The Weather here has been so great! 70s+ and we have been able to take our jackets off. It's so nice to not have to keep our jackets on, as silly as it seems, the jackets really get annoying when you're carrying around a shoulder bag. This week is the last week of transfers and it looks like I'm staying in Hartford! The only person leaving Hartford is Elder Fife, Elder Pacheco's companion, and we have a native Portuguese speaker replacing him.
Yesterday we got the chance to listen to Elder Fife speak Portuguese, which was really cool. We called a member of our branch who is from Brazil and at the beginning of the conversation you could hear some Spanish mixing in with his Portuguese, but after a few sentences, his brain just switched to full Portuguese and he was speaking fluently again. Crazy!
I don't remember if I told you but I got a letter from grandpa telling me of my cousin Jeffery in Brazil! He's a ZL and doing a great job I hear! One thing that made me laugh was grandpa's surprise at his number of baptisms. I guess back in the day, Brazil wasn't the easiest place to baptize. BUt grandpa said "He's having a lot of good luck in an area which is very hard to baptize in." But the ironic part of that is whenever we go tracting we say "Just remember, for each door we knock on, there's a baptism in Brazil." haha.
This week has been pretty great. Our newest investigator Daisy came to church this week for the second time in a row! She's probably going to be a baptism for us! We are going to set up a baptismal date with her this week, but I worry a little bit because she tells her friends to talk to us about God, no matter the religion. Hopefully she understands we are LDS, not just Bible Teachers! But, she's in the Lords hands -- He knows her better than I do!
We had a great meeting last night with the South Elders and their investigator Romulo. We went over 2Nephi 2 and we had Romulo read and we explained the passages to him. He really liked the chapter and we shared with him our thoughts on how he needs to taste baptism and stop worrying. He is worried about sinning again after baptism, but we told him he'll have the Holy Ghost to help him resist. Romulo is great, I really hope he gets baptized. But last night we got transfer calls when we were at his house and found out Elder Fife is leaving, so hopefully that doesn't get him too upset. Luckily, Elder Pacheco is staying though.
Yesterday we got a little hard work from the ward! Our Elders Quorum president came out with us and visited some inactive members! It was great, but unfortunately it's really hard here to keep people coming to church. I made a funny parallel yesterday. They call this state the Constitution state, yet this state is one of the hardest states to worship freely in... Doesn't make much sense, does it? The church can NEVER get permits to build. So it's annoying for some people, especially a lot of the people we teach in Hartford, because they are too poor to have cars and can't get all the way to bloomfield for church. From where we live, to church is like downtown to your house. So it's not as easy as a hop skip and a jump like it is for us in Utah.
With the warm weather we see all types of interesting characters coming out of the woodwork and walking around on Park Street. It's a pretty interesting place, but I love it. Our neighbors are CONSTANTLY partying through the night, so that gets old fast, but we just turn some fans on and it drains out most of the noise. Finding sure is easier when there are people outside to talk to.
So, something really neat that happened to Elder Urrutia and I this week. We were walking past some houses trying to decide if we should tract or not and then I see this house with the door open. I had a thought that I should go in but didn't mind it too much and then Elder Urrutia said "think that's a sign?" I said "Yeah... the spirit just told me the same thing." So we went in and ascended to the 3rd floor and we ran into a family that just moved here from the DR 2 years ago. The girl that answered the door is 15 years old and she actually had heard a little bit about the message in the DR! Her mom, we haven't met yet. But we're hoping to catch her this week. But every time we go over the kids run over to the door and love to see us! What a blessing!
I gave the lesson in Gospel Principles yesterday on the Life of Jesus Christ. It's all in spanish, and boy was it difficult. But I told them at the end "Espero que mi espanol esta bien, pero yo se que el Espiritu Santo habla en un idioma que todas las personas entienden" and they agreed. It was a great lesson though!
We also had a ward activity this week with investigators etc. It was awesome! We had a really great time and ate TONS of food. Elder Worthington (one of the senior couples) did the Hakka for us. He served in the pacific Islands and speaks Mowry. It's a really beautiful language.
We went to catholic mass two saturdays ago. It was really interesting.
Love ,
Elder Conner Allred
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