Week 41

What? June already? I hit my one year mark in 4 days.

 

So this week was pretty normal as well. We dropped lots of investigators that weren´t progressing on arriving in the area, so we spent most of the time finding new people to recieve our message. We haven´t seen too much luck yet. We found a few people who could be promising, but here in São Paulo, the hardest thing is getting back to their house after finding them. Everyone here works about 13 hours a day, 7 days a week. No one has time, and they don´t understand that our message is definitely worth the time. And a the few that have time, they would rather use it on other stuff.

 

Elder Arichichu is probably the funniest Elder I know without trying to be. Every night he sings really loud in the shower, and I think it gets louder each night. Sometimes he´s not in the shower until about 10:00, so I always feel a little bad for the neighbors. He sometimes wakes me up at night with his sleep-laughing/talking. He talks really loud and coherent in his sleep. He also sleeps really, really heavy. I have a hard time waking him up, but I think I´ve figured it out. I wake up, pray, use the bathroom, and then I have to turn on my iPod as loud as it goes, play some Beethoven on the DVD player, turn on a song on the cell phone, and then stand in the middle of the room playing harmonica. It worked this morning, but I had to do it for about 2 full minutes. Then, after he was awake, I don´t think he was fully awake because I asked him about 3 questions before he even looked over at me. He sure is going to be the a big part of my mission the next 2 transfers. He has a lot to learn. The other Elders I trained already seemed to understand a lot of things, but Elder Arichichu has a lot more to learn still. We´ve been working on the small things first, like the keys to the house, and he´s almost figured out which key is the door and which is the gate. I´m not even picking on him, I´m serious. 

 

This last Sunday was a regional conference for the state of São Paulo and Rio. It was a broadcast, and Sister Dalton, Elder Anderson, and President Monson spoke. It was pretty good, but this next week is the dedication of the Manaus Temple here in Brasil. Saturday night we get to take all of our investigators (if they´ll actually go) to watch the cultural festival live in the stake center, and then on Sunday, we have 3 sessions for the temple dedication instead of normal church. That´s going to be really cool to watch. It sounds like it should be President Uchtdorf who will dedicate the temple. This is going to be a really exciting day if we can get prepared for it. This last week we spent a long time trying to find families who we can visit on the 10th, and these next 6 days we´re going to be trying really hard to be prepared to pray in 10 families´ homes.

 

Well, I can´t really think of much else that happened this week. I´ve got a couple pictures I´ll send too.

 

A sweet view from a members home.

 

I want one of these trees in my front yard.

 

I guess the guy that lives here is a Mason. It'sjust missing the G in the middle.

 

pão de mel is sooo good. Honey bread is the translation, but it's more like a cake with dolce de leite in the middle.

 

The front of my dream car.

 

And the back has to look just like this one because there are various styles of the VW Gol.

 

There's a lady who gives us lunch that has all the missioinaries that pass through the ward sign her hot pads. I found this and thought "If only."

 

Here's a quick video of a guy driving down the road listening to funk. My email won't send very big files, so I had to keep the video short. Just after I stopped the video, the white van's alarm went off.

 

And one more sound clip of Elder Arichichu singing because it's so funny. There are a few really good songs I have yet to capture though.

-- -Elder Candland