Quiet Week‏

Hey everyone!

It was so good to hear from you and see the videos and pics of Carrie! I can´t believe how she´s already talking! It´s all passing SO fast. Also, I got your package with the letters and everything! Thanks so much for everything you sent! The chocolate is amazing. Thanks so much for always taking care of me:)

As for us, we´re grounded this week! S. Cantuara went to the doctor on Friday, again, after a huge long process. This is how the public doctor works in Brasil: We went there, waited forever, got in, she told the doctor her symptoms (cold that wouldn´t go away) in a two minute visit , doctor didn´t even look at her or anything, prescribed antibiotics and gave her an order to go get an X-Ray of her chest. We went downtown to get the order approved, not sure why, then went waaay out to the hospital to set up an appointment for an X-Ray. This was all at the beginning of August. So the date they gave her to come back for her X-Ray was August 20. We went back that day, waited forever, got the X-Ray....then she picked it up a week later. Then on Friday we took the X-Ray to the doctor for her to look at. So more than a month after deciding she was sick and needed to go to the doctor, she finally found out that there´s a lot of infiltration in her lung (is that what you call it?) and she´s at the beginning of pneumonia.

The problem being that she didn´t take the antibiotics the first time, so I think her sinus infection (what I was 90% sure she had, not being a doctor) never went away and stuff got down into her lungs. So now the doctor said she has to take oral antibiotics as well as 7 injections, one per day, and we´re not supposed to leave the house during that period. Bah! Seven days inside for a missionary is like...the end of the world. So we talked to the president´s wife, the health coordinator for the mission, and she agreed that we shouldn´t leave the house. So we stayed in that day.....only, the next day, our whole zone was supposed to go to Livramento for a Mission Tour with the first president of our mission. We couldn´t miss that, so we went! We also went to church on sunday, and are out today.....but really, I´m pretty sure it´s impossible to just stay in that apartment for 7 days. We had to escape! So that´s the story of how we´re grounded.

So, it´s really hard to stay in as a missionary. I think it makes you depressed, because you´re so used to constantly having something to do, and then just staying in with absolutely nothing to do except read (a selection of 4 books), write or clean....it´s pretty tough. But we´re already on the fourth day, so it´s going fast!

So there´s not a whooole lot to tell this week. There was kind of a scary story that happened on Thursday. I never know if I should tell these stories or not, if they´re like talking bad about people or something. But they really happen - some people don´t receive us well. So on Thursday we knocked doors in the neighborhood of a girl who had gone to church with a friend in another ward last Sunday, and the elders had called to tell us her address. So turns out she´s kind of Jehovah´s Witness, goes there with her sister a lot, but was super receptive and liked the message. So we started knocking around her house, and the whole neighborhood was Jehovah´s Witness. Not making any snap judgments or being prejudiced or anything, but when you´re a missionary, Jehovah´s Witnesses don´t let you in. At least not in my experience. But a teenage boy at one of the houses let us in and said his family was home, so we went in and started talking to him.

So it turns out his family is also Jehovah´s Witness, but he hasn´t gone for a few years. He actually thought we were missionaries from his church, which was why he let us in. But he was pretty cool, listening to our message, until his mom came out from the other room. He sat with his head down and stopped really answering our questions...then at the end, we invited him to pray to know whether our message was true, and kind of heard a scoff from the other side of the bookshelf.
Then when I said, "Ok, can we say a prayer before we go?" his mom jumped out and said, "NO. Prayer, no."

Silence.

"Can you tell me who you pray to?" she asked, angry.

"Umm, God..." I replied, afraid to get into a fight.

"In the name of whom?"

"In the name of Jesus Christ, like it says in the Bible." I was already getting ready to leave because I could tell she just wanted to argue.

"And what is God´s name?"

Dang it, she really wanted to argue. "God the Father´s name is Elohim," I said, knowing I was playing into her argument but not knowing what else to say.

"Can you show me where it says that in the Bible?" still angry.

"We´re not here to argue, just to share a message about Jesus Christ..." I said, super scared. I know I shouldn´t have been, being a missionary and everything, but...it was really scary. She just had a really scary demeanor, and I´ve always hated being yelled at. We basically said we had to go, but said we could come back another day if she really wanted to talk, but we weren´t here to argue with her. So we kind of ran out of there to avoid a fight, saying all we could tell her was we know God loves us, and thanked her for receiving us.

Of course after the fact I´ve thought of a million better things to say to her, but I don´t know if we´ll ever see her again. We said we´d be around there on Tuesday, but know that we´re grounded I`m not sure if we´ll go. The weirdest part was she said, with the strangest attitude, "We cross paths in the street a lot. I see you guys all the time - I even pointed you out to my friend the other day. The other day you guys went to the Baklizi (supermarket) and bought food." Like she was revealing some horrible secret about us. It was like...yeah, we´re real people, who eat food...I don´t know, the way she said it it was like she really hated us. S. Cantuara basically said, "Yeah, we´re normal people, children of God just like you..." It was the strangest experience, and made us feel really terrible at the time, that bad adrenaline rush. But after, as we weren´t feeling in the spirit to knock more doors, we went to Alba´s house, who, although she doesn´t actually believe in our Church and doesn´t want to be baptized, is the most amazing Christlike person and comforted us saying there are a lot of closed-minded people in the world. And I got the impression, "She just doesn´t know." If she know what our message was and what our purpose is, she wouldn´t have treated us like that. I really hope she can open her heart to at least say hi to us next time we cross paths.

It was funny, right after leaving I felt like I was tired of being a missionary, tired of being recognized and thought of as an ET...but immediately after, I realized, no way. If people want to judge me for being a representative of Jesus Christ, it´s a privilege to be judged. I would gladly withstand worse things to be able to represent the Savior. I thought about when Paul said he would never be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and how much worse things he had to put up with. So, I´m really glad for that experience. A little opposition is always good for us. I´m really glad I realized that I never will be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and that I´d gladly withstand any punishment or any judgment for standing up for what´s right.

So those are my stories from the week! Lots of stories for a quiet week. But as always, I´m so glad to be here on the mission. It´s really the greatest possible experience I could have had. Every day I come to know our Savior better and better, and my testimony of Him gets stronger. I´m so grateful for this opportunity to grow spiritually. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God lives and that He loves us. I know Jesus Christ overcame death and sin so we could return to the presence of God someday. I know God hears and answers our prayers, and that His ultimate goal is our happiness.

Thank you guys for always loving me and supporting me on my mission! I love you all so much. Have an amazing week!

Sister Madsen