Elder Cole Gunnoe: Email received January 19, 2015

Oi gente!
This week was a good one! Full of ups and downs, surprises, and just flat interesting things!

Monday was a normal p-day. Nothing really exciting happened. We had to stay in or close to the house because of transfers. So we couldn´t really do anything.

Tuesday is the same story for the first half of the day. We just stayed close to the house and chilled. We had lunch not too far from the house with an investigator family. It was a good lunch! After lunch was over one of their daughters took Elder Medina into the backyard to show him something. Elder Medina then came back inside and said that we should go look at what it was because it was a problem... When we saw what it was, I was very surprised! Never seen that many in one place! Hundreds and hundreds of ticks!!!! Hundreds of them! So we started burning them! Sounded like popcorn! It took forever to burn them! We kept finding more and more! During the process, One of the Zone Leaders showed up at the house with another elder from our zone. First thought was that I was being transferred. But they told us that no one was being transferred!! They were just there to drop off the new elder. I was so happy and relieved to hear that I was staying! So we went to get him and let him in the house. He´s a super cool kid! From São Paulo, was serving in Teresina and has 9 months on the mission. Super good kid! After that, we could finally get to work! We spent the last half of the day visiting people just close to the house. Had some good lessons and visits!

Wednesday we visited good people and came across a couple new investigators! We had a birthday party shceduled in one of the member´s house, but we had to skip out because it didn´t even start until after 8 and we had an appointment at 8. So we missed that, but had a great lesson instead!

Thursday Was a long day! We left at 730 that morning to go get money and get back at a decent hour. When we got back we visited some people close to the house and had a tough time finding anyone at home. It´s really hard to work in the morning and right after lunch. Everyone is either sleeping, preparing lunch, or not home. So from 10-4 is hard to work without appointments. After lunch we went off to our area of work for the day. We talked with an awesome investigator that we don´t get to see much! She is really funny and very excited and interested to learn more! She is truly one of the elect! After that we talked with a few more people before coming back to the house at 930.

Friday didn´t really start until lunch time. We had one lesson before lunch, but that´s it. At lunch something really funny happened! We were finishing up the meal with Manga Rosa (Pink mango). The one that I grabbed wasn´t ripe, so it looked like a potato inside and was really hard and bitter. I had only cut 2 pieces out for Elder Felipe to try. He and I agreed it was no good. But we didn´t want to just leave it there. We were sitting next to a window, and outside this window was a wall dividing the properties. So Elder Felipe grabs the mango while the sister isn´t looking and chucks it over the wall!!! I about died from laughing so hard!!! Just chucked the thing over the wall! Definitely a funny sight! After lunch, we talked with more good people and made some contacts on the way.

Saturday morning we talked with some kids who had a lot of questions. And we were able to answer them and he said we took away his doubts, so that was great! They both really liked what we talked about and were very interested! One of them said he´d like to become a Mormon! It was funny and awesome haha. After lunch, we went to one of the far away areas again to talk to the people there and invite them to church and all that jazz. We talked with the same investigator that we had talked to on thursday, and it was great! Always really good to talk to her! When we were coming back close to the house for a birthday party, we ran across one of the young men who was all wound up and anxious. He said that his step father and brother had a major fight and that the brother had a knife and was getting ready to go at the stepdad with it. He said if he hadn´t held his brother back, the stepdad would have been killed. After this his mom left the house and ran to another area because the stepdad was very very drunk and angry. The stepdad then got on his motorcycle and went after her. His brother then went and got her and took her to another house far away. We were helping him to stay calm and help look for her before the brother took her to the house. It was a pretty stressful situation for everyone involved. But to make it worse, the kid had taken the knife from his brother and was "keeping it safe" in the backpack that was on his back... REAL SMART! Carrying around a knife (big sucker too) in your backpack with a drunk father chasing down the son that was about to kill him. REAL SMART! We finally convinced him to get rid of the thing. He slept in a different house that night and I don´t know what happened after that. So Saturday was a day of major opposites!

Sunday was a lot more relaxed than saturday! We had 4 investigators in sacrament and they all loved it! Very interested and excited to learn more! That afternoon we visited people and talked with them and had a good day overall!

All in all, it was a good week! Crazy stuff happened, but it was good! We had 45 lessons, but I know we can still do better! Will continue to work harder and better!

I hope everyone is doing well at home and is enjoying life! It truly is a blessing to be here on this earth learning and growing every day! Always work hard and remember to always have a balance in life! Have a good week!

Elder Gunnoe

One of our investigators - he sells ice cream!