November Rain

So the weather finally cleared up around here. No joke, it´s been raining everyday for the past week. And though it will be hot again on the streets, at least my laundry will have a chance to get dry. As the great American poet Mr. Axl Rose once said, “Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain.”

The Ute game is coming up soon, right? Me and Elder C are praying and cheering, so I hope that we pull it off.

So I hear that Obama won, eh? Every person that we visited that day (investigator, recent convert, drunk man on the street) was quick to inform me and assumed that I would have a strong opinion and much to say on the subject. But, as a missionary ... I informed them that I didn´t know much about the situation and that it´s very wrong of them to assume, because they know what happens when they assume…(that joke doesn´t work in Portuguese, as I found out, ha ha)

Horray for the political system and... and at least Levi got a vote as vice-pres. from Comrade Magleby.

Heh, so it is quite weird for me to have a year on the mission already. Looking back on a daily basis, it does seem like quite a long time that´s past. But looking back at all the time in general, it seems to have gone by quickly. I think it´s true that the days sometimes pass by slowly, but the weeks and months fly by. I feel happy looking back at some of the progress that I´ve made, especially in the language. One year ago, I could only ask simple things like “how old are you?”, “Where are you from?” or “Who´s your favorite Powerpuff girl?” (No joke. The second word that I learned in Portuguese after “Thank you” was “Powerpuffgirls”.), but now I feel like I´ve progressed well and "I is to speak the language much the very good." And no Mom, I haven´t burned a tie yet. I dunno what the tradition is in other missions, but here you burn a tie a 6 months, a shirt at 1 year, pants at 1 ½, and supposedly a suit coat with 2 years. (Though I´ve never known anybody to do the pants and the coat. I´ve got a shirt that´s pretty brown from some mud that I don´t use anymore, so maybe you´ll get a cool video with a nice shirt burning ceremony…)

We´re still in finding mode here in my area. We´ve been picking up a lot of new people this week, but not too many that are really solid yet. I talked to some lady in front of her house (named A...) and offered the message, and we ended up teaching everybody in the house. They´re a Catholic family with a strong belief in God, and Ana has a strong desire to visit the church, so we´ll see where we go from here.

In other news, our other investigator who went to church last week was unable to come, as she was taken to the hospital as a result from not taking her medication. She told us that she was on a bunch of stuff for depression and other things, but she told us that she didn´t need them as she had faith enough to overcome the problems. We of course explained to her how the Lord provided us with doctors and medicine as a way to bless our lives and that she should continue with what her doctor said, but she didn´t listen.

Today we´re heading down to the center of the city to check out the Mall and other stuff. Now, that wouldn´t be too exciting were I in Provo headed to Provo Town Centre, but as I´m in a foreign country (and the state capital too) it should be good. We´ve got our whole district going, so we´ll see what´s up there.

Welp, sáll from me at this end.

Thanks for the support from year one, and I´m looking forward to year two.

My apologies to anybody who has sent me a letter that has not received a reply. I try as hard as I can, but I write very slowly by hand, and am looking into buying a low end typewriter to speed up production.

We get mail tomorrow as President Leal is coming for interviews, so thanks in advance to everybody.

-Me

P.S. There are about 20 churches within 5 minutes of our house, and one of them has a sign that I found funny. The church is “????”, the kind of church where the pastor has the microphone and is always singing and yelling stuff and they call people to the front to cast out the demons that they have. The sign that they have on the front of the church says “Meetings like in the times of the Apostles.” I thought that kind of funny, because for sure Peter, James and John didn´t teach with yelling and screaming like that. Voices and words of thunder as they were teaching with the power of God, for sure. But, like that, no. I´ve seen what a meeting with Apostles is like... one year ago I was at General Conference in SLC, and it sure wasn´t like that. It is interesting to me how most people consider the Apostles and stuff like that to be things of the past when they are actually things that are happening right now.