Hurrah for Israel!

So this is my last P-day! I leave next Tuesday for Brasilia. I anticipate the plane ride is around 1.5 hours or so...I'm not sure. So don't worry, everyone, I don't have to take a boat through the amazon and swat mosquitos away as I battle wild tigers.

The past few weeks, EFY rock stars such as Chad Neth have been the talk of the MTC. (huge over-exaggeration) Haha, he is an artist that has a few songs on the youth.lds.org website and that's really all the music we have. So naturally, I've adjusted my music tastes a bit to compensate. Music is a nice comfort from the quotidian tasks of the MTC, though. This week it rained a little bit. And it so happened that it rained the day we went out to talk to people on the street. Many of the people around the MTC are accustomed to missionaries walking around, but Sao Paulo is big enough that often you get people who know nothing about the church. Even though it was raining (this was on Monday), we talked to quite a few people and many were interested enough to want a Book of Mormon. Elder Bell and I talked to a nice old lady about the gospel and more particularly about the Book of Mormon for about 15 minutes. She was very kind and curious. She spoke slower than most people we found, so we could understand pretty much everything she said. She liked the news of the restauation (Portuguese has already messed up my english spelling) of the gospel and agreed the world is in need of guidance. We were also stopped by a man who was pulling some kind of trailer in the street. This was interesting. Before we had anything to say he just started asking questions. He had a very heavy accent and didn't really finish his words. We couldn't understand anything he said. He had known about the gospel and has two Books of Mormon but he was insistent that I draw the "heart of the world" for him. Haha. He wasn't really interested in what we had to say, but we listened to him for quite a while. After 20 minutes of utter miscommunication, we ran out of time and had to leave. I loved these interesting experiences. We ran into some other guys (20yrs or so) who were both interested in the Book of Mormon--or at least appeared to be. I'm sure one of them was sincere. He asked where the church was and wanted to learn more. It was so great to be outside talking to people about what we believe. It was a great experience. We get to do it again next Monday too.

I don't have enough time to explain my love for this chapter, but 2 Corinthians 4 taught me a lot this week. When you consider that the glory of god (vs 17 "weight of glory") as intelligence or light, a great opportunity for analogy appears. Cross-referencing has been a great instrument for learning for me recently.

Gotta go!

Love,

Bryce