Hi there!
I apologize for not keeping up on this blog recently. Elder McKeon was in the office for the past few weeks while his knee healed. When we talked to him at Christmas he was VERY excited to be getting back out into the field. His knee is feeling much better, and while he still can't really bend it, he can now walk with a minor limp. Here is the latest from Elder McKeon:
Hello everyone!
It is so cool out here! It is the farthest zone away from the Mission office, which is good and bad. It takes about 3 hours to get here by bus and metro. It is VERY hot here. It's the middle of summer and I am getting the worse missionary tan ever. I was super white in the office and now that I am back in the field, I have gotten way darker! I am now a Zone Leader in the Guaratingetá Zone and it's WAY out in the countryside, which is a nice break from the busy city. It's way more chill out here and the people are more polite. It's a really flat area, which is good for my knee.
I have a Brazilian companion now, Elder Zancheta, he is from Curitiba, Paraná, it's the state right below the state of São Paulo. He is a great guy and I have already known him since the beginning of my mission, so we are already brothers, and he is a really hard worker! We work hard together and teach even better!
We had a really cool experience this past week. Before I got here, Elder Zancheta got a reference from a member. The references's name was Johnny. He lived in a area where we have to get a bus in order to visit him. We get to the bus stop and we had to wait and wait and wait for the bus to finally get there. When we arrived, we finally find the house and they're actually home. We walk inside and start talking and they are super cool. Johnny and has his "wife" (they aren't married legally) and their 4 year old kid were all there. We started teaching the Restoration, but we also brought the DVD to watch the movie. We led into Joseph Smith and his questions about which church to join and we popped in the DVD. It started to skip at the beginning and me and Elder Zancheta looked at each other like, "Is it going to do this for the rest of the movie???" So we both started to pray so that it would play smoothly. It did, thank goodness, (side story: the Lord works in mysterious ways, because when we looked at the DVD after the lesson, it was TOTALLY scratched up and shouldn't have worked, but it did! I love miracles!!) We finished the movie and the Spirit was so strong there and we asked if they would pray to see if these things are true and to see if the Livro de Mórmon is true. The wife, Mayara, said that during the movie, she felt the same way. She had been a Catholic her whole life and she is now thinking, "Is it really true?" She started to cry. They both promised to read and pray about it, but they didn't go to Church because they were going on a trip that night to a different state and don't get back until tonight. There was such a strong Spirit and 8 other people live in that house and they want us to meet them and teach them too! We are going back there this week to teach them all!
A couple days later we were teaching this less active member and her non-member son. We had just finished the lesson and were eating some ice cream and playing with this big turtle when we hear, "BOOM BOOM BU BOOM!!!"
A huge storm came out of nowhere. It started to rain, HARD, like huge drops, and then hail started to come down. It was impossible for us to leave, we didn't have umbrellas or anything. and so we waited. Two of her stone pots broke because they filled up with water and then fell and landed like 2 feet from where we were standing. So, the irmã let us borrow some jackets and trash bags to put our backpacks in so they wouldn't get wet. We then went out and it started to rain even harder so we started to run and sing "I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain! What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again, I walk down the lane, with a happy refrain, I'm singing, just singing, in the rain!" and people thought we were so crazy! We then get to our bus stop and sit there waiting for the bus, and finally a bus comes by like a half hour later (it's like 8:30 at this point) and the guy said that no more buses pass this bus stop and told us to get on so he would take us to the right spot! The Lord was looking out for us, because if we didn't get a bus there, we would've either had to walk home, or spend the night there.
This place is amazing and I love it so much! I love being a missionary so much and am so grateful that I could stay here on the mission and teach and love this amazing people! I am so happy to be a servant and tool in the Lord's hands for this short time! I am taking advantage of every minute.
I love you all so much and hope you guys have a great week! I love you!
Love,
Elder McKeon
