Where did the sun go?

The view of Osasco from the rooftop of a member.

This week was a good one here in the good old Osasco. This week was ridiculous with the amount of rain that we got. In the past 7 days I have seen the sun for like 2 hours and it was Wednesday. 

But this week we got a surprise trip to the temple. On P-day I got a call from the ZL and they said “tell your district that tomorrow we will go to the temple.” Opa!! Well then. So on Tuesday we got to go to the temple. And what a good experience. Elder L. Araujo and Donhal were there and I got to talk to them. It was awesome the spirit that we can feel when we go to the house of the Lord.

On Tuesday it started out raining, and then just got worse..... We got home at about 4 from the temple, and it was raining drizzling. My comp didn’t want to go, but I was like, lets go. We need to visit the folk. So we left in the rain. And here in Brasil the rain is super weird. It rains so so so hard for like 10 min, then returns to what we call "garoa" which is like snow. It falls lightly, and hits you like snow. But it is rain. And then in another 10 min it is raining super hard. And on Tuesday it was like this. We were having difficulties finding the people home. So we were in the street for an hour when it did this switch. Rain, garoa, rain, garoa. and then something crazy happened. It started to rain super hard, and not just rain, the wind started to blow super strong, and we were beneath a canopy, and a piece of sheet wood almost hit my comp..... We were called to enter a bar by a nice guy. We entered and he shut the garage. We got to talk to the guy for 30 min. (you will see a pic of my comp sleeping with a umbrella in his hand. Ya, that is what happened while I was talking.) The power went out, and we we left in the dark in the favela. :) 

We visited Pedro and Dayana who are awesome members in our ward. And we talked to them for a while. Then made the dark walk home in the rain. Luckily at that time the rain was just drizzling and the damage was already done. People lost their roofs, power lines were torn down, transformers exploded, and it was a lot of damage. We returned home. And the worst thing about a power outage … No hot shower.... here in Brasil the water is heated by the shower head.... Luckily the power returned at 9 :) 

This week we started teaching a family from Pernambuco. They are great folk. We are getting along very well with them. After the second visit Fransciso. Who is the man with the mustache :) he asked for us to keep in touch. So we grabbed his address and he is hilarious. He loves us. And we have such a good time. We almost always visit with Dayana and Ludimila came with us. (see picture) Their daughter Mariana (in the middle of the pic) made us bracelets :)

This week something crazy happened. I got a call from UTAH?! What? Well I saw the 801 in the front and I was like what the heck???? and I answered it was a sister from SLC. She called me and told me that she had a reference for me? I was like... wow this is sweet. We had a conference call. A guy who lives near our church, me, and a sister in SLC. :) I was shocked. The sister is from Brazil and explained that at Temple Square they teach people through the phone and email. Which is awesome. The other guy passed the address to me. (he lives in the area of the other elders.) And i left shocked. The first thought was.... "MOM?" haha but it was all good. 

This week was are visiting a dude who is 12. He is the nephew of a member. Last week we gave him the BoM and he is already in 2 Nephi 4... What?:) he is 12, but understands everything so well. We will have his baptism later this month :) 

Well this week was great I had the chance to read what is commonly known as the war chapters in alma. And I learned something incredible. The enemy can be defeated with 2 simple things. Obedience and Preparation. IF we do these two things. The enemy can try. But we will be stronger then the enemy. Try harder everyday to prepare, and be more obedient. Obedience is the only thing that we can give to our Heavenly Father.  Are you putting it in practice? 

Love you all

Elder Iverson :)