Week 14

Alrighty. This week has been better. We´ve found a few new people to teach, and one of them appears to be looking for the Truth in her life and basically accepted baptism. We committed her to start preparing now, but she seemed a little hesitant to just jump into it. Anyway, we also have a baptism finally here. A guy in our ward who is a little less active is dating a lady who already has 2 kids and her daughter just turned 8. She´s been attending church with him for the last month or so, so we´ve been teaching her the lessons with her dad to get her all prepared. She´s got a lot of sassiness, and makes fun of my accent sometimes, but I´m pretty used to it since I have a sister like Kortney.

Anyway, today we had a zone Brasilian barbacue (churrasco) which is way better than hot dogs, hamburgers, and sometimes steak. It´s pretty much all meat, like 5 different kinds. My favorite is linguiça. It´s a big sausage of chewed up something. It´s so much better than brotwurste. I made some real good American brownies, but they weren´t done on time, so we´ll eat them tomorrow for our district meetings. I left them in the kitchen at the church and hope no one eats them over night. I left a note saying ``Não comam se vocês querem salvação.´´ That should do it. We also played lots of soccer. I´m pretty terrible, but at least I try. We have 4 Americanos and 6 Brasileiros, so we did a lot of US vs Brasil. We held up alright for a while, then the Brasileiros got all excited and destroyed us. They said until 5 gols, but after 5, they said ``Mais um´´ and we kept going until they finally had 10 and we had only 3. Regardless it´s pretty fun. We´re not allowed to be competative as missionaries, so without too much competition, I enjoyed running around in the sun for 3 hours trying to kick the ball.

Here´s our crazy story for this week. We were walking down the road (as missionaries do) and this motorcycle whipped past us through a turning lane of oncoming traffic. Then this car tried to follow him (thankfully there wasn´t any traffic) and drift through the lane after the motorcycle, but he didn´t know how, and almost skidded into us. As he reversed out, one of his friends came running after him yelling ``He´s getting away, go go go!´´ Then the car sped off again. I have no idea what the guy on the motorcycle did, but the guy in the car was ticked off.

Yes, the weather here is getting super hot. I´m dying during the afternoon. The other day it was the hottest I´ve had yet. It was about 40 degrees celsius. I was gonna die I´m pretty sure, but then during a lesson, it started raining, which first of all blocked out the sun, then the rain cooled off the pavement so I wasn´t burning from top and bottom. We walk from place to place, and there´s no wind here at all! Well, there´s no wind between the buildings, but above them there´s a lot apparently. Lots of kids sit on the roof with kites. I´ve seen about 15 kites the last week all tangled up in the power lines too. 

As for being homesick, I got past that in the MTC. I was studying in Preach My Gospel and there was a quote from an Apostle (I forget who), but it basically said that the cure for homesickness and friendsickness and so on is work. Just work and focus on the work and you´ll forget/be blessed.

I can´t believe it´s almost December either. 6 months has gone by really fast. Also, I had a completely normal day. I actually thought Friday was Thanksgiving all day, then we got home and I saw that it wasn´t Thursday, but already Friday. Then, on Sunday, I remembered Black Friday. I think I´d have forgotten all about Thanksgiving if I didn´t have my calendar.

Mexico sounds like it was pretty awesome. Sometims Brasil feels like a vacation not having to worry about homework or much at all. Just work and food. I actually had a nightmare I hadn´t done my homework for school. I also had a dream I went back to the MTC for some reason like they ran out of companions. I was so good at Português in comparison with the other Americans. I actually spoke with the Brasilian Elders in real Português in my dream. That was sweet. Oh ya, Mexico; no one here worries about copyright or anything. Lot´s of places sell copyrighted stuff. Especially movies and video games. Kids daycares and schools have Disney and Ben 10 stuff painted all over their walls to make the barbed wire or shards of glass on top look more friendly.

I´ve started trying to find out who´s house I can visit on Christmas to talk with you guys. 10am there should be about 4pm here. I think that should work. I hope so. It´s almost 7 o´clock here, so maybe you can figure out if the time difference is 100% correct by this email. Major bummer Stephanie can´t be there though. I still have 3 more holiday phone calls at least.

I still haven´t got the first package yet. I´m kind of nervous about Christmas. I finally got everything for your package and have been trying to send it for the last 4 days without success. Either we don´t have time, or it´s closed or something. It´s frustrating. If your packages are late, I´m sure mine will be too, so it´ll be even.

That´s just about it for this week. I´ll try and have some cooler stories next week. I´m also dying to know how Lars´s wrestling meet goes. Anyway, until next Monday.

Elder Candland