Cowboy Up!

It’s always kind of a bit different after a phone call. It kind of makes me realize that there’s more out there than my little town here of 30,000. It was great talking to you guys, and thanks for the birthday wishes. (Btw. I just completed my “sister mission” as well. Here’s hoping that I can prove myself an Elder! Ha!)

Welp, so my district leader just called, and I’m getting transferred. Actually, despite the difficulty of the area, I’ll be sad to leave. Our recent converts are the most energetic about the church of anybody that I’ve seen in a while, so it’ll be sad to leave them.

I’m being transferred to Londrina, which is quite cool. That means that I’ll have served in the three states that our mission has: São Paulo (Bauru and Adamantina), Mato Grosso do Sul (Ponta Porã and Campo Grande) and now Paraná where Londrina is. We’re getting more towards the cooler part of the year here, and I hear that Londrina gets a bit chilly during these months, so I’ll be happy with that. It’ll be interesting to see how’ll that’ll be. Elder U. will be staying and getting somebody else who I don’t know. I’m still waiting for the Zone Leaders to call to tell me when I’m leaving. Also, when you’re leaving an area and going to a new one here, they never tell you where exactly you’re going or who exactly is going to be your new comp., so you just always arrive there at the bus station with no clue. So, while I’m going to Londrina, I might end up at another city outside of Londrina. I guess you guys will have to wait to next week to find out. Oh, the tension!

This week was pretty low attendance at church. I’ve noticed that Brazilians take their holidays pretty seriously, so that if any relatives show up at their house, they put all the stuff on hold to spend time with them. A good attitude, to a point, I guess. Less than half the people that are usually at church were actually there, including a lot of the leadership. They served lunch afterwards for Mother’s Day, so we got to eat lunch twice in one day. Whoo hoo!

On a closing note, I saw something that really became the highlight of the week. It was kind of a difficult day Monday night, as after P-day we had an appointment about 45 min. away on foot with a family that we felt was progressing pretty well, only to show up and find out that they skipped out on us. Then on Tuesday, we were standing in line to pay out light bill and I was thinking about how that was pretty annoying and hard. Then I noticed the guy at the counter had a hat that said on it, (in English) “Are you gonna COWBOY UP, or just lay there and BLEED?” with the word “bleed” in huge red letters. I started laughing, as I felt that it was a personal message for me to keeping going, and “Cowboy Up”!

Welp, sáll from me for this week.

Sorry for the shortness, but I know that I’ll have a bunch to tell with the new area next week. ´till then!