Oh, By The Way...

So transfers rolled around and I was not transferred this time around and neither was my companion.  Because none of us were being transferred we had no need to go to the transfer meeting.  The Zone Leaders said they'd call me to let me know what would happen at the meeting later that day.  We continued on with our normal daily routine:  we taught the gospel, ate lunch, talked with some crazy people, you know, normal things.  When night came we started to plan when I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize, I responded and the following conversation ensued:

ME:    Hello this is Elder Johnson.

SISTER:    Hey Elder Johnson this is Sister _________

ME:    (why is she calling me?) Hey Sister _________ do you need anything?

SISTER:    Yeah, I just want to know where this week’s district meeting will be held.

ME:    District Meeting?

SISTER:    Yeah you're our new District Leader right?

ME:    (heart stops) ....  I'm your District Leader?

SISTER:    Yeah, you're a District Leader didn't the Zone Leaders call you?

ME:    No...

SISTER:    Oh... well..... Congratulations!!!

I then received a call from the Zone Leaders telling me that I was District Leader, with a district of six sisters.  Needless to say that was a very stressful moment for me.  He then gave me all of my instructions over the phone and and wished me luck and told me I had a meeting to do on Thursday (it was like 10 at night on Tuesday when I got the call.)  The next day was filled with much preparation and stress.  The meeting, I feel, went over pretty well.  I talked about finding investigators and how it mixes in with faith and I feel like I did pretty good for one day of preparation.  Anyways, that was a fun/traumatic experience.  It's all good though, I'm learning a lot.

So on another note, I saw the worst clown in the world the other day.  We were talking with a member in front of her house the other day, which is located on a hill.  We heard lots of chanting and out of nowhere popped this really terrible clown.  He had dirty hair, with crude white makeup on his face and was wearing clown pants.  He had this unicycle and he was accompanied by a band of excited chanting children.  He would yell something and they'd respond "tem sim, senhor!"  He then hopped on his unicycle and went barreling down the dirt hill, with the flock of children chasing after him into the sunset.

So two people who are really cool, one is our recent convert.  She was having issues with coffee before her baptism, but after her baptism she told us that she just doesn't have any desire to drink coffee anymore.  The other is our investigator, with whom we are trying to get him married.  We went and got all of the papers and information for marriage and we were explaining it all to him.  We were trying to tell him where he could pay less for marriage, when he told us that it didn't matter, that he knew it was right for him to get married and he had a desire to follow the gospel!

One person who isn't so cool was an investigator we lost this week.  We showed up at her house and the following conversation ensued:

Her:    I have some exciting news for you!

Me:    Really?

Her:    Yes, I did what you said.

Me:    Uh huh.

Her:    I prayed.

Me:    Yes.

Her:    I received and answer.

Me:    YES!

Her:    That I need to stay in my current religion...

Me:    (slight dry sobbing)

Yeah, she said she had a vision and that she was supposed to stay in her religion.

Oh well..

To top things off we had a conference for all of northeast Brazil yesterday.  It was given by Elder Ulysses Soares, of the presidency of the seventy, and Elder M. Russell Ballard, even spoke.  They talked a lot about missionary work, going to the temple, and paying your tithing.  It was really cool; it was broadcast by satellite and even the presidency of the area spoke.  We had a conference for our stake the night before, they're working on splitting the stake so they held a missionary work conference on Saturday, they had all the missionaries in the stake come and they gave a training to all the members.  It was really cool, and everyone left all excited to do missionary work.

Well that's it for today, a pretty interesting week if I do say so myself.  Hope all is well in the snow.  Love you all and have an amazing week!

Elder Johnson