Well, this week has been a toughie for me. The area I´m in is completely different from the Manaus I know. It´s all cars and high gates and doorbells. I didn´t think this stuff existed. There are a few parts that look like Zona Leste, but in all, I´m going through a transition right now. I´m still sleeping in the bed, but the hammock is a nice addition to take a breather and just rock in.
So, Lagoa Verde is basically where the church started in Manaus. It has one of the oldest chapels and members that have 15-20 years in the church. They love the missionaries, though. There is one member, Atila, who is 33 and has already served as bishop. He is super awesome and lives just right up the road from us.
I made an executive decision and we are "training" members to give us references to help us form our teaching group. It´s a bit of a challenge to find people in the road here. But, the members came through with their part. They brought 4 people to church this week that we were not even expecting. It was really cool because I looked at the numbers over the last few months and there have been like 2-3 references a transfer! We got 4 on the first week here, and then others during the week. I like this ward more already.
Tough part of the week. Yesterday around 3 in the morning I woke up with a fever, stomach ache, back pains, headache, and I was just hating life. We spent our day at home while I recuperated, but I called up Atila after a while and asked him to come over and help give a blessing. I immediately felt better afterwards. I am so thankful for the priesthood and for the amazing things that can be worked through it.
We played football today with about half of the American missionaries in Manaus today. It rocked, and we ate tacos later. I started to feel a little sick again and I´m a bit queezy right now actually, but today has been splendiforous until now. (That´s a word in my dictionary.)
We met a guy named Oscar the other day and we taught him the restoration lesson, and he was getting really into it. That made me excited. We are going back tonight to see how it went with the reading we left him and the prayer we invited him to do to know if these things are true or not. We actually could mark a baptismal date with him, too! If only everyone were like him! Pray for him! He is actually traveling this Thursday and won´t be back until the 20th, but I feel that he will be baptized end of January or early February.
Hope you are all having an awesome week! Good luck to Olive&Ike with the strep...
-Elder Tenney
