Week 10

Another week down! I have to say that I have been absolutely loving it here in my little area in Florida, Cypress Creek. The more work I do here and time I spend with the members and people here, the more I dread leaving. As excited as I am to go to Brazil, I'm gonna miss this place so much. Nonetheless, I've still got a couple of weeks here and I fully intend to make the most of them! This week was absolutely amazing and, though it might have started off a little tough, it has proved to be one of the most miraculous and profound weeks I have had. 

Starting on Tuesday of this week, things were quite interesting.. After our studies and lunch we set out to do some knocking for a few hours, and after little success and quite a few Spanish-speaking families, we ran into a gentleman named Ronny, sitting outside in his driveway with his mother. We ended up talking to him for an hour and a half or so about a lot of different things. Ronny was from Venezuela, but spoke really good English, unlike his mother who sat there the whole discussion popping bubble wrap. But the discussion was over many different things and Ronny was a talker. Eventually, he got onto the topic of reincarnation and shared about 3 different episodes of a show he watches called "ghost in my child" or something like that, supposedly based on a true stories. After a long discussion, with many weird talking points, we finally set off for a dinner appointment we had with the Clarks. Unfortunately, on our way to the appointment, as we were crossing a street, a car moved up, just as I was passing it, causing me to swerve and hit the curb. Long story short, I was fine, except that I tore a hole in my pants, around the knee. The Clarks wanted to take us out to a restaurant, so we met at a place called "Sweet Tomatoes". Basically, this restaurant is a healthier buffet than most, with a huge salad bar in which I made probably the best salad I have ever had, as well as several different soups, pasta, breads, fruit, muffins, and desserts. It was an awesome dinner in which Elder Hansen and I had our fair share, till we were stuffed. At the end of the dinner we went out to grab our bikes, and I discovered that I had a flat tire. Brother Clark, luckily, was able to drive us and our bikes to the church, where we had a short little Book of Mormon study, but afterwards, we had to walk our bikes home. 

The following day, we had a lot of fun getting my bike tube patched up. I wanted to save money by buying patches instead of buying a whole new tube, but after patching up the tube, we found that the tube is just a little too big now for my bike wheel, yet we made it work somehow! We shall see how long it lasts, with just a patch... But then again, I'm only here for another 2 weeks, so hopefully it'll work out alright. We also had district council that day in which our Mission President attended and interviewed each of us. In my interview, President Garns suggested that I try to attend at least one of the Portuguese ward sacrament meetings in addition to our sacrament meeting, before I leave. Hopefully, we can make that work because it would be some really good practice for me to be immersed with Portuguese speakers before I leave for Brazil. 

On Thursday, we biked out to a park pavilion to meet up with one of our friends named Shane. Actually, we had been trying to meet with Shane for weeks because, before I got here he was progressing really well, but then he just stopped answering phone calls and texts. Elder Hansen had told me stories about meeting with Shane, how one day when they met up with him at his house, another resident of the complex, named Lamar, came out and cussed out Elder Hansen and his companion, threatening them and clenching his fists. Luckily, he didn't do anything more than threaten, but he apparently had some very bad abuse when he was young by his parents who were of the F-LDS church, a splinter from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Therefore, Lamar hates us members of the LDS church. Since then, Elder Hansen had been meeting with Shane outside of his home at nearby parks, to avoid Lamar. When we had finally got a hold of Shane again, he was saying how he has been working 80 hours a week with 2 jobs, but that he was slowing down a little bit, and could meet with us. When we met with him this Thursday, I found out just how much of a talker he is. We ended up being there for about 2 hours while he talked and talked. Every time we tried to tie in gospel principles and questions, he somehow managed to relate it back to food and cooking. But, even though we weren't able to teach him much, we were at least able to become better friends with him, and open him more up to future meetings. Plus, we got a ton of cooking tips from him, as well as dieting opinions. After Shane had to head home, Elder Hansen and I got a text from our friend Joey who said "I think I just saw you guys at the park. Would you like to meet up for a little while?". We were shocked! Most of the time, Joey was stuck at his job taking care of special-needs clients, and could barely have us over, let alone meet with us elsewhere, but because he finally had other staff working with him that day, he took one of the clients named Brandon out to the park, and saw us at the nearby Pavilion while driving. So then we sat for another hour at the same Pavilion and had a great discussion with Joey.

