Londrina calling

So today I´m coming to you guys from Londrina. Visa renewal time rolled around so I’ve spent a lovely Sunday night riding on the Bumpy Brazilian Bus (The journey was supposed to be about 12 hours I think, but the driver drives like a man possessed and managed to get us there in 10 hours. Not bad, eh?) And, I got to take a look at the mission office for the first time. (I picked up my Christmas package from the family. Thanks for the harmonica!)

P-day will be a little slow today as we have almost no idea where anything is in this city.

Yesterday was good as we had some investigators that had never been to church before show up. Including that guy... that I said came to church last week but gave a wrong address to us so we ended up not being able to visit him. He’s a great guy... He sometimes doesn’t remember how old he his and stuff like that... we’ll keep working with him.

It’s been raining for a good 4 days straight in Campo Grande, which has its good parts and bad. The good side is that we don’t roast alive in the sun, we just get soaked. The bad part is that my laundry once again is not drying, and we recently discovered that the tube-thingy responsible for carrying the water away from our back porch area doesn’t drain very well and creates a bit of a flooding problem when it rains too hard.

As a result of the heavy rain yesterday, it seemed that about half the ward didn’t show up. It was a bit sad to see so many not there as a result of the weather, and the bishop expressed disappointment that so many were missing. I also had the opportunity to try to put into practice some council of President Kimball when he said that if some parts of Sacrament Meeting are boring, that’s your fault and not the speakers. (Or something like that.) The last guy spoke for a good 45 minutes, and obviously didn’t prepare his talk. He would just read a couple of paragraphs from his manual and then make some commentaries. I tried to stay interested, but only managed to pay attention to the last 10 minutes, which weren’t too bad.

In other news, it’s mango season here in Campo Grande, and the place is loaded with them. There’s usually trees growing all over the place and sometimes in the road, so me and my comp usually grab a couple from people that offer them or grab ém from a tree in the road. It’s pretty cool.

Welp, that’s it from me.

I hope everything’s good over there, and good luck with the Christmas preparations.

Give Berkeley a congrats from me for the wedding. I’d love to see Andy’s, so tell him to wait till I can make it.

´till next week!

-Me

Feliz Natal (Merry Christmas)

Levi tells me that it´ll be Arizona and BYU. G´luck to them, and currently I´m an Alabama fan. (Down with the Utes!)

So, my prediction was right. Elder O. left, and I´m here with Elder Rebelo from somewhere in the north of Brazil. He´s a nice guy, and speaks English pretty well. I thinks that he speaks better than any other Brazilian Elder that I´ve run into. He said he just read and studied a lot, so the promise of learning English is true. But as a result, he knows a lot of funny things to say, like “Don´t go after those wicked women” and stuff like that.

Welp, it´s been a week of much tracting. The whole mission is currently in an immense effort to find and focus especially on families, so we´ve been in search of some. We found many who were interested in the message, but nobody yet who´s made the effort to come with us to church yet.

The search continues...

On Wednesday, this guy... stopped us on the road and said he´d like to receive our visits. Apparently he had been visiting with the missionaries and even had a baptismal date marked when he moved here, so he lost contact with the missionaries. We set up an appointment with him and invited him to church. Turns out he showed up yesterday and everything. His name is A..., about 29, and likes to study Hebrew. He asks everyone that he meets if they speak Hebrew and will say a few words to them. He´s a little odd, but a good guy. We tried to pass by his house later that day to see how he was doing and feeling after church, but unfortunately we couldn´t find his house. We walked up and down the whole dang street many times, but unfortunately the number system of houses is quite weird in the city. On many streets, you get to just choose which number you´d like, instead of being in order, which means that sometimes house number 34 will be next to house number 567, so it takes a while to find a house at times. It´s a bit stupid with the numbers, but we´ll keep up a diligent search for him.

