Mãos que Ajudam

This week was super fun! We had a reunião de zona and a Helping Hands activity with the branch/district. Oh and the branch had an activity on Saturday called a quadrilha which is basically like a hoedown haha There were so many people there and 6 of our investigators came and we received a ton of references!!! It was awesome!

So yeah the week was filled with fun but we got a little discouraged because we had investigators dropping us and we had to cut some others since they haven't been progressing...Gabriel was one of them. I've been working with him since I arrived here in Colatina and he's been interviewed twice and he's already been to church like 5 times and he came to the activity on Saturday but he didn't come to church yesterday and he just doesn't want to baptized even though he knows that he needs to. So we finally had to cut him because we lose a lot of time visiting him instead of people who really want to progress. But we're still going to be seeing him a lot since he is best friends with Gabriella and we've started to teach her again since she still has a lot of questions about the church. 

Ahhhh I just love all of the people here in Colatina and it's so hard to see people stop progressing. Like, we've also been teaching Uanderson (13 years old) and his family. Uanderson and his uncle came to church a couple of weeks ago but haven't returned and we've visited Uanderson a few times and he was interviewed earlier this week, but the next day he got really discouraged and decided that he didn't want to be baptized anymore because he doesn't think he'll be able to stay firm in the church on his own and his family is kinda crazy :( Sister Hibauza cried a lot during the lesson and I almost cried because he said that the first day that he met me and Sister Alós he was really needing help and he said that God had sent two angels to his house to help him...

During our zone conference, the zone leaders shared a quote with us that I loved. Sorry it's in português: "Vocês missionários vieram até aqui para mudar o mundo, mudar vidas, mas há um custo. Exige colocar tudo que você tem sobre o altar de sacrifício - seus medos, seu orgulho, sua preguiça, sua desobediência, suas fraquezas; não podemos reter nada." Sei que realmente eu vim até aqui para fazer isso. Estou aprendendo muito e estou tentando de colocar tudo que tenho sobre o altar de sacrifício. Muitas vezes, eu tenho muita preguiça e muitas fraquezas e acho que não quero trabalhar mais, mas eu vim com um propósito e essas coisas não importam. Sei que tenho que esquecer de mim mesmo e ir para o trabalho.

Eu amo vocês!!!

Com amor,

<3 Sister Earls

Oh and sorry I'll have to send pics next week because we took all of the photos on Sister Hibauza's camera but the computer is being really slow and not reading her memory card :(