#25 Feb 16, 2015 Flooding!!!

The Beach at Guaratuba

The District

Elder Keller with Elder Helm (new missionary from WA)

Alright so this week was pretty crazy! Guaratuba also rains cats a dogs and its totally awesome except for when your second story apartment starts to flood... Elder William and I after lunch came back to the apt. because he forgot something there. We were totally soaked cuz of the rain and so when we got there i was taking my shoes and everything off so we wouldn't get our apartment wet, then elder william starts yelling for me to run inside and i was thinking this guy is crazy were gonna get the apartment totally wet with all of our stuff? Then I looked inside and their was like 2 inches of water in our apartment! The balcony was completely filling up with water and all that water was coming into the apartment. So we just grabbed buckets and started chucking water off the balcony and then we realized that the drain on the balcony was totally clogged up. So then we had to get a knife unclog the drain and then for 2 and a half hours bail water out of our house with buckets until we got most of it out. Then we used a squeegy (don't remember how to spell that) and tried to get as much out as we could. In the end it all worked out okay and luckily they don't have carpet here so we just had to dry off the wooden stuff and now we just have a really clean apartment floor! haha 

But the work here is totally awesome! The members here are on fire! On monday we did a family night with Irmão Moraes, the guy who came here alone and started the church (total powerhouse) and there were 18 people there and 5 of them weren't members of the church but are totally already integrated into the church. It was sweet! Then on tuesday Irmão Adijair who was baptized 10 months ago wanted us to do visits with him. So we visited a bunch of less actives and with those less actives they have a lot of people in their family who aren't members still and so we found a bunch of awesome investigators that are ready to accept the gospel! The only problem is that no one is married!!!!! My goodness man people just don't get married anymore! haha so it will probably take a little while with some of these people but at least we have work! 

Were also working with a lot of the youth! They are totally awesome! We have three young men that want to be baptized but their parents wont let them and it totally stinks... !!! These two João and Daniel are brothers and are 12 and 15 years old and their dreams are to one day be missionaries. They live with their drunk dad who is a total jerk in this little broken house and its seriously just one of the saddest situations I have seen. The bishop lives across the street and tries to help them out and brings them to church and the activities every week and the dad lets him do that because he's at the bar all day but he wont let them be baptized. It stinks and I feel so bad for the kids! They're super smart and would be awesome missionaries but the dad is always drunk and just gets mad whenever we show up there. We finally got in because their extended family from Curitiba was there and the grandma wants them to be baptized but we have to get permission from the dad... So please pray that the dads heart will be softened! 

But anyways there was a kid in the ward here who they found last week who was killed by the drug cartel here. He was shot ten times and the police say they think it was a "vengeance kill" or because they were just mad at him. His family had fallen away from the church a few years ago and i think this kid was only 15 or 16 years old but he had gotten into the drugs and stuff here and was killed. The members say that he was a really good kid but he just got caught up in the wrong stuff. Super sad. Every day as a missionary you see the importance of keeping the commandments in our lives! The commandments aren't here to restrict us but to help us! And every less active family we find usually says they started to leave the church because of a problem with the commandments. And then they realize they aren't happy any more and realized that the gospel of Jesus Christ is here to help us! We need to always remember that! 

Anyways I love and miss you all so much! I hope you guys have an awesome week!!! 

Elder Keller