Difficulties and Challenges Give us Opportunities to Grow

What´s up everyone!

Man today has been full of ups and downs. Something crazy happened though. On Tuesday the other missionaries that I live with called me and told me that they were at an investigators house teaching. The investigator offered them grapejuice and said it didn´t have alcohol. They drank it and started to feel really drowsy and relaxed. They called me when they left and told me that they think they drank alcohol. We met them at the house and called the mission president and everything. They´re fine, but they felt different for a while. They don´t know if the guy gave it to them on purpose or it was a bit old and it fermented or something.  President just told them to be careful next time. But yeah it was pretty crazy, haha. Whenever they bump stuff or drop something now we joke that they´re still drunk, baha!

They language is coming along really well. I´m starting to feel more and more comfortable every week the Português.

This week was pretty good with the work and everything, but this weekend was pretty rough. We have a investigator named Nilse. She´s been trying to stop smoking for a while now and was doing really well this past week. We marked a baptismal interview on Friday night, but she smoked friday morning. We were a little sad about it, but we´re going to help her be baptized this next week. 

We have another family that has a lot of potential. They´re reading the Book of Mormon every day and are doing really well! Something happened in their family though and they couldn´t come to church. We´re bringing them to church next week thought for sure! 

Then Sunday came...WOW! haha. We helped Nilse get to the bus stop on Sunday morning before church. We went to go find some other people to bring to church. She took the bus, but didn´t show up at church! I think she either got lost or fell asleep at the Bus stop. So we didn´t have any investigators at church yesterday. That was pretty disappointing. Vera was supposed to be confirmed yesterday as well. From what she told me, she was heading to church, but got sick and went to the Hospital again. I think she´s fine, but unfortunately she hasn´t been confirmed yet. So yesterday was pretty rough, but the rest of the week went pretty well. This week was a great learning opportunity for me.

Everyone has difficulties in their lives and sometimes it can be pretty rough, but they give us opportunities to learn and grow. I´m definitely going to do my best to take this weekend as a learning experience and make sure to do better in the coming weeks. Hope you all are doing well and love you all tons! Have and awesome week! 

Até mais! Falou!

Elder Jackson