How is the life of a missionary

Hello, my name is Ronaldo Dos Santos, you probably think this is surely a common name, well my parents are from Brazil then you can imagine the rest. You probably wonder why I chose to serve a mission, well, let me share with you my story: all my life wasn’t easy at all, not only for the normal difficulties that everyone is facing, but also because where I live isn’t safe at all; all the possibles awful crimes between guns, selling drugs, corruptions, etc. Even when you do your best to try to escape, to survive, not always you get that lucky at all. I was raised up in the worst period ever, between las favelas wars known as gangsters/mafias people where many innocents lives were taken as some of my relatives too. I was literally living every day as it was the last. I’m glad of being grown up with great parents: my father was an hard worker, he gave me a great education, I wouldn’t be who I am now without him, he loved my mother with all his heart, unfortunately with his alcohol addiction things didn’t go well, he was becoming almost out of control so then the separation came when I was 13 years old. My mother was also a great example to me, she not only gave me a great education that despite seemed almost violent but that is how latin american mothers are like throwing shoes etc, but thanks to her I learnt many home works, overall I became great at cooking stuff. I have a great relationship with my brothers, well, I would say one of them, the other one unfortunately chose a different hard path, he wasn’t nice with me at all but he is my brother, you know, so despite he decided to leave, I wish all the best to him and hope someday he could come back to me and the rest of my family. Well, as you can see I grew up well even if my family isn’t perfect I love each one of them, they are very important to me. I always been a good guy, you know, even living most of the world stuff, I am a guy grew with good principles in my house even if I wasn’t completely like my family and I had hard times at school not only for being the only one in my family with a different skin color and for that I got bullied but that didn’t put me completely down. I grew up with a catholic family, I remember when I was little my parents started to have different meetings with two men wearing white shirts, black ties as their trousers and shoes, those meetings were done often for a period till they stopped to pass by. Then when I was in high school I was curious of the pictures I had at home of the baptism of my brothers, on the pictures they looked older, I knew they got baptised at the catholic church when they were born, but those pictures made me more curious and confused. Why they got baptised again? I remember my mother telling me that when I was born, the war situation was worst than now so I found out that I was the only one not baptised in my family. I wanted to be like my family, so I started to look for a church to where get baptised. One day, at school, the school president came to our class and he started talking about as he called ’the Mormons’; he was saying that they were another religious cult, that they say they follow Jesus Christ (the man that was crucified for all men sins as I learnt in the catholic church studying the Bible) but in reality they worship a man called Joseph Smith. He said also to be careful from them as their purpose is to wash the brain of everyone. Then when he started to describe their appearance and everything, in that moment I recognised those were the same that came to visit my house when I was little as I mentioned you before. The moment arrived during I was in the middle of my search of which church to get baptised, I was on my way home, it was a late evening you could recognise that because it was becoming darker in that time so I remembered I had to hurry because around those times it is really dangerous to be outside for as I already told you the situation in my country. I had to hurry home from a nice time spent with family of friends when on my way I saw two young men walking on a bridge, they looked as from another country, they were dressing up very elegant; both with a tie and white t-shirts, black trousers as their shoes, they also had a tag both on their chests showing their names, well I guess their surnames since that ‘elders’ doesn’t sound correct as a name and above I was able to read the name of the church ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’. I recognised those guys as the same when they visited my parents for their looking but with different faces this time. My curiosity became hard to control so I decided to walk towards them till I was in front of them, facing them both. Then I finally asked:

“Why are you both called ‘elder’?”

“This is just a title.” One of them said and as confirmed they were from different countries, not only because of their looks but also for their different accents

“Oh, I see. Under your name is written ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.’ My school president said that you worship Joseph Smith and that you use the name of Jesus as an excuse, is it true?”

“No, of course not. Sorry, but we have to go to a meeting right now, we are already late.” The other one said. I noticed that they seemed like worried or even scared.

“Are you trying to avoid me?”

“No, of course not. We really have an appointment right now to go.”

The first one continued. Well, if you think about it, as I told you it was becoming dark that time so I guess those guys were worried that something bad could happen or even that I could be one of those guys. I tried so to show them that I wasn’t a bad guy.

“Alright I got it if you don’t want to talk with me..”

“No, no..” the other one interrupted me. “Look, what do you think to meet again in another moment so we can explain you better?”

“Yes, let’s do it tomorrow at 8am.”

They both opened their black bags hanging on their backs looking for something till they brought out little white books looked like agendas, mostly of the pages looked filled with their writings.

“Sorry, that time we will be doing our studies.”

“Then, it’s true that you don’t want to speak to me..”

The elders have a specific daily routine and I didn’t know that and because of that I was very stubborn and unpleased for not receiving the answers to my questions.

“No, no.” One of them interrupted me again. “It’s fine.”

“But elder..” said the other one.

“I said it’s fine. We can study later. It doesn’t matter now.”

The other listened and we both left our contacts and left with the promise to see the next morning. I couldn’t wait for it.