Iápois

Distrito Jacintiuca

Elder Ortiz and I.

Hey everyone!!!!  How is it going!!!!!  So mother, to respond to your questions:

I'm pretty great.

Yea, I'm liking my new area.

I am keeping up on the exercises.

And yes, going up and down stairs all day is a pretty great work out.

Grota

Grota.

Things here in the Jacintinho Ward (Jah-seen-cheen-nyo) are pretty great.  I'll start off with a pretty inspirational story.

So this week we were walking down the road.  We had been having a hard time with finding people who really wanted to hear the gospel.  We were just struttin' down the street, minding our own business, when we heard someone behind us say, "Vocês são os Mormon né?"  Why yes!  We are the Mormons.  Turns out it was this lady who just moved to Maceió from Rio de Janeiro.  She had previously been investigating the church there until she moved here.  She had thought that the church didn't exist here in Maceió but lo and behold it does.  She started talking to us about how she wants to become a member and how she wants to become a missionary.  We taught her about the Book of Mormon and we told her to pray about it and that we'd come back the next day.  We came back the next day and she had a dream.  I've never met someone who had a dream as an answer to a prayer, let alone just after saying one prayer.  So we've marked her baptism and my companion and I are elated.

So there's this one recent convert here in the ward, she's really cool.  She's a theater/art teacher at a local school and is also a professional actress.  She’s only been a member for like four months in the church and she's already the Young Women's president. She has quite a few tattoos and is super spiritual and smart.  With our lessons with her, we just have super philosophical and profoundly spiritual discussions.  Elect people exist!!

So we were down in the bottom of the Grota this week leaving a lesson with a less active when we rounded the corner and found this party.  It was a pretty big party, but I feel that Nephi has the best description of how it was:

And they began to make themselves merry, insomuch that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness,

Much rudeness indeed...

Another Grota

Some people take soccer way too seriously.  There's this one family we are teaching and the six-year-old son is a fanatic for the Brazilian soccer team.  He especially loves Davi Luis and has his hair done as such.  They were telling me that during the game where Brazil lost 7-1 against Germany, Davi Luis got on the ground and just started to cry.  Apparently this was way too much for this little kid's eyes to witness and he started freaking out.  He freaked out so much that he started slamming his head against a wooden table with so much strength that they had to take him to the hospital so the doctors could reduce the swelling this poor kid had caused to himself.

Soccer man....

Well that's it for now.  Things are going well for now.  I love you all and have a great week!

-Elder Johnson


P.S. Iápois is Alagoan slang for the phrase "for sure" and it's very common for people to say this.

View from my house.

Another view from my house.

Grota.

Grota.

Jatiuca.

Sunset.