In other news, the championship game between São Paulo and some other team was on yesterday, which made it quite difficult to find people to listen to the message instead of watching the game. Those that did listen either turned out to be drunk (I´m getting better at telling the difference between a drunk guy and other types of crazy), Pastors who just wanted to teach us some stuff, or both. One lesson we taught was to two people in their driveway, and my comp had just about finished explaining about the Book of Mormon, but for some reason the other guy who lived there got angry and came out and yelled at us, told us to go to heck, and many other words that I didn´t understand. Heh, it was one of the times where we weren´t well received. At least, in my experience here in Brazil, usually the missionaries get pretty well treated, but I guess not always.

Welp, that´s all from my front.

Thanks again guys, and a Feliz Natal to everybody!

-Me

Short letter, sorry!

So, we´ve reached the end of one more transfer. We actually won´t know about anything until tomorrow, but I´m pretty sure that my comps. outta here. He´s in the same boat that I was in (6 months in 1st area) so my prediction is that he´s gone. We´re still struggling in the investigator going to church department. We teach enough, but when it comes to those that actually go there, we have a bit of a problem there. We have a new goal in the mission to focus more on families, so it´s going better in terms of finding the people.

Sorry about the short letter this week, but we´re a little pressed for time again.

–till next week!

-Me

Pastors and Girlfriends

So the Cougars took a dive, huh? Me and Elder Cooper are pretty let down about that. I expect that next year will be a better result though. (Does that mean that the Utes head to a BCS bowl again? Yeesh!)

It was a week of highs and lows again. We were teaching and expecting three families to show up on Sunday, but unfortunately we only had one of them come. That’s one of the more difficult problems I’ve found in the mission. Many listen, read, and pray for a response, but when it comes time to head to church, the number drops significantly.

We’re teaching a guy named E. (I think that’s how you spell it…) who read and understood really well about everything that he read. The only problem was that after he had read and pondered about the Book of Mormon, he went and asked, not the Lord liked we invited, but his local pastor. So, when we made a return visit he ended up with less of a response than when he started, so we explained again about the importance of asking the Lord and not other people and invited him to try again. He’s a good guy, just that he usually does what his pastor tells him to do all the time, so we’re working on helping him exercise some free-agency, heh.

In other news, my comp. got a package from his girlfriend this week, which gave him a nice boost of confidence. When I arrived in the area, he hadn’t received a letter from her in two weeks (eternity for him I guess) and was predicting the worst. We’re still sweeping up the glitter that was used as the packaging, and now Elder O. has a nice smelly scented frog that sits on our study desk and makes me sneeze. He’s having me help him with English so he can impress her when he gets home. Currently he’s mastered “What’s up?” and “I love you”, so now we’re moving on to the more complicated, but just as essential, “It’s not me, it’s you” and “I’ll clean the garage after you make me dinner!” I think that he’ll be speaking well at the end of this transfer.

We’re trying to find a way to get the ward involved in the missionary work. Unfortunately, we don’t have a ward mission leader as the last one was released before I got here and they haven’t called a new one yet. We struggle in teaching lessons with members, as the ward is a bit spread out between the two areas, and we’re lacking involvement with the ward. Pray for us as we look to fix this problem.

On a closing note, we have a game of flag football planned for today. One of the Elders in the zone has a football, so we’ll see if we can instruct the Brazilian's in the way of the pigskin.

Till next time.

-Me

Rats in the backyard

First off, my thanks to Sister Toone and the Parkway 2nd Ward Primary for the pictures and package. I appreciated the support from the home ward.

So this week´s the Ute game, huh? I´ll keep it in my prayers. If Utah wins and gets a BCS bowl game, I dunno what I´ll do...

The weather continues to be quite weird around here. We were roasting all last week on the roads and especially in our house. The bedroom is the most poorly ventilated part of the house, and I wanted to move the mattresses outside and sleep in our backyard. (not a yard really, just a concrete area.) Elder O... didn´t want to as he says he says that there are rats living out back as our trash always gets moved around at night. One day we´ll have our sleep under the stars... but, today is a nice overcast day and actually quite cool.

