Well, I Jumped the Gun on That One.

Turns out rumors of me leaving were a farce. We just goes to show you that you shouldn't always believe what your comp tells you. I'm still in Bauru. You were right this time, Dad.

(Oh yeah, the worms are gone. I guess that they just kind get digested after a while. I'm worm free as of right now.) Thanks for the letter, Mom (the worms are honestly gone, for sure)

On a side note, my comp. will definitely leave after this transfer because the singing group that we have in our mission will start up again next transfer. Taking that into consideration, I could be in my area for a while. Not that I´m complaining, I like my area, just not my house. Like that house Rob wrote about on his mission, ours is pretty "Soviet" as well. We're having roof leaking problems, and when it rains in the morning, I have to be careful where I'm sitting, otherwise I'll get rained on.

So, this week was pretty good. Almost everyone in our zone got transferred (I think that me and Elder R. J. are the only ones that didn't move), and right now we've been attending a BBQ with a bunch of other Elders. AND, I'm not the newest American anymore. We got a new American today, which means I'm no longer the "greenie" as members sometimes refer to me or "gringo." (Funny side note, I thought that I could get out of being called gringo because I don't look like a typical American to Brazilians, which turned out to be wrong, I still get the label. But one thing I did get out of being called is "Alemão". It means "German" in Portuguese, but some Brazilians here just use it to refer to any White American. At least they know I'm definitely not German. (I´m not, am I?)

Elder RJ's family lives in Orem, and he plans to attend BYU after the mission, so I guess that he's a "prospective" student/fan of the university.

Also, I´m excited for General Conference. It was cool to invite our investigators to attend conference this Saturday and Sunday to hear the Prophets and Apostles speak. Patricia said that she'd definitely be there with Vanderlay, so we´re excited. We've only had two discussions with them, but they´re progressing really well. Also, people are excited to see who the new apostle will be. I´m guessing Elder Groberg, because he´s the only seventy that I can remember.

So you guys are going to conference on Sat, huh? Who wants to yell "Luke Heperi is the *Cada!" really loud to see if the microphones pick it up for me? (That's a joke.)

Well, that´s all for this installment.

Excelsior!

-Elder =w= Heperi

*Possibly my favorite aspect of Portuguese, the word "Cada". Literally it means "Face", and Brazilians use it the same way that we use "Dude" or "Man". So when I hear teenagers greeting each other, it´s always "What's up, face?"

For Dad: Ha, so you took a listen to the Portuguese scriptures, huh? Well, there are many parts that I can´t understand exactly what´s going on either. (Like Isaiah, hard to understand in English...but actually surprisingly a little bit easier to understand in Portuguese. I've found that some of the words used in the Portuguese scrips are in slightly less formal language than English, and some of the words that Isaiah uses in the 2nd Nephi chapters use Portuguese words that I can look up and understand, so that's a bonus for the language. Nothin' like Isaiah to expand your vocabulary!)