Death of Maria Lucia

Dear Family,

Thank you once again for your emails and letters. This week was a pretty slow week. There is a holiday going on right now so a lot of our investigators and members of our ward left town. We didn´t teach as many lessons as we usually do and spent a lot of time looking for new people to teach. One thing that happened this week though was the death of Maria Lucia. She was 73 years old and had been struggling with cancer for a while so I don´t think that her death came as a surprise to anyone but was still a sad event. She was the first baptism that I had here in the field and maybe the most significant to me. I know I already wrote about the story of her baptism but I want to write about it again this week.

Story of Maria Lucia: I arrived for my first day in the field on Tuesday, September 18th. That day we went over to the house of Lindo Mar because Elder Bangerter wanted to introduce me to them and they were interested to meet the new greenie. We went over to his house and when Lindo Mar answered the door he said ´´Elders will you baptize my mom?´´. We said we would be happy to teach her and went inside and taught her the first lesson. She was a little hesistant to accept it because she had been Catholic all 73 years of her life and wasn´t planning on changing that any time soon. However she said she would pray about the Book of Mormon and ask God if our church was true. She prayed and the next day she told us that she believed our church was true because after she prayed she slept the whole night through in peace and that she hadn´t slept that well in a long time. That Sunday she was baptized by her son Lindo Mar. At the baptism Lindo Mar said that even though his mom had been living at their house for a while, and even though the missionaries had passed by his house many times, he had never felt like he should ask him to teach his mom. However that day when he saw Elder Bangerter and I he said that he felt inspired to ask us to teach his mom. The Spirit was very strong at the baptismal service and afterwards she said that she felt different than before. She was confirmed a few weeks later in sacrament meeting. Last Tuesday we passed by the house of Lindo Mar and Maria Lucia was there, we asked her how she was feeling and she said that she was feeling very well. The next day we got a text message from Lindo Mar saying that she passed away in the hospital on Wednesday morning. She passed away less than two months after being baptized and confirmed.

Other than that this week was pretty slow and there´s not too much to write about. We had interviews with President Ferrin on Thursday. He said we are doing well and that my portuguese is good. I can´t believe its already November! Only a little more than a month until Christmas!

What kind of deserts are common in Brazil? They have a lot of stuff that the U.S. has. Ice-cream is pretty big and we get it pretty often. Chocolate cake is really common. Pie isn´t a common desert at all. They use a lot of fruits down here and one fruit that I really like is Maracujà. They don´t have it in the U.S. but it is yellow/orange on the inside and outside and the inside looks similar to a pomegranate because of all the seeds. They sometimes make ice cream with it or pudding and its really good. It seems like they eat a lot of pudding for deserts.

What is the weirdest thing I´ve eaten? So far I have been fortunate enough to not have a crazy response to this question. I ate grilled chicken hearts at a churrascaria before. And one time we were at a members house and they had a big pot with chicken soup stuff in the pot. While I was stirring the contents of the pot around a big chicken foot came to the surface and kind of made me loose my appetite haha. But other than that I haven´t eaten anything crazy.

 

Thanks again for all you emails and support!

Love,

Elder Caleb Anderson