What's up, everyone! 200 days in the mission this week. Pretty crazy to see how far I've come. It's been by far the longest but fastest time of my life!
First off, me and Elder Cloward started the week off with a bold choice. I have finally gone through the rough stages of growing the hair back out to what it was before; however, that didn't last long. After hearing Elder Cloward was going for the buzz cut, I felt left out and decided it was best if I was the same. Let's just say I regret it and miss having hair, but it isn't all that bad. The heat gets worse by the day and having basically no hair is kinda nice.
Eduardo, our friend who we have been teaching for over two weeks and who came to church on Christmas Sunday, was progressing so well until Wednesday. On Wednesday, we went and visited him and when we showed up we caught him red handed smoking a cigarette. It was like when you catch a kid doing something and he just immediately threw it and tried to hide it under his foot haha. We taught him the lesson on prophets and bishops, and it went so well. He was so happy. He opened up about when we started teaching him, he was smoking two packs a day and some days even three. That's close to 60 cigarettes a day. But now it was down to one a day and he had gone two days since his last one. Truly some amazing progress. We left his house and a few hours later we get a call from him. I answer and all I can hear is yelling from Eduardo. Basically, what he told us was to lose his number and never talk to him again. If we ever go by his house again, we will have problems. Then he blocked us. The next day he called the Elders Quorum President and cussed him out and said the same thing. We never really got a clear reason why, but we were sad to lose our friend Eduardo. Stuff like this is never fun. You see first-hand a guy you've grown to care about make huge changes in his life to find true happiness. You see a guy who is so close but gives it all up. However, the Lord has a time for everyone and as a missionary you sometimes have things like this happen. As much as we want it for him, we can't do anything more. People have agency and at the end of the day, it is their choice. We will keep doing our part and trust the process!
My first New Years in Brazil was spent with members in the ward. Fireworks went off probably all night and the people stayed out partying into the morning. On our way to pick up people for church, we passed our fair share of bars and people still keeping it going. I think the best part was some dudes smoking crack at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. Solid way to bring in the New Year.
Despite a rough start to the week, I still saw the Lord's hand in our work multiple times. This part of the year is definitely the hardest to find and teach but we were able to meet multiple new people and began teaching them. This next week is the last week of transfers and I'm hoping I stay in the area. When I showed up here with Elder Cloward, we started with basically nothing and now we've built a foundation. We've grown really close to the members and have people here that feel like family. I still feel like I have something special to do here and want to continue helping the people out here.
Thank you all for the emails and please keep them coming!
Elder Copeland
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