Rescuing O-W-L

Today's p-day was full of adventures! First of all when we woke up there was an owl outside of our front door (first picture) we tried to scare it away, but realized pretty fast that something was wrong with her. She would fly only a few feet and then fall back to the ground. We decided that she was just a baby and that she fell from one of the trees that are neighboring our house....so we did a capture and release (film).

The first try was not successful...nor the 2nd. But the third time we managed to catch her using my mosquito net :) and we stuck her in a box. We called animal control but today is a holiday (dia das crian's...day of the children) and it turns out that it doesn't matter what your job is, everyone takes the day off. They told us that no one could come and pick her up until Wednesday. They gave us a plan B...send her to the animal shelter via Moto-taxi. Here they have taxis with cars and taxis with motorcycles. We decided to go with plan B, because we don't know how to take care of owls but on the way to the Moto-taxi station, we ran into a police car. We told them the situation and they agreed to take the owl to animal control for us. Let's just say that I lived out my dream of playing Crocodile Hunter today!

We also broke the day today by hiking to a church that's about 1 1/2 hours away from our house...

1 So to get to the top of the catholic church they have the custom that you need to climb on your knees to show repentance. There were 86 steps and we only stopped to take the picture on our knees :)

2 We made it! With the group that went with us.

3 Inside the little chapel...the religion of Brasil...but we´re working to change that :)

4 There was a little natural pool with this water fountain. The rest of our group went swimming...minus the missionaries who just wet our feet.

5 This is an area where you pay to go fishing...there were little man made lakes all next to eachother. We didn´t have time to go fishing so we just took some pictures.

This week we really got working...but Satan was working too. So many of our investigators weren't at home during the hour that we marked with them. We're struggling a bit to find the Lord's elect, but we know that they are out there.

. . . One of these golden couples is Wanderlucia and Jeronimo. Wanderlucia read the chapter we marked for her 3 times because she wanted to understand what was being taught. She told us that before she read each time, she started with a prayer so that the Holy Ghost could help her understand the chapter. She's started reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning and is already in Chapter 5 of 1st Nephi. This is huge because she struggles with reading and the Book of Mormon doesn't use language that's easy to understand. But she asked us questions about the chapters and all of them showed that she understood what was going on in the story.

Friday we found a 16 year old boy who had been talking to his older sisters how he wanted to start going to church again and how he wanted to be baptized. Thirty minutes later we showed up to teach his sisters a spur of the moment lesson...he listened and this past Sunday came to church. I'm greatful for the Holy Ghost and know that I need to pay more attention to his promptings. I'm so set on making and following plans that I'd getting caught up on doing things my way instead of the Lord's way. I know that it's a humbling experience that we're passing through here in Rio Verde.