I'm DREAMING Of A (Nonexistent) White Christmas☃️🦌

 Monday, December 5, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil:

This week was pretty good, had some awesome lessons and contacts. 

I have started having some allergies (seasonal I think?), that have been a little bit annoying.

This week it rained a few days. Nice cool rain, followed by hot and humid days. Still pretty hot here, though some days are cloud-filled before the rain comes. 

It is inching towards Natal (Christmas). Honestly not much changing other than a few decorations. Really missing cool fall and cold winter days now

But #LightTheWorld started, go check out Ideas of how to serve others!!!!!

 www.LightTheWorld.org 

We ran out of gas for cooking, and while we can get reimbursed for it by the mission, we need a receipt and none of the places we have found will give a receipt.

This week my companion and I were making some street and door contacts with people. We were working in an area with lots of industrial buildings, such that we didn't always know for sure if they were houses or workplaces. Also, some of the doors were super tall and we couldn't see behind them. Because of this I kept telling my companion that we probably shouldn't knock this door or that door. But most he insisted on. And close to the end of the day, we knocked on two doors that were awesome. One of the was a guy dating the Bishop's daughter, super interesting guy. He had a lot of contact with members of the church, even missionaries once, but not recently. We gave him a Book of Mormon and explained to him about it. It went super awesome, and I definitely felt the Holy Spirit with us. 

After that lesson we knocked on a few more doors, and-as the dark settled in-my companion suggested knocking another door. I said 'eh, it looks dark inside' but my companion insisted. So, we knocked there. A man opened the door, and we proceeded to have a lesson with him and one of his sons. As we talked, he said something that hit me, in that he said they didn't get many visitors. They do live in an industrial area. But it reminded me of times in the past when new families would move to Raleigh and be in our Ward at church. Sometimes my family (and I'm sure other families) would make cookies for them, or just simply visit them. It made me think what the church can do. When sometimes in the world, finding friends, connections, people who see you and really care about you, can be hard. Sometimes we can be on a long street full of neighbors, but maybe they don't know us. But the church does and always should be a community of love. A community of ministering.

This week I was thinking a little bit about accountability. I read a BYU Speech, that had an awesome story:

-A company that shipped products for training events was having problems. The products kept coming late or not as ordered. The people in charge of shipping the products always blamed others- The packaging dep., the delivery dep., etc. But to stop this, some bonuses were offered for the shipping team. Because of this bonus, the shipping dep started taking accountability, not just of their job and part, but also of the other departments' jobs. They called to make sure each package was packed correctly. Then they made sure the packages got shipped early, and called to make sure they arrived as expected.-

This made me think about personal accountability. How personal accountability has two parts - Our actions, and Others' actions. We are always responsible and in control of our actions. They will always affect us, so we always need to be accountable about them. We all know that. But the second part is also super important.

Each one of you reading this has been a part of a team or group. Group project in school, work department, marriage, family, friendships, etc. 

In each of these situations YOU had to be accountable. But not just to your actions, to the groups' actions. If your coworker or group member did everything right or not - that affected you. The goal isn't to complete just your part right. It's to complete the overall job. To raise a family, complete the whole job together. And maybe with that you need to give more support to coworkers, teammates, and family. Sometimes we need more support than our own. But being accountable means that you all work together to reach the goal.

So, two invitations today:

1 - Love and visit those around you, especially those who don't have friends. Maybe they NEED a visit from you. 

2 - Be accountable. To yourself and for yourself. To, and for, your teammates.

That's it, love y'all! I honestly hope all of you have good weeks! Enjoy this joyful season!

Elder David Olson

MANAUS

Pics-

-Lunch with one of the member families

-Elder Schmidt & Natal

-We bought a tiny Christmas tree. Very festive.

-Our English class only had 2 participants besides us, but was still fun