Small town and little Branch

Welp, hello from Adamantina.

This week has been pretty hectic. I left Campo Grande on Sunday, but actually didn´t arrive in my area until Tuesday morning due to some bus problems. I arrived in the neighboring city of Tupã Monday night, and we slept there before coming to my area on Tuesday. An interesting trip.

My new comp is Elder Freire, from Recife in the Northern part of Brazil. He used to be comps with my last comp, Elder R., so we´re getting to know each other now. Unfortunately, I would be the pianist in the branch here, but there isn´t a piano, so we´re trying to see if somebody has a keyboard that we can borrow.

Tuesday was interesting, as it was Carnival and everything in the city was closed and there was basically nobody on the roads. (By the way, send my sympathies to Jeff there in Rio. My comp from Rio told me that he´s been robbed various times in his lifetime, and said that it´s fairly normal there.) Much door knocking was done that day.

I can tell that this area is gonna be an interesting one for me. Campo Grande is where the church is the most well established in our whole mission, next to Londrina. The ward there had a frequency of about 150, which is quite high around here. Here, however, there are only branches and a district. Sacrament meeting had a frequency of 57 yesterday, and we meet in a rented building as our chapel. It´s quite interesting for me to see, as I´ve only passed thru wards until now, so I excpect that I´ll learn a lot.

The branch president´s a nice guy. He´s been a member for about three years now, and says that he´s still getting the hang of being Pres. He´s pretty helpful and left with us to go teach some lessons on Tuesday.

I´m thinking that this area will do wonders for my Portuguese, as it´s just me and my comp here in the city, and the closest American elders are an hour and a half away in Tupã, so hopefully I can get rid of my accent a little better.

I heard the usual “You know something Elder, you don´t look American” all yesterday, and actually somebody tried speaking Spanish with me and asked if I was Mexican.

The town´s pretty cool. It´s kinda of got an Ephraim, Utah feel that I like around here. It´s a college town here with a couple of small colleges, so the town about doubled in size with school back in session. We talk with a bunch of college students on the roads as that´s usually who's out and about around here. Our apartment (my first apartment in the mission, as opposed to just a house) is right in the Center of the city, and is definately the kind Spider-man or Daredevil would rent as there are a few tall buildings around here and a balcony. The apartment´s OK, but we´re actually looking to move 'cos when it rains the whole place leaks, and the neighbors downstairs are college kids, so it gets to be a bit noisy on the weekends. (The guy downstairs is a huge Avril Lavigne fan, and we´ve already had to plan while hearing “Sk8r Boi” coming thru the window.) I´d rank the apartment as #2 in terms of the best place that I´ve had to live on the mission, with my last house being #1. We live right across the street from the local Catholic church that is pretty cool looking, and it even has a big clock with a bell tower that rings all thru the day and night.

We actually take care of two cities, Adamantina and the neighborhing city of Lucélia, about a 20 min bus ride from Adamantina. Apparently, there used to be a branch in Lucélia as well, but it closed. The branch here is struggling to grow. The church has been here a little more than 20 yrs. and only grows very slowly. The members here are not very excited about missionary work, except for the Branch President and his councilor, so we´re gonna have to get to work and pray to see what we can do to help the members out.

Please pray for the branch here.

Welp, sáll from me.

Till next week.

-Luke