Keep up the Doughnut Work

Hello Family!

Work wise, it was one of those weeks that you wonder what you're doing wrong, but it was still good. We're teaching a new investigator named Ze who's kind of hilarious. Half the time I don't think he understands what we're saying, but he's a good kid who really wants to change his life. He showed up to church all dressed up and Sister Walker and I weren't sure where we knew him from.

Artur is still great. He's such a funny kid. His mom and brother are still in Praia, so he wasn't baptized on Saturday, but he's super excited. We hope they get home soon.

I should probably apologize now for this letter...my brain's not working. I'm pretty sure Augusto and Florindo gave me the flu. But...it's p-day. I can't be sick on a p-day.

Well...most of what I wrote down to tell you are just funny things that happened this week. We taught two great lessons about fasting--one to Florindo and one to Artur.

During Florindo's opening prayer, his little two-year-old brother kept shouting 'Florindo! Shut-up! Florindo! Shut-up!' It's super hard to keep the Spirit there when Joao's present. (He repeated the scene during our lesson on Sunday, too.) But we asked Florindo what fasting was and he said it's when someone does something bad, they can't eat or drink for a while. Ha-ha. Well, I'm not going to say that sometimes fasting doesn't seem like a punishment.

Artur seemed to agree when we taught him. We said, 'Fasting is not eating or drinking for two meals.' His eyes got really big and he said, 'We'll die!' Oh man. I love these kids.

Fast Sunday itself was very good though. We had a day packed (seriously) with lessons and Elisabeth literally pushed me out of my chair into the aisle so I would bear my testimony. And that's what good friends are for. Ha-ha.

District Meeting was also one for the journal. The zone leaders came (from Mindelo) and brought mail and Sister Walker got a bunch of letters from the Primary kids in her parents' ward. They'd all filled out this little formula letter -- Mad Lib style -- and Sister Walker and I started laughing so hard while reading them that the Elders wanted to read them so our District Leader read them all out loud. It's been a long time since I've laughed so hard. Some of our favorite ones were these:

'If I were a missionary, I would like to go HOME.'

'If I were a missionary, I would like to go TO THE BEACH.'

'Keep up the DOUGHNUT work!'

Also, my animal accounts for the week are these - we saw a giant whole cow being shopped up right outside a member's house.

We saw a dog being (literally) run over by a car and after its spin around the tires it just ran off yelping into its house. (That one sort of traumatized me.)

Also, we have a pet lizard. I built him a house to stay in on the porch, but somehow, every single night when we get home, he's just hanging out on our walls. We can always recognize him because I was trying to replace him in his house and I accidently pulled off the tip of his tail...

Another highlight of the week was today when we went to see the SALINAS! Sal's salt flats. It was super fun and I found it actually really interesting. I took lots of cool pictures, but I'll have to send them another week. Basically it's a super old salt place that's still in use and we got to walk around and see all the salt deposits and such. It doesn't sound interesting, but it is. I took several pictures of people pretending (or not) to lick the salt.

Sorry for the scatterbrained email. I'll write a better one next week because...we get to go to Mindelo this week for Zone Training! I get to see Sister Turnbow (and a General Authority), and I get to visit Mindelo for the first time. I'm quite excited.

Love you all lots.

Love,

Sister Brooks