Week 13

It´s pretty crazy that in December I´ll already have 6 months on the mission. Speaking of December, I´m kind of worried about Christmas here. I´m pretty sure it´s not going to be so great. It´ll probably be about 95 degrees out too. I´m not sure if we´ll have lunch at a members house or not. At least I´ll probably be able to Skype with you guys. Usually holidays for you like Christmas are pretty crammed with family.

Sounds like everyone is super busy at home too. All of the kids seem to have way more extra curriculars than ever. And Lars, I can´t believe he´s enjoying wrestling. Speaking of which I had a wrestling meet at Tolt in my dreams last night. I wrestled the kid from Win Win and won... That was the inflight movie everyone was watching on my flight to São Paulo. I didn´t watch, promise. I just saw a little bit of the wrestling since it caught my eye. 

Anyway, this week has been pretty empty of success as well. We even had a big ward activity set up for Saturday. We announced it two Sundays ago, and the 2 days beforehand, we invited every member we could talk to, and we asked them to please invite a friend since the purpose was to try and introduce people to the missionaries and church in a more laid-back way. The night of it started at 6 pm, but at about 6:05 the first 2 people showed up. After about 25 minutes our bishop showed up and he helped us make some phone calls. At about 7:00 we had about 15 people there, but the people we had asked to bring certain things hadn´t brought them, so we waited about 30 minutes more for them to grab it and come back. Finally, we had a quick activity. It was that activity where we have someone hand out candy, and each time he asks if they want it, we had to do 5 pushups, regardless of whether they wanted the candy or not. Then we shared a quick message about the atonement and agency and that was it. The activity went well, but we were really sad that so few people showed up. 

One of our zone leaders is from the US, and he reminds me of a combination of Andrew Ashby and Brandon Howlett. He and I had a good conversation about the Book of Mormon animated movies today. We also visited the São Paulo futebol team stadium today. It had the same exact feel as any normal American football or baseball stadium. I picked a team a while ago, and it´s not São Paulo. I actually root for a team from Rio. Vasco da Gama. I get a lot of crap since I´m serving here in São Paulo and everyone loves the teams from here. That´s probably why I chose them.

Oh ya, happy Thanksgiving.I won´t be celebrating. It doesn´t exist here, but there is a holiday about once every 3 weeks here. They even have a Kid´s Day, just like Mother´s and Father´s Day. I´m pretty sure it´s just an excuse not to work and to ``focus on the kids´´ by sitting at home, watching some futebol, and drinking some beer.

My Português is pretty awesome now though. I´m able to listen to most people speak, and I´m reading O Livro de Mórmon every day and understanding just about everything. Now that my ability to understand is catching up, I´m trying really hard to work on proper grammar. I still have a hard time wording questions right during lessons. I find myself thinking in Português a lot too, so that´s pretty sweet.

I hadn´t read Jesus the Christ for a long time and picked it back up again about a 2 weeks ago. Right now I can´t put it down. I have a hard time not reading it my entire study time, so I had to set rules for myself. It´s pretty cool to read about the life of our Savior so detailed. I´m learning a lot about his example and his works that I hadn´t known. It´s a really good book.

Well, that´s it for now. Hopefully next week I´ll get email from everyone with a little more detail from Oregon State. 

Elder Candland