Wednesday, April 22, 1970

Yesterday was Tiradentes Day, a national holiday causing everything in the city to be closed. We expected it would be an excellent opportunity to catch people at home and planned a full day of tracting. All morning we caught only three people home, a man with the lineage, a Presbyterian minister, and another man who did not care to listen to us. It seems that the gente had all gone to the beach or to the interior.

During the afternoon more people were home, but it didn’t do us much good because nearly everybody was napping. We did encounter one sharp man, Jaurez by name, with whom we marked a lesson for Thursday evening. We visited Meuze in the afternoon, and he informed us that he did not care to know more. Satan had boldly stepped in and obviously made himself welcome.

During the evening we used my Blue Book to teach a special lesson to a family with the lineage. A lesson had been marked before knowing the lineage, but we purposely taught the lesson to give the man a good image of the Church. He is prominent in the city and making him a friend of the Church will counteract some of the opposition manifest in the city and perhaps check some of the rumors.

Following this special lesson, we visited Aldo and family to hold a type of family home evening. We had a free discussion about our work and its problems, the branch and its problems, the city and its problems. Aldo is a tired and discouraged branch president who lacks vision and spirit. We tried to animate him, knowing full well that the Lord’s work will win and that the elect will be gathered and that the kingdom will grow. We tried to be horizon expanding. His wife, Virginia, is so sharp. She told us this morning how much they enjoyed the discussion and that they further discussed it after we left.

As indicated above, the branch has its problems, seemingly a larger number than its size deserves. There are 50-some members in the city. As soon as a member of the district presidency comes from Recife, Aldo will be released as branch president, and I will be sustained in his place. Aldo and his family are the foundation of the branch in this city, and as Aldo has gone so has gone the branch. He is a wonderfully good man, but he lacks the spirit and jeito needed by a leader in such a position. The branch has been retrogressing, and now we are called to change that.

Sunday the meetings were shamefully bad: disorganized, unprepared, started late, without much spirit to them. I was told that sometimes they are better. My first time here for sacrament meeting I was the featured speaker. I used about 25 minutes speaking about the Prophet Joseph Smith and his work, picking a few exciting but lesser known incidents from his life to inspire the members. I compared how we might follow his example. It was all spur-of-the-moment because I had planned to speak on baptism until Aldo, substituting in the morning in Sunday School class, wore out that subject with a long and dull treatment of it.

This evening we had a lesson marked with a man named Romulo Mello. He arrived home late from work, and we did not have time to teach a lesson, but we talked about our message. Both he and his wife were negative towards what we had to say, not willing to accept of our message. We left tracts with them and promised to return in a few days to see what they thought.

The weather in Maceió is generally hot, although the nights are nearly always cool. We are just entering the rainy season. I have been here now an entire week, and there has been some rain every day. The storms do not usually last more than 15 or 20 minutes.