Happy New Year!!
This week was pretty good, everything seemed to slow down here on the mission. I got way less phone calls from missionaries and from the church in São Paulo, and in the field it was a lot quieter as well. It's nice to have weeks like this every once in a while! But in the field, holidays make working a bit more complicated. It was harder to find investigators at home and find people who weren't "busy getting ready for the new year" but it's during weeks like these that I think the Lord tests us as missionaries, to see if we can keep working even though it's a bit tougher than normal.
Something pretty funny that has happened the last 2 sundays in a row, the 24th and the 31st, is that our lunch was fallen through, or in other words the members forgot to prepare lunch for us. So we've had to make lunch in the church both sundays! It was my comp Elder Dantas and I and the 2 sisters Sister Magleby and Zêni that serve in the ward with us, so it was actually pretty fun. On the 24th we made rice, beans, and chicken, and yesterday we make rice and stroganoff. It was good!
This week it has also rained a ton. Every single day this week the day starts rainy, then (if the clouds go away) it gets really really hot and humid, then at about 7:00 or 7:30 it starts to rain again.
Man, is 2017 really over? This year really flew. It seems like only a little bit ago I was in my first area during the new year thinking "Here goes the year of the mission! The only complete year that I'll have as a missionary", and now it's come to an end.
Thinking a bit about my "mission year" it's been really interesting to see how the different experiences I've had, the people I've met, and the things I've learned have shaped me as a missionary. Lots of times, it's hard to see a change in myself and I feel like the same person as when I left. But if I pay attention to the small things, I can see that I have changed a bit! The way that I see the world and that I think about things now are for sure different than one year ago. I'm grateful for all the experiences that Heavenly Father has given me during this past year, even though lots of them weren't the experiences that I expected or what I necessarily wanted. If there's one thing that I learned this past year, it's that the Lord always knows best even though lots of times we think that we know what's best! The faster we can learn to just trust in Him and make the best of the situations that He gives us, the happier we'll be. If we trust in the Lord, things will work out, lot of times in ways that we don't expect.
Let's have a great 2018! Love you guys!
Elder Odom
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