Week 17

Alrighty, so the big thing I suppose is my new companion. His name is Elder Davis; he´s American, so we speek English at home. He´s pretty good. He´s really motivated so it´s helped me to work hard. My last companions have had their things that I haven´t liked or that they have slacked on like progress reports and investigator reports and using time smart, etc. Finally, being the leader for the next few weeks, I´ve been able to do all of the things I´ve thought should be done better. We´ve been on a roll. Our ward is pretty small, so we´ve decided to focus on less actives to try and get the ward stronger. With our little ward, it´s hard to retain many people when someone new is baptized. I´d rather not have any new members in this area than just keep adding to the less active´s list. Finding is pretty tough in this area too. Most people say we can come back, but I´m pretty sure they tell us to come back at a time they know they´ll be gone or busy. Anyway, we´ve gone through the area book, which doesn´t look like it´s been touched for a long time. I know my last companion never used it. We´ve organized it all really nicely, and are going back to try and see who would be willing to have us back, or who straight up doesn´t want it anymore. We´ve been organizing all the old investigators into little areas so we can try and contact as many as possible. So far we´ve only met a few, and only a couple of them have said we could come back. The others that don´t want it, we do all we know to leave them with a good impression and make sure they know they´re welcome at church anytime. We feel pretty good about all the people we´ve contacted so far. Having two motivated Elders that just want to what the Lord would have them do is so awesome. We´ve had the Spirit really helping us the last few days. Basically, training is the best thing that´s happened on the mission so far.

My Português is getting a lot better as well. I´ve had lots of compliments on my Português, but now that Elder Davis is here, he´s actually speaking better than I was when I first got to Brasil., so he gets more of the compliments now. I still have to do most of the talking though, which has been good for me to get over the fear of talking. I still have a lot to learn, but I´m usually able to carry out all of the conversations pretty well.

Here´s a couple of the funny stories from this week:

I found a really nice CD on the street one day, so I grabbed it and took it home to see if it had any sweet music on it, preferably funk (because it´s the cool thing here and it´s so dang awful). Anyway, it turned out to be this live performance album of some really cheasy, but I think popular, guy. It´s really funny music actually, especially when you understand some of the lyrics. We´ve both gotten a kick out of the CD.

We saw a guy on the side of the street unconscious with a really bloody knee. Elder Davis said: ``Somebody please remove these cutleries from my knees.´´ I had just mentioned Flight of the Conchords earlier that day. We both laughed, but then realized it was real blood and pretty gross.

I think Valve got a bunch of their sounds from Brasil. I heard a dog that sounded just like the flying camera things when you hit them with the crowbar, and the bus´s brakes all sound like some kind of vehicle from Half Life.

One last story. We stopped and talked with a bunch of young boys on the street the other day. They were all curious about how to say different things in English and had us talk to eachother in English. They also asked a lot of questions about the mission and what we do here. It was pretty cool, but then one of the boys showed ``here comes the truck´´ and this big water truck slowly started coming up the hill we were on. As it passed, a bunch of the boys ran after it and jumped on the back and hung there for about 30 seconds. I guess it´s the other thing boys here do for fun. Flying kites and playing futebol can get boring I guess.

Oh, I forgot, we had a ward Christmas party on Saturday. It was so funny. It wasn´t anything like our parties. There was a ton of fruit to eat, lots and lots of soda, and a ton of little fried foods. Then, a few of the more outgoing members sang really really bad Brasilian karaoke for about 2 hours. We both really liked the super cliché karaoke music videos. They´re just as bad here in Brasil as they are in the US. Anyway, we didn´t just sit around for 2 hours. We had a big list of people we needed to talk to and lots of things to figure out with the members and spent a lot of time talking to the ward figuring it all out, but it was also a party, so it´s not like we did that much work during.

Anyway, Sunday we had a lesson about our talents and stuff. When we talked about how are talents are given to us for the benefit of others, I thought about running track and how that could have been for anyone else. Then I remembered mom. I´m pretty sure she enjoyed it more than I did.

Have another really good week. I´ll talk to you Sunday.

Elder Candland