Week 3 in Brazil

So, I definitely had more pictures to send, but I don´t have my camera with me now. All of the senior companions organized this trip to a members house where he cooked us a real nice Brasilian BBQ. It was so good, but they didn´t tell me we´d stay there all day, and come back to write email AFTER our Pday ended. I´m a little frustrated now. I´ve noticed a lot of Elders not following the rules as near to 100% as I think they could be; my companion included. I´ve been doing my best to follow the rules as best as I can because I know I need as many  blessings as I can get. Especially with our investigators. Last night I was a little upset and read the scriptures a little extra before going to bed. It helped me feel a lot better, then I prayed and asked what I could do to help my companion. I got a clear answer that he´s not disobedient because he wants to be bad, but because he doesn´t understand the importance of it, and that I just need to love him and set the example.

 This week was decent I suppose. We haven´t seen much progress in our investigators though. There´s one in particular that I feel like I can help once I can speak Português better. This week I straight up told her and her friend during a lesson that anyone who has any doubt that the Church of Jesus Christ is not true, they´re only arguement is with the Book of Mormon because if it´s true, all else is true, and that she can recieve an answer for herself. She didn´t say much after that, but before she had been quite argumentative. My Português is definitely progressing. It´s not enough to satisfy me, but I can tell it´s better. A lot of Elders tell my my sotaque (accent) is not very thick at all. The other day we taught a family about the Book of Mormon after teaching a quick 2nd lesson, and I did quite well at contributing. I rehearsed the 1st Vision for them in Português quite well and they definitely felt the Spirit. That was exciting.

I also ran into a guy in our ward here that served with my teachers in the MTC. We took a quick picture on his iPhone and he sent it to them via facebook. He was telling us that one teacher in particular speaks perfect Português. I think that may be part of why I needed to be in the Provo MTC. He was very helpful with teaching us the language correctly, getting us excited to learn because he was hilarious, and was always checking up on us individually to make sure things were okay.

 I had a hard time in church yesterday. We were there late because all of the investigators we were going to take with us bailed out on us. I was exhausted and it´s hard to stay awake when you can´t understand the lessons very well. My attention span feels like that of a 5-year-old right now. The second hour my companion and I were interviewed by some friend of a member the whole hour and I missed out on Gospel Principles. Then Sacrament meeting felt so irreverent to me. Lot´s of people talk during the meeting. It´s not just little kids. And I think worste of all, we were singing a hymn, I can´t remember which, but each line ended with a dotted eighth note, sixteenth not, and a quarter note, but they sang it as a triplet. It´s so obviously not a triplet. How does no one see that??? Oh ya, and my companion is tone deaf. Worse than Jordan by far.

This week too I was able to go out on splits twice with Elder Paxman. Totally coincidence(?) that it happened so soon and two days in a row. We didn´t get to teach much since we were two Americanos all alone in a monstrous city with little Português abilities. We did however contact a gay guy in the park. That was not too cool. He wasn´t interested in our message, but still talked with us for about an hour and a half. We couldn´t get him to just listen to our message. He kept inviting us over for dinner at his mom´s house, but he wanted us to be in normal clothes. We explained like 5 times we can´t.

I went to the police station to get all registered and stuff with my visa and ran into my Zone Leader from the MTC. He was about to leave the CTM in São Paulo. It was really cool to talk with him. Turns out he lived in Corvallis and attended Stephanie´s ward a few times. His name is Elder Manning. Good thing he returns after me. He´s tall and very athletic. ;)

Thanks for the cake recipe. It´s good to hear from everyone too. My address is this:

Rua Drive Rui Batista Pereira, 165

Jardim Caxingui
São Paulo-SP 05517-080
Brasil

Tell Uncle Ben thanks for the letter and have a good week.

Elder Candland