Fletcher Madsen formerly in Africa

Oi todo mundo! This week was a little tiring, but all's well in Patriota. Sadly, Elder Lima was transferred, so tomorrow we'll know where he goes and who will be my new companion. I'll be staying here in Patriota, so we'll see what happens.  Today we played soccer with our ward and the other ward that meets in our chapel. I accomplished my goal of not causing our team to lose singlehandedly. A lot of people actually complimented me, that I didn't play like an American ha-ha. I guess the other American missionaries must have not been so good at soccer. Playing soccer was fun, but I got pretty badly sunburned, see picture below, lots of lotion getting used from here on out.  Foto atividade futebol This week the Sisters baptized some girls, and Helena chose me to baptize her, which was an awesome spiritual experience. The spirit is always so strong at baptismal services. When she chose me to baptize her a few days before, she called me Elder Najuri...

Preparation day soccer Oi gente! I don't have a lot of time this week, but I'll try and give you all the rundown. This week was tons and tons of walking, Dangereux is really far but we're teaching some awesome people there, and we've been getting more referrals there, so it looks like walking 4 or 5 hours a day will be the norm, we'll see for how long though, only one week left in this transfer, time is flying!  A typical breakfast, bread eggs and a banana. School started for people here because their summer ended, so now it's harder to teach people, not because they're at school, but because they run away from school all the time. The parents don't care though, some go to school in classes with kids 20 years younger, even though they have lots of kids being left at home. Ai Angola, the more I try to understand things here, the more confused I get.  Angolans asking questions in English at church.  A few in our congregation speak so...

Oi pessoal!    If you can't tell I'm really excited about what happened this week, we finally got a baptismal font at our chapel! It's not a magnificent sight or anything, but it works just fine. On Friday Elder Lima and I cleaned it out and then filled it for baptisms that would happen the next day. Elders from lots of other areas baptized at our chapel on Saturday, since it was a historic day for our chapel and ward.  Helena, who we've been teaching, was the first person to ever get baptized at our chapel! This is a big deal for us because in the past we had to make a long trek and pay for a few taxis to get people to a church with a baptismal font. Helena chose the Bishop of the Patriota ward to baptize her. 9 people were baptized in all, such an awesome experience. The spirit is always so strong at baptismal services, when our Bishop gave a talk during the service, he almost broke into tears because of how much this means to him. Every day the s...

Eating a fruit like papaya Oh no! I don't know my own strength This week went by super fast but was awesome as always. Our sink and shower decided to turn our apartment into a pool last night, so fixing that means that I have less time to write this, but it's all good. Highlights: I love the people we teach here. Elena is someone we started teaching because she's friends with a member and went to church. After teaching her we asked her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it to find out for herself if it's true or not. When we went back we asked her what she understood from what she read, at first, she didn't have an answer and it seemed like she hadn't read anything, but then she responded, "I understood that it's true, and that this church is true". That was definitely a shocker, a few minutes later she told us she was ready to be baptized, we told her that she needs to know more but that we'll prepare her to be ready to be...