Elder Derek Titus: I found him to be a very humble, and nice man.

Out in the savage jungle with my crew. (And glad the snakes are hanging on the wall at the zoo . . . I hope. . .)

Well, sorry for the lack of blogging last week. We were using the internet at the bus station while we were waiting for our bus to Londrina for the zone leader council. We got into Londrina late Monday night, had the meeting all day Tuesday, then left early Wednesday morning and got back late-ish that night.

When we got to Londrina we went to drink some açaí juice, like normal, but there was a really black guy there and the juice lady pointed to us and said to him, “Their names are elder, too!” Turns out the man was named Helder, a pastor from Angola. We got to talking quite a bit, drinking our juice together. He will be in and out of Brazil for 4 hours, studying theology and preaching. I found him to be a very humble, and nice man. He spoke English well, but we opted to speak in Portuguese (Angola’s national language is Portuguese). Although he had a different accent, we understood each other perfectly. He had no intention of bible bashing (thankfully!), and was very professional, which is very unlike pastors in Brazil. Some other elders showed up and Elder Cavalcanti went to talk to them and I kept talking to Helder. Our conversation turned to our church and I taught him the first lesson in 3 minutes and spent more time on the Book of Mormon, to which he gratefully accepted. He seemed very interested, and he said that when he goes back to Angola he will search out the missionaries and investigate the church.

Like normal I’m out of time, but those moments with Helder made my week and I thought I would share that story with you all.

2 weeks ago we went to a zoo, where we saw some freaky anaconda skins (how’d you like to have one of those slide into your sleeping bag with you?). We also spent some time in a grove-like area and took a replica picture of the first vision. It was quite fun.

Tchau,
Elder Titus