Campo Grande 3-3-13 to 3-10-13

Dear Familia,

As for this week, things have been going good. We had the usual ups and downs with steady investigators falling and finding new investigators with real potential. Good lessons filled with the Spirit, and lessons where the investigators didn´t understand anything. Just a ´it always feels good to pray´ and ´all we need to do is have God in our heart´. Yeah, the usual ups and downs. Even the weather was hot and sunny one day, then crashing rain the next, then returned to hot and sunny. It was interesting, lol.

Oh, as for a story, one of the Elders in our zone was almost struck by lightning. Yeah, when I said crashing rain it always comes with a lot of lighting and thunder here too. People say that Campo Grande is the city in all of Brazil with the most lightning. And i´d believe it too. Every time a storm rolls through there´s always a lot of lighting. I´m not exactly sure what it hits though. Maybe trees. With the Elder in my zone it was a light-post. Or maybe it hits a lot of cows. There are a lot of them here. Maybe that´s the target, lol.

And speaking of cows, beef is really cheap here, and also leather. So if you want something leather, just let me know. They have a lot of leather, like leather boots, leather belts, and leather bags. Oh, and leather bracelets, leather sandals, basically a lot of leather (and a lot of cows, lol)

But that´s pretty much it. I´m excited today because we´re going to visit Wal-mart! My first time in a wal-mart for almost 6 months, can you believe it!?! I hear they don´t have items imported like the Wal-mart in São Paulo, but it´ll be fun anyways. Really I just want to print some photos to send to Eric. He keeps sending photos to me, but I don´t have anywhere in my area to print photos to send to him. But I´ll get a couple printed today. I also want to see if I can find a battery charger. I was going to ask if you could send me one, but I realized I would need a converter too, so I might as well buy a charger here. Mainly for my camera. I don´t want to keep buying new batteries (the batteries here don´t last very long and I already brought rechargeables with me, just forgot the charger, lol). So if I remember, I´ll be able to let you know how it went. It´ll probably seem just as cool as when I visited McDonalds, lol

As for the poor, our area is interesting... sometimes we find people who are humble because of their poverty, but then sometimes we find people who are poor just because they don´t care and don´t have a drive to change anything in their lives. Or, they are uneducated and buy into the false ´milagres´ of the million churches here. Or, they´ve seen how the churches just want their money (it´s true here, all but one church was created to get money) and so they don´t trust churches and say that they just need to have Christ in their hearts. But it´s good if the only thing is that they´re poor and have a trail of faith to walk for an hour to get to church.

That being said, we´ve had success with one family who was exactly that. They are very humble. But they are also very loving and respectful. It´s sad when poverty turns men to beer and women to 15-year old mothers. And the other churches say that it´s fine. Gosh. I think one thing I´ve really seen here is the power of the great and abominable church over the hearts and the minds of men. I just can´t wait for it to fall and for all of the people to see the hypocrisy of all the ´powerful´ pastors.

I think it just shows that we really can´t judge who is ready and who isn´t. And it´s not our place. What we need to do is love everyone, no matter their age, sex, or social position. I´ve made really good friends with people dirt poor, as well as people extremely well off for the area. It shows that this church really brings people together. No matter what stages of life they are in, the gospel is here to help every single person who will just give their will to the Father, who then in turn makes bad men good and good men better.

Sister Grimes