Let That Be Enough

Dearest family,

HAPPY BIRTHDAYS JASON, DREW, AND MATTHIAS!

Thanks for all the updates and emails, once again. You’re the best.

I hope you enjoy the email I forwarded from President Terry. ELDER BEDNAR IS COMING.

I love this saying. I learned it from some English class students a few months ago, but I never wrote it down. “Agua mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura.” Paciencia é um virtude, com certeza. Só se eu pudesse compreendê-lo...

Since I left my journal upstairs and Elder Barrett is already in the heat of writing a hilarious letter (he’s a very entertaining writer), I’m going to try to write this one freehand. With the keyboard…



The last few weeks have each been very different, and it seems like this week was a combination of all of them. It’s been slower as to the missionary work, but at the same time extremely thought provoking. It’s been a very pensive week for me. It all has ended up focusing on one gospel principle: the Fall.

Last P-Day, I spent hours finding the mold on all the ceilings and scrubbing it off. I’ve had to do that every few weeks here (it’s humid, no circulation, water condenses on the concrete walls, etc.). I scrubbed mold out of the grout (tile grout is a curse to all mankind). A few months ago, I was having a huge mental freakout because I was facing so many effects of living in a fallen world: misunderstanding, entropy, dishonesty, etc. Cleaning the mold that perpetually grows everywhere was a big reminder to me of the imperfect state I inhabit. Cleaning for me always is a time of great reflection. When I’m angry, I clean, and our house looks great this week.

But the real new perspective started coming to me once I was shocked repeatedly into looking outside of my own life because of the hardships of others.

Familia Teixeira (the single mother with three teenage boys) decided to move to a better house this last week (they still live in our area!). We offered to help move things, so on Friday we took the van to help them get the big things out. We got there at four in the afternoon and loaded stuff up and made a few trips back and forth. Their old house is on Rua Maria Pia, which is a long, narrow, busy street with a lot of bus and drug traffic. I drove the big, white utility van (so we could fit the washer and bookshelves). I had to parallel park it downhill on a sidewalk in the pouring rain with busses flying by only 6 inches from the car. No big deal, right? Right. They had a lot of stuff still left to do, so we offered to come back the next day. (Saturday, their last day to leave the house)

Saturday, we started teaching Carlos, the new investigator I talked about last week. We went over to their house only to have the strangest lesson I have ever had on the mission. We wanted to make Carlos feel comfortable since Vanusa is being very pushy to get him baptized. So we got to know them better than we do most people. It turns out that Carlos has had four near death experiences. And when I say “near death” I mean being nearly dead. The guy has screws in his spine.

It perpetuated a very difficult realization for me that I really have no idea what life is like. I have no idea what it’s like to get close to death. I’ve never broken a bone bigger than a metacarpal. I don’t know what it’s like to get my electricity cut off because I don’t make enough money. I have no clue what it’s like to overcome a hefty drug addiction. The list goes on and on. But more importantly, I really have no idea what it’s like to go through all those things and then choose to leave it all behind and put Christ first.

It’s amazing to me the progress that Carlos has made in such a short time, but I imagine that his life experiences have taught him a lot. It’s been hard for me to feel good about myself while acknowledging that I have so little life experience. I still make choices all the time, and I have a lot more that I will probably have to do before I learn better. Even by that time on Saturday, it was the start of a very humbling week for me.

Then we got to the Teixeira’s at 4 PM to help them move “the last bookshelf and the fridge”. It turned out that the help they had requested had decided not to show up, so it was just Elder Barrett and I with the van to move everything else that they had in the house by the end of the night. I never truly knew what kind of living conditions they lived in. I knew the house was small, but I had no idea what it was like. The tiles were cracking under their feet, paint was falling off the walls, etc. When we picked up the bookshelf from the back room of the house, a HUGE salamander (or something) ran out up the wall and into the ceiling. It was the size of a triple combination. I think I’ve lost the capability to be startled by anything, and I just stared at it in a daze. It was HUGE. Apparently, during the summer, they don’t even try to hide. Anyway. It started to pour like crazy, and over and over we worked to fit everything in the van. It got dark, traffic was getting worse, and Irmã Teixeira was definitely not going to finish the cleanup before the end of the day. The zone leaders were in a lesson, so I called the sisters, and they came over and did a great job cleaning up once we got everything out of the house and into the new one.

André, 16, was the only one there to help with the move, and I found out that he has already moved seven times. He seemed to be ignoring the situation, focusing on putting together the bunkbeds with us or the neighborhood or whatever.

We went to the Rau house and took apart a bunkbed for them to sleep on that night.

Another load in the rain.

More cleanup, and another load in the van.

I wish I could describe the scene in my mind. Our huge van parked inches from the windows of the houses on the tiny, wavy cobblestone sidewalk… the narrow street was loud and dark, lit only by a couple street lights, there were busses going by every five minutes. While navigating the tiny streets, there were times that I had to get close enough to cars that you couldn’t even fit your hand between our van and the cars on each side. I hit mirrors with a bus – no damage. I don’t think I’ve ever prayed more sincerely than that night. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so horribly grateful for everything I have than that night. I don’t think I can explain how unbelievably lonely I felt for this family… working so hard and receiving so little support for their needs… with the kids who have gone through so much but still don’t really understand it all. I am incapable of expressing how it felt. I don’t think our time could have been used any better than we did that night.

We finished at 9:40 PM, and Irmã Miquelina had made some soup for them, and they had been planning on eating all together at her house, but it was too late and raining too hard to be practical to go. So they went to their house and went to pick up the soup for them. We drove on the streets I had previously vowed to NEVER drive the van. I had to park it in the middle of the tiny street, on a corner up a hill with cars on both sides. Then I had to move it down the hill onto the busy road because somebody was coming. Then we ran in the rain with the soup in the bags and drove back to the house. I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like that in my life. I have never felt so outside of myself, like I was watching everything happen. I’ve never felt so low and so high at the same time.

“By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, until thou shalt return unto the ground – for thou shalt surely die – for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou wast, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Moses 4:25)

I have never felt that so powerfully, ever, in my whole life.

Like Preach My Gospel says, “They [Adam and Eve] could not know joy because they could not experience sorrow and pain.” It’s unfortunate that we have to pass through unbelievably hard times and make stupid mistakes to learn good from evil. But how unbelievably fortunate are we to have Jesus Christ, our Savior. Our Redeemer. We can learn from our trials and difficulties and come back clean with the experience and knowledge we gained. We won’t have to be in the presence of Heavenly Father by default just by being innocent. We can be in His presence because we are worthy of it.

The rest of the week was great, too.

Love,

Elder Lobo