We found some good people this week. One house that we found always had about 3 or 4 new people there each time we made a return visit, so we ended up teaching the first lesson three times at the same house to bring everybody up to speed. Unfortunately, none of them went to church yesterday, which was quite a big disappointment. We´ll see if they can do better this week.

Still a lot of finding and searching. Funny enough, there´s a neighborhood that is part of our area called “Los Angeles.” We worked in there a bit this week as it´s an area that hasn´t been touched yet. It´s one of the poorer parts of the town, and my comp says it´s not good to be around there after dark, so we´ve mostly been doing some daylight work there. We´ve got one family that´s pretty solid in the praying and reading department, but unfortunately the mom and dad both work all day every day with one day off a week. Their day off doesn´t land on a Sunday until the end of the month, so they said that they´d go to church then. They´re a really cool family, and when we showed up for our second visit, they were all in the front yard playing volleyball. They really like the emphasis that we place on families in the church, so we´ll see what we can do to help them.

Other than that, Christmas is coming up so I´m starting to see the trees and lights come up. It´s funny, but people still use the icicle Christmas light even though I doubt that any ones even seen an icicle around here. Also, being dressed in the Santa suit in this weather seems like a tough gig. As the Mall isn´t too far from our area, maybe I´ll get to sit on Santa´s lap and tell him what I want. Heh heh.

Sáll from me.

´till next week.

P.S.-Last week I ate Subway. I´m happy.

-me

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.

Wet Laundry

Welp, the weather has cooled down significantly around here. We’ve had nothing but storms the past three days; so unfortunately, my laundry has stayed wet for about that long. I would take the clothes off and move them, but every morning I look outside and think “today the rain will stop. Today…”How I miss a good dryer!

The ward is quite interesting. To answer your question Dad, the name of the ward is Universitário. There is a college campus close to here, so I think that is why it’s called that, although it’s just a normal ward. The ward is growing quite rapidly, and I’ve always heard that Campo Grande is the most fruitful area of our mission. My area is still huge, even though they put the extra companionship in the ward 6 months ago. The Bishop is a nice guy... Sometimes he’ll make jokes that others don’t get, and people will just stare at him or give him a courtesy laugh, which is even funnier to me.

The keyboard thing that I play in church is probably the nicest thing I’ve played on my mission so far. It’s got so many settings, and nobody knows how to use them because it’s written in English. The primary program is coming up soon, so I got enlisted to help out.

This past week, we found got a reference from the other Elders to visit a woman named A... Apparently she just showed up at the chapel one day, and said that she was in need of a church. She said that she got sick of the pastor and what he was doing to her other church, so she left and started walking in search of a church. She found our chapel, entered, and decided to see what it had to offer. We went and visited her, and found out that she’s quite the talker... As soon as we got there, she launched into a twenty-minute story about her life in the church before. Now, I like to get to know the people and all, but as we were nearing the 20 min. mark, I moved forward in my chair and opened my mouth to interrupt. She noticed and said “I’m wrapping up, don’t worry.” 10 min's later she finally wrapped up and we taught her the 1st lesson... she showed up to church on Sunday by herself, she seems to have the desire to learn. We’ll see how she progresses.

Elder O... is a very good Elder. He only has 5 months on the mission, but works like an Elder with a lot more time. I’m only his 2nd comp., so he’s getting used to someone who’s not his trainer. As I’ve found with all of my Brazilian comps, he’s sacrificed a lot to be here. Neither of his parents are members, and his mom even forbade him to go on a mission, saying that something bad would happen if he went. So, he’s worked thru a lot to be here. I’m learning much from his example.

Oh yeah, I forgot to respond to the question about P-day. It’s permanently on Monday now; it just gets moved sometimes for transfers. I guess that Elder Didier met with Pres. Leal a while back and they decided that Wednesday would be better, but I guess now its back to Monday. I like Monday better, personally.

Welp, that’s all from me.

Happy belated Halloween!

-Me