Friday was a little unexpected in that I went on another exchange with Elder Zemp, our district leader. Apparently, every transfer the district leader is supposed to exchange with each companionship in his district, and I was due for one. Thus, I switched over with Elder Zemp, for really only part of the day. We picked up some lunch from a Spanish member of rice, beans, and chicken, and then did some visiting of friends, as well as about 2 hours of knocking, during which we found 2 more friends for Elder Zemp's area. After this, we drove back down to Cypress Creek and I switched back with Elder Hansen, just in time to eat at the Roosna's house again. Man, I love that family, because both the husband and the wife are amazing cooks and they TREAT their missionaries very well! That night, we had burgers, and we were offered two patties, which we obviously accepted. Along with the burger, I had two hefty servings of homemade mac and cheese and some baked beans. Let's just say I was satisfied for the night, expecting not to eat for the rest of the night. After our dinner appointment, we had planned to meet with Cynthia, the Brazilian friend we had found 2 weeks ago. Suddenly she had texted us that she had watched a documentary about our religion, and no longer was interested. She also stated that she didn't want to be tied down to a church and such, being more of a free-spirited type of person. Well, we weren't gonna give up just like that, so we called Cynthia and simply asked if we could meet with her, just to get to know her and have a friendly non-religious discussion. To this she agreed, and boy did we jump for joy! When we arrived our member that we invited, Brother Clark, was already there, and we found out that Cynthia had bought a bottle of Coca-Cola and 2 cheese pizzas for us. From there we talked with Cynthia for almost 2 hours, firstly just about her hobbies, what her experiences were in Brazil where she grew up, and how long she has lived in Florida. However, after some small talk we ended up talking about our church, and were able to clarify several concerns and misconceptions that Cynthia had about our faith. It was an amazing discussion, and afterwards Cynthia agreed to come to church in 2 days, stating that she would bring some Brazilian food to the potluck or "Linger Longer" we would have after church. Although, we were also pleasantly surprised that Cynthia had gone out of her way to get us pizza, soda and some cream filled treats, we were still pretty full from the dinner we had just had, and she made us finish that pizza! By the end of the night I was stuffed, but also very happy that we were able to change Cynthia's mind.

On Saturday, we had a Niner-Niner which is where all the missionaries in our zone commit to find, and only find, new friends from 9 AM to 9 PM. Elder Hansen and I, along with a couple of other missionaries had already committed to a couple of service projects that morning, and so we really only started finding at 2:00 PM, but nonetheless it was an amazing day. After the service project at 9 in the morning, where we helped a friend named Kimberly and her daughter move, Elder and Sister Church (our Senior missionary couple) bought us all donuts from Dandee's Donuts, and they were some of the best donuts I have ever had. We also ended up helping a sister move her heavy wood table down from her condo, and she gave us all $25 gift cards to a seafood restaurant nearby. So guess who's going to "Bonefish Grill" before he leaves Florida? This guy!!!!! In the afternoon, we were blessed with a blitz in our area, in which we had 3 other missionary companionships knock doors for about 2 hours with us, to help us find new friends. From this knocking session we managed to find 3 new friends, as well as 2 referrals for Spanish-speaking missionaries. After the blitz, Elder Hansen and I made some calls, planning for the week a little, and then started knocking for about an hour, until we found 2 more friends, Sal and Andrea. To be honest, Sal was quite a bit drunk, and apparently had clinical depression, but Andrea is just about the sweetest person you will ever meet and has been prepared like no other to receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The whole rest of the week, we had struggled to find even just one friend, but thanks to the Niner-Niner we were able to meet our goals and make 5 friends for this week. It was truly a blessing!!

On Sunday we also were extremely blessed. We were able to have 10 friends at sacrament, which is unheard of! Our friends Carl, Jill, Cynthia, Joey, Kimberly, Rossy and 4 kids of a part member family we have been working with were all able to make it to church, and it was just an all around great Sunday. 

Finally today we had a zone-wide barbeque with our stake President, in which we had tons of food, corn hole, checkers tournaments, and even a small American Ninja Warrior structure to play around with. It was super fun, and we were grateful to all meet together and have some great food. 

Anyway, that's gonna do it for my blog this week! I apologize if I don't have many pictures for this week, as our church Wi-Fi is out and uploading photos is a struggle. Also just so that everyone is aware, next week we are going go the temple on Friday, and thus our P-day will be moved to that Friday, February 21st. This means that I won't be able to email until the 21st. 

Take care everybody! Remember that you are a child of a Heavenly Father who loves you and knows you by name. Never forget that you have great divine potential, and that in and through Jesus Christ, you can accomplish and overcome all things. 

-Elder Lightheart