It finally rained!

Hey everybody!

This morning, I woke up about 15 minutes before the alarm to some giant explosions coming from the backyard. I thought it was the garbage man or something, but they come at about 12 or 1 in the morning, so it was too late to be them. Then there were a bunch of flashes all over the place, and I finally realized what in the world was going on. Not only was it raining for the first time in months, there was a huge thunderstorm going by. So I wandered around the room in the dark looking for my tripod to get pictures, and Elder Hatch mumbled out a "what in the world are you doing?" I was so focused on finding my tripod that the only thing I could get to come out of my mouth was "tripod... where's my tripod?" I eventually found it, set up the camera in the window, and set it on long exposure and got some really cool pictures of lightning and the buildings. There's a book I almost bought that had a really cool picture of the Vasco da Gama bridge with lightning behind it, but now I don't really feel the desire to buy that book anymore.

As for the rest of the week:

A member told me on Sunday that BYU had won, and I didn't believe him. He's kind of a jokester anyway (his name is Franciel, but everybody calls him Linguiça, which is a kind of sausage). Crazy. It sounds like this opening week was crazy. Pancadas

We taught Benvinda a couple times this week with Bispo Artur, and OH MY GOODNESS. He loves to talk. I have never met anybody who can talk so much. I don't like to talk to myself with somebody in front of me -- I prefer to talk with somebody. Bispo, however, talked from basically the moment we got in to the moment we left, and it was all over the place. Everything from how the Igreja Universal is full of evil spirits to what your body will look like in the resurrection. It was very out of control, but somehow that seems to have worked out OK, because Benvinda is thinking about getting baptized before she goes to Angola in a few weeks. All she has to do is just have a couple more lessons with us and go to church. There's a certain kind of persuasive, smooth-talking capability that some people have over others that I just don't have.

We also visited a brazilian family who moved from Barreiro recently to our ward. Ivanildo, his wife, and their 8-year-old daughter Lorena. Lorena is absolutely HILARIOUS. She reminds me a lot of Katie (Katiebugs). We had a family night about eternal families where she cut and colored every member of their family from construction paper and we "sealed" them together with superglue that had "Templo" written on it in Sharpie. Ivanildo is the administrator of a RIDICULOUSLY nice apartment building in Parque das Nações. Their house has AC, a REAL water heater, a dishwasher, motorized persianas (they're like blast shields over the windows - everybody has them), and a pretty nice kitchen -- and he lives there for free!. They're a great addition to the ward.

I really enjoyed the responses to my question about the most beneficial and fulfilling parts of being in your respective wards. I had a hunch the responses would be something like that, falling into two categories: being served and serving. It seems like they go together, and they happen naturally when everybody actually cares.

It's been a little slow, otherwise, seeing as most of our members still haven't returned from vacation, or at least it seems that way from the number of people in sacrament meeting on Sunday. Elder Croshaw and Elder Bass spent a week in the Azores for a zone conference and some divisions with people, so it was pretty quiet.

I've been casually thinking a bit about optometry and opthamology and all that stuff, and the more I analyze it, the more I think that optometry is right for me. I work to live -- I don't live to work. I've never really been so sucked into something that I would want to do it for the rest of my life, but optometry embodies a ton of principles and topics that I really enjoy. It's not so much about what I do, but the process of how I do it. It's something that seems stimulating and broad enough to be stimulating, but it's also simple enough that it won't consume my life. Some people have ADD, but I think I have the opposite -- I can't really multitask in life. I have a really hard time zoning out on something or somebody unless something else captures my attnetion. I like the idea of optometry because I want to help people, but I don't want my success to depend on them (like teaching). I want to help people who want to be helped, and I don't want to try to convince people to want something they don't. Optometry sounds really cool -- it's still a scientific process, but it's in a personal environment. It's not robotic like working at a desk, nor is it completely subjective like teaching, but it's objective and subjective at the same time. I'm a very subjective person, but I like doing objective things. I really like it. Plus, I like the idea of studying at Pacific University because I want to stay in Oregon or Washington. I'll be able to figure all that out later, but it's cool that all this has suddenly opened up in my brain as an option I really like.

It's been fun to have a working oven in our house. We've been making cookies like crazy for people and for activities. We take some with us when we go to visit members. I gave a lesson yesterday in District Meeting about the Plan of Salvation, consisting of playing the CES Fireside talk by Elder Bednar from last May, and while he was talking I mixed chocolate chip cookie dough on a table in front of everybody. "A spirit hath not [the ability to mix chocolate chip cookie dough] as ye see me have" (Luke 24:39). There are just some experiences that you need a body for, and when we understand that, the Plan of Salvation makes a lot more sense.

We had a less-active member show up to English class yesterday. She had talked to us a few weeks ago while we were doing internet, asking if we still did English classes Tuesdays and Fridays at 8 PM. We replied in the affirmative, but unfortunately hadn't heard or seen anything of her since -- until last night. She's returning to activity, and she seems to enjoy English class. We started doing it in the chapel (to facilitate giving chapel tours to non-members), simply using a chalkboard in front of the chairs. We don't have benches -- I've never had a chapel that actually had benches here, but I know of a couple that have benches. Anyway, a little "I am a Child of God" or even a practice run of "Carol of the Bells" later, and we have our Ukranian friend Nikolai listening to some scriptures, which he didn't like before. Music is awesome. There's so much more to life than just words.

The man cave looks pretty cool. It's hard not to call our house the "man cave" sometimes -- I don't think I'll ever live in a house in a condition anything like the houses I've lived in. Sometimes it feels like living in an abandoned house, even like camping indoors, if that makes sense. You are one with nature.

Speaking of being one with nature, we found a gecko on the ceiling of our room last night, and I caught it and took some pictures. It was really small, luckily, because the big ones are ridiculously fast.

Oh well.

Every truly good desire we can have in life is dependent upon the Gospel. Without it, it's impossible.

Love to all, and to all a good morning.

Elder Lobo