Week 12

Pretty exciting email to NOT get last week. Here磗 November 9th (or what should be November 7th):

So my new area is called Mangalot (mahng-guh-LOH). It磗 a lot more like how I pictured Brasil. It doesn磘 really feel like S鉶 Paulo, but more like an isolated city right outside. It磗 a lot more calm here, and is mostly small houses instead of apartment buildings. There are lots of dirt soccer fields, more grass, and trees. My new companion is Elder da Rosa (dah Hozuh). He磗 black. It磗 his last transfer here, so President Martins told me to keep him focused. I don磘 think he磗 very trunky right now, but we磍l see with only 2 weeks left.

The ward here is pretty small in comparison to my last area, so we磖e trying to get to know the members well, and help lots of the inactives get reactivated. We met with on last night. He plays guitar really well and actually sings really well too. He磗 the first person here I磛e heard sing well. We played some songs with him, and he talked to us about how he was an alcoholic and is doing well now, but is trying to divorce his wife since she doesn磘 want family or anything to do with the church, and he seems to realize there磗 something missing in his life. He seemed to really enjoy having us over, so we磖e hoping to get him back in church every week.

It's so dang hot here. I finally burned the other day. Now I'm starting to look really tan, like I did right after Trek. It's still not even December yet, and I'm dying in this heat. I'm so glad It's not up further North.

My companion has an album from the same guy who wrote the Nashville Tribute to Joseph Smith, and it's about the pioneers. There's a song I heard called "Somewhere There's A Mountain" that I thought would be cool if Kortney and Rylee sang.

As for interesting stories this week, we were at another inactive members house and she lives with lots of her family that aren't members and don't really live very well. Her daughter's husband was super drunk and was talking to me for about 15 minutes about Eddie Murphy and a lot of other stuff that didn't make sense or I didn't understand because of his drunk speaking. I also saw a lady with a brand of jeans called "Goot." I thought they looked like a real goot pair of jeans. There was also these really cool guys driving down the road with their music blasting and the words "Check Noris" over their windshield. I thought maybe it was a funny joke in Portuguêse, but my companion told me it wasn't a joke, they were just not very smart.

There's a lot of people here that like to talk about Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama. I think I here just as much talk about our president here as I did there. There was an article in a magazine here about Mitt Romney and if the US is prepared for a Mormon President. They interviewed Elder Niel L. Anderson since he speaks Portuguêse. It was a good interview. He answered simply and honestly. A lot was about Mitt Romney, but the last question said "Will the churches standpoint on gay marriage be changed in the future? and he answered "The family is the central part of our doctrine. I don't see how this is possible." I thought it was pretty straight to the point.

So our missino conference was super good. Elder Godoy and his wife spoke briefly, and Elder Evans spoke for a good 2+ hours. He and his wife only speak English and Japanese, so we had a translator that spoke into another microphone after every phrase. His wife had a really good point. She said that the phrase "The mission was the best two years of my life" is wrong. It should be "The mission was the best two years for my life." She also said it's not just our lives that the mission is good for, but our family's lives; present and future, and that the blessings of the mission don't stop after the mission. Then Elder Evans spoke alot about the mission too. He talked about how the friendships we have on the mission are eternal because we're all served together, and how our relationship with our mission president is going to be one of our best even after the mission. I got a lot of good notes from this session. It was much better than the first.

Hope Mexico is awesome, that everything goes well at home, and that OSU is still sweet. Have a good week.

Elder Candland