Which Apostasy do you attend?

Well, this week was a little tough. I got a little sick about Wednesday or so (not completely sick, I just had a cold), and the roasting hot weather that we’ve been having hasn’t been great for it either. I think that I got a little dehydrated, so I’ve been drinking a lot more. It’s a bit of a pain, and I think that I literally sweat about 24 hrs. a day, but it’s fine. I’m still not 100% yet, but I’m definitely on the upswing from the cold. Besides that, the week was mostly good. I had to learn to stay motivated and continue to work hard even though I really just wanted to lie in bed. It was a good learning experience.

We also had another couple of spilt’s this week. One that was an all day split that I had with another American Elder, (Their house is a lot nicer than ours, so that was cool), and another split I had was with our American zone leader, again. His name’s Elder C., and I found out that he went to high school with Austin and Zack Collie (BYU!), and he knows them quite well. We talked some football at night, and that was pretty sweet.

When I was tracting with my zone leader, we knocked on a door (clapped actually, in Brazil everyone has the gates on their houses, so you have to clap to get their attention. A little strange at first, but I’m getting better at clapping) and asked the guy there if he would like to hear our message. He let us in to his front area, and we started teaching the first discussion. When it was my turn to teach about Joseph Smith, I struggled a little because I’m still learning to teach that part. Anyway, the guy kept interrupting me and saying that he didn’t understand a word that I was saying and that I needed to speak better. That was pretty discouraging, but then when my zone leader, Elder C.(who is fluent in Portuguese) continued teaching, the guy continued to say that he couldn’t understand what he was saying. It went something like this:

"So, Joseph Smith was a boy, who in 1820, was confused..."
"Wait, wait, wait, are you speaking Portuguese? Because I can’t understand what you’re saying!"
"Oh, sorry, the message is hard to understand?"
"No, no I can’t understand a word that you’re saying!"
"Really? Not a word?"
"Nope! Nothing!"
"Do you understand what I’m saying right now?"
"No! I can’t understand you!"

So the guy was just being stupid, thinking that he could convince these two missionaries that he couldn’t understand our Portuguese. So I felt better after that.

Obviously, I can’t speak very well yet, and I bet that he couldn’t understand everything I was saying, but that guy was telling someone who could speak that he couldn’t. My zone leader was pretty ticked after that, and he continued to teach a little bit, though he’d mutter some stuff in English… in between. Needless to say, we ended the lesson shortly thereafter. Ha, so not every experience is as uplifting as the next, but it’s good.

In other news, our washing machine arrived (finally!) this week. It’s been sitting at the house of the Sisters in our area, which is across town and we had no way of getting it, but a member was kind enough to pick it up for us, for which we are very grateful. It’s very nice to not have to take 2 hours every P-day to wash clothes. My nap time has greatly increased! Ha ha, just kidding. We don’t nap all day, but it’s nice to have some more time freed up.

Oh, something funny that we do with our contacts. A word that nobody outside of our church understands here in Brazil is "Apostasy". If you bring it up when talking with someone on the street, they think that it means Church. So sometimes, if people say they don’t want to hear our message because they attend some other church, we ask "Oh, which Apostasy do you attend?" And they’ll say "Oh, this church" or something like that. It’s kinda funny. I wondered why nobody knows what Apostasy means until Elder C. pointed out that this is the last doctrine the dominant religion, here, is gonna teach about. So, just some fun that we have with contacts down here.

Thanks for sending the music and stuff Mom. And also sometime in the future (not now of course, I’m trying not to be greedy) but when the church comes out with a new picture of the new First Presidency, could I get one? That’s actually one of the questions that comes up occasionally during lessons "You guys have a prophet? What’s he look like?" It was good when we found out that President Monson was sustained as the new prophet, because otherwise we were telling the people "Well, right now the last prophet just died, so now we have 14 men that collectively all guide the church..." So, it’s cool that we have him as the Prophet.

I’m plugging along pretty slowly with the Book of Mormon. First I read a chapter in English then write down any passage or knowledge that comes to me, and then I read it in Portuguese out loud. It’s painstakingly slow, but I know that it’ll get faster as I improve with the language. It helps my Portuguese a lot, and actually, I’m seeing that Portuguese is translated into somewhat more modern speak than in English. The down side is that things in Portuguese take a lot longer to say (word length wise) than in English. O Livro De Mórmon in Portuguese is about 100 pages longer than The Book of Mormon in English, so that’ll give you a little idea. Actually, I’m at the point where I can read basically any passage in the BOM and have a general idea about what is going on. Specifics are harder, but I’m happy that I can at least find something that I understand now.

Well, that’s it for this week, so c-ya!

Thanks for everything family. I’m doing good here. As I’ve said before, missions are incredibly different from what I thought that they were, and it’s pretty tough, but I’m coming to enjoy it more.

Elder =w= Heperi