The Year

Happy Birthday (yesterday) Miranda! I hope you had fantastic (or maybe pinkalicious) day!

The week went way too fast and Sister Walker and I are getting a lot done. I'm feeling pretty good about my knowledge of the area and I keep meeting new people and trying to remember who they are. But it's been really great to see how much the members here want to help us and love to give us references! I honestly don't know if I've done a single street contact or knocked a door yet. Weird.

But it was a good week. We got to really test out President's challenge of being "Watchmen on the Tower" this week, which was one of the themes from last Zone Conference. He encouraged us to be especially diligent the week of an investigator's baptism, since that's when things tend to get crazy. Well, this week we talked to Leidymara on Sunday and she came to Family Night on Monday. She was SO excited for baptism. She was talking to everyone about it and she was even practicing her baptism with the branch mission leader. Ha.

Then Tuesday, we went to teach her and she said she wasn't ready. That she needed to learn more and that it was just much too soon to be baptized (we think maybe her member sister-in-"law" talked to her--and it took her almost a year to be baptized so we can only imagine what she might have said). Anyway, we talked to her and told her that we wanted her to feel ready before baptism, but that she didn't have to be perfect or know everything beforehand. It was a couple of stressful days, but by Thursday, she was pretty excited again. Well, then we showed up on Friday to go with her to her baptismal interview and she wasn't home. Her sister-in-law had told her about a job opportunity so she'd gone out to look at it and we just missed her. We were pretty frustrated because just the day before she was excited again, so we were kind of confused. But just a little bit later she gets home, breathing kind of hard saying how she already had been to the church but no one was there and now she didn't know if she could be baptized. Well, 'No worries,' we said and gave the Elders a call (they have to do what we ask since we're the only four missionaries on the island) and we all met at the church and she was just as ready as we knew she would be.

And then Saturday she got baptized and it was awesome. A little bit cloudy and cold (Sal doesn't have a baptismal font so all the baptisms are in the ocean) but she was super happy and excited.

Wooh. I'm out of breath.

The rest of the week was quite good as well. Sister Walker and I were experimenting in the kitchen and have discovered that pizza pockets are possible in Cabo Verde. BUT...you shouldn't let the dough continue rising during District Meeting because it will explode and get dough all over the only bug-safe area (the oven).

And Sister Walker also made me brownies for my one year mark. And yes, realizing I've been a missionary for a whole year was extremely weird and awesome.

I probably shouldn't have told you about our water and electricity status because this week we ran out of water, power and gas. Ha-ha. But it's okay. We're still alive.

I've decided that Sal is not the Cabo Verde I know, but it's probably the Cabo Verde I always imagined. It really is quite pretty. Today we went to the tourist city, Santa Maria, that's sort of on the other side of the island, but only like fifteen minutes away, and I saw some extremely pretty beaches and very white people. So weird. But Sal is kind of amazing and in the distance you can see Sao Nicalau, so that was cool, too. Sigh. I really don't think I'm ever coming home. Sorry.

Thanks for the emails and I hope you all have a fantastic week. I'm glad the Dirty Devil was a success and that no one got eaten.

Oh! I almost forgot. Do you remember Domingos? Okay, I'm sure you don't, but he's Mane's brother in Praia 1 and possibly one of my all-time favorite investigators. But he's lazy. He's the one who said he knew Joseph Smith was a prophet because a man couldn't have written the Book of Mormon and he'd always get all his clothes ready Saturday night but just never woke up to go to church. Well. He's finally come to his senses and he's baptizing this Saturday!! Sister Laimana called to tell me and I was so excited and then I had to call Sister Turnbow to talk to her about it and basically the whole mission's excited. Ha-ha.

And I talked to the sisters in Praia 2 and Helder's still been coming to church! I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!

Love,
Sister Brooks