Dear Family & Friends,
This week I had my first baptism in Brazil!!! Remember Mel? We baptized her on Saturday! It was so awesome! That day was just full of great stories, so I'll start from the beginning....we went over to the church at about 8 that morning to clean out the font and fill it up. So we cleaned the font for about 40 minutes, then went to turn the water on, but it didn't turn on. After a few minutes of exploring, we found that NONE of the water in the building worked. We panicked for a few minutes, BUT hope was not lost. There are a few emergency fire hose things in the church with water, so we went to hook the hose up and crank the water, but to our dismay, the metal ends on the hoses that hook the hose to the spout had been cut off and stolen. What the heck, who does that?! When I said something about it, Elder Etchichury said "Welcome to Brazil." So with that new development, we devised a plan. We found some buckets in the closet, and we proceeded to fill the buckets at the fire spigot, carry them to the font, and dump them in. I'll send some pictures. That took us another hour to do, but we got it done! We went to walk out of the church at about 11. BUT - there's more. For some reason, we only have a key to the door of the church and not the gate to the church grounds. Someone had unlocked the gate for us to let us in, but while we were inside working, someone walking by must have seen the unlocked gate and wanting to be helpful, snapped it shut. Little did they know, this locked us inside. So yeah. We were trapped inside the church grounds. Elder Etchichury made a call and some members came and rescued us. We were able to leave in time for lunch!
The baptism was awesome, we had a LOT of members come to watch, despite the fact that we and Mel and her family were a half hour late.....but it all worked out well, and the best part is that I said the baptism prayer right the first time! My Portuguese is getting better and better, its great to see my progress. The hardest thing is still understanding people, but I understand so much more than I did when I first got here. I can actually contribute in conversations now. Anyway, this week was great, mostly because Mel was baptized. It's amazing to see the changes she's made in her life. I love my mission!!!
Love,
Elder Poulson
Brazil Fortaleza East Mission
Rua Republica de Armenia, 765
Agua Frio 60821-760
Fortaleza-CE Brazil
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