Brazilian Thanksgiving

HELLO!
I am super excited to write all of you this week! I hope your week has been wonderful! I just took a 90 minute nap so I am still a little out of it, but I will try to do my best.
As you all know, last week was Thanksgiving so my companion and I tried to do it American Style. We were having Zone interviews with the President that day so two of the districts were going to be in our chapel already. To prepare for this grand feast we got carrots, corn, beans, potatoes, gravy and stuffing (thanks Mom), chicken (because turkey is super expensive and takes forever to cook), and Elder Bybee, Elder Duffy and I made a pie. I was in charge of the crust and I have to say it turned out quite nicely. I learned how to cut butter into flour which was fun. They were in charge of the filling. After it was all put together, Elder Duffy and I decided to paint the top with egg yolk and milk to make it look all fancy. When it was done, Elder Duffy tried to take it out of the oven with his hand. I don’t know if the skin flavoring was really needed :). Sister Tanner, the president´s wife, sad she wasn’t worried about us eating well after that.
One day this week, I was pretty sure we were in for a second flood. There was literally a river in front of our house that we had to wade across in our garbage bag ponchos. I was swimming in my leather shoes! In the morning all the trash on the street had moved down stream and ended up in front of our house.
A family that we have been working with for almost two months now was just baptized. It was a wonderful experience. Every time we had talked about how the mom was feeling about baptism, she would always reply ´´I don’t know´´ so we decided to proceed as if she going to be baptized on that Sunday. The last time we asked her how she was feeling, she said ´´At peace.´´ The baptism itself is definitely note worthy. When we were prepping the font we realized that we did not have the baptismal clothes because the other ward had just used them. So we had to use the white clothes from the house and leftovers from the other Elders´ ward. The mother ended up in one two times to big and blew up like a puffer fish in the water. My pants, on the other hand, were from a Brazilian Elder who is about 5´6´´ and 150. Needless to say they were a little tight. To the point that the ladies of the ward thought I was gonna rip them. After we exited the font it was even worse. Fun times! The gospel has really changed this family for the better and I feel so blessed to have been a part of it. We are still trying to help the father keep the Sabbath so that he might be baptized, but he has work that is very hard to leave. He has such a strong desire to be baptized that I know it will work out.
We have one investigator we are preparing to be baptized this Sunday whose English teacher is a member of our ward. She always has really in depth and deep questions that are at times difficult to answer. What has been a true testimony builder for me is that every question she has had, one of just studied within the last two weeks. She had one question about agency that I had struggled with for a long time that I had literally resolved a couple days earlier. I feel as if a hand is guiding my study so that I study what will help others the most. I had another instance of this last Sunday when the teacher asked me if I knew where a scripture was. I had never studied that scripture before in my entire life until that weekend and was able to help him just when we needed it.
This week I have been studying the Christ like Attributes and I was especially touched about the importance of hope. We always need to be hoping for a better world, always believing that people can improve. When we have the expectation that when we do our part we will receive, we will receive. When we have hope, we have confidence and faith in what we are doing. Doubt and fear are traitors that stop us from achieving what we could if only we believed that we could. Always believe that things can change for the good, work to realize that good, and then it will happen. What we want is what we receive. I love you all so much and you are in my prayers. I hope that you “hope” this week and for the rest of your lives.
Come on really,
Elder Healy

More Pictures!:)