Week 9: Breaque Dancing

That's the line that my companion, and therefore also me, use when talking to people on the street. I've done about 5 contacts on the street as a missionary, all incredibly brief and broken, and doing more of these is my goal right now! I've been told by multiple people and now my companion during our weekly planning that I need to talk more with people, and it's probably true. It's just hard when I need people to repeat every other line they say, rip. But, it's getting better, and even while not conversing much with people, I'm still having fun! 

Breaque Dancing -- On Tuesday, while waiting at someone's door, my companion started wandering off towards a place across the street playing music. After we finished, we both went over and I saw a guy break dancing in the middle of the front room. My companion, who was a big rocker before the mission, wanted to learn more so we talked with the guy in charge and his young son. Turns out they have breaque dancing every Tuesday night, and now my companion wants to return next week haha. If I knew how to dance at all I would've tried. Also, it's called breaque "break-ee" dancing because Portuguese doesn't use the letter K, so most of the time, when a foreign word is borrowed, K's are replaced with que, which can be pretty funny sometimes.

More Food -- This week, more food! Every lunch with members is almost the same--rice, beans, some meat, and lots of coke or mystery juice--but some additions have stood out. Yesterday, we had an amazing chocolate dish for desert with white chocolate, and after eating too much of it, we were all very sleepy during general conference. And, my comp and I have stopped by multiple bakeries here, and the pastries are simple but always so good!

General Conference -- General Conference this week was amazing. I listened the best I ever have, and even though I listened to half of them in Portuguese and therefore didn't understand those ones, I felt that multiple of the talks by Apostles were written directly for me. Especially, I was impacted by Elder Jackson's talk, "Remembering the Sheep." It was a surprisingly practical lesson about remembering people first, their names and who they are, and why that's important for a church community. And, it's exactly what I need to work on the most in my missionary work. No one here can pronounce my last name, and similarly, I hear a name and it immediately leaves my head because I've never heard it before. This talk definitely was to remind me to work hard on this.

Favorite Hymn, also General Conference -- There were multiple fire hymns this conference that made me miss watching and performing with choral groups, but my favorite was Standing on the Promises from (I believe) Saturday. It's a hymn that I hadn't heard before, and the melody and arrangement were amazing. 

And, I love it's message. God has promised so much for us. His Atonement allows us to move past any sin or loss and find joy now through repentance and covenants. And, best of all, we have the opportunity for eternal life and families in the life to come. I know that these promises are real because I'm finding more and more of them come to fruition as I trust in them. All you have to do is trust in what Christ can give.

That's all I have for this week.

Till next time,

Elder Haroldsen

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