do. Getting help from members is one of the hardest of all missionary tasks.

Also, congrats to Bro. Vanduyn! I hear that Brian is off serving the Lima Peru mission? That's cool. It's not Brazil, mind you, but Peru is at least amongst the Lamanites still.
I'm about to get the pictures from Elder Eliason, so I'll email you back in a sec.