Email - 4/14/09

From: Bryan Barney
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:39 PM

WASHING MACHINE WORKS!!!!!
Sim, queridos amados irmãos e irmãs, Os Élderes de Tibery finalmente podem lavar suas roupas!!!

I'm very happy, the house is at long last nicely furnished. Now if only I could say the work was so completely well moving as well. We're working on cleaning out the ward list to see who moved and who still is here, and who we can and cannot reactivate. And I have to be a little honest, it's a tad bleak at times.

But things are hardly grim and doom right now. I'm still having plenty of adventures and misadventures along the way. Elder Owen and I stopped to talk to Mara after school yesterday, and one of her friends came to chat with us as well. We're working our best to see if we can't baptize some of Mara's friends as well, haha. But anyway, we passed on by, and her friend chatted with us for a bit. The girls tend to love Elder Owen, he being blonde haired and blue-eyed, a rare commodity in these parts. Oh, and he's American, which goes well.

But to make a long story short, it's not weird here for people to kiss cheeks as they leave. So when I shook the hand of this girl as she was leaving she tried to kiss mine, and I had to do some major dodging maneouvers, since it's against the Law of Moses, among other things, to kiss an Elder. The poor girl was incredibly embarrassed, but really we're still laughing about it.

Also, I had an awesome experience Easter Sunday. We have in our ward a woman named Fernanda, who is a recent convert and a single mom. She recently had a daughter, and this Sunday was the blessing. So her Uncle, Franz Roberto, who has just a little more than a year in the church, was called upon to perform the ordinance, and I and Elder Owen got to participate. VERY VERY COOL.

I need a few pictures, yes, and laminated would be cool, but they don't HAVE to be made into a flip chart here. We have two papelarias in the area where we can have that done for fairly cheap. R$30 or so. It's just that flip charts are an incredibly useful thing. People remember better that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ if you show them a picture of it. The remember better that the Book of Mormon is about Jesus Christ if you show them a picture of it. So I need a few pictures for the Kingdoms of Glory, because it's a tad abstract for the average Couch Crente (Couch Believer).

I'm glad to hear Easter went so well for you all. I had a great Easter Sunday. We ate lunch in a bairro (Buy-hoe)(Neighborhood) called Morumbi, which is normally the poorer part of town, but that said, the ACTIVE members there are cool. The Inactives are of a ranging variety. Sometimes working with inactive members is fun. Sometimes, its not so great to see these people fall. I met a woman this weekend who had "Changed churches" Or rather, she no longer went to church because, in her own words, the time schedule was problematic for her, and she'd switched to A Igreja Internacional da Graça de Deus em Brasil! Which is to say, she watches Church on the TV now.

Hahaha, so speaking of that, one day we were out doing some street contacts using the Book of Mormon, and there was this lady, and I said, "Tudo Bom Senhora! My name is Elder, I'm from the US, but I came here to share this book with The Lady! This is the-"

"Sou CONGREGAçÃO CRISTAA!"

"Perfect, I want to share this free book with The Lady, it's The Book of Mormon, another book of sacred scriptures, like the Bible, can we visit you at your house another day to share this book and pray with you?"

"No, I only use the Bible."

"Does The Lady not accept more of the Word of God in her life?"

"No, no, I watch the Pastor on the telly every day, too!"

Hahaha. I feel sometimes like I'm Peter or Paul trying to share the New Testament with the Jews, and they just respond, "I already have the Old Testament." Or "I'm a Samaritan! I only use THE LAW." Or, "I watch my Rabbi on the telly every day!"

Just gotta laugh some days, right? It's an adventure, really, and we have to do something to cast of the enemy when he's trying his hardest to get us down. For example, Morumbi is kinda dusty, and the dirt here is all red, so one day we pretended we'd been called to serve on Mars, except you can't say that to members, because Morumbi is also the farthest from the chapel, so people get a tad offended.

It's not that it's bad watching Conference in Portuguese, its that it's BAD. The translators eat the microphones, but sometimes you hear snips of english amidst the Drive-Thru voice and lose your focus. But hey watching it was better than not. I even watched part of the Young Women's Session.

I hope you have a good time at the Temple. Every couple weeks I go crazy from not being there. You just kinda start to miss it after awhile.

Well, I have to split now, but I hope everyone is okay. Not sure really what to do about the phone call thing yet. If I'm still here in Tibery (Heaven forbid) I'll likely call from inside of a Jaguar, but that's a story for another day.

Love,
Bryan.