Week 2 in the Field

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you all for your letters and emails!  I love hearing the news from home.

This week has been a lot of work but pretty rewarding as well.  We did a lot of street contacts this week and found a lot of people who seemed sincerely interested in the gospel only to find out later that they gave us a wrong address or phone number.  We even contacted 2 girls at the lake who seemed really interested and then when we tried to call the number they gave us they always hung up.  Finally we tried to go by their house only to find out that they had given us the address of their uncle who is a Jehovah´s Witness hahaha.  It was kind of annoying at first but pretty funny afterwards.  However we did have some success because we are teaching a girl named Larissa who is a friend of a member in our ward.  She is really excited to learn about the gospel.  We have her baptism marked this Sunday right after general conference.  I don´t think general conference will make too much of a difference for my schedule.  It will be a little difficult though because any baptisms that are going to be done need to be done at the stake center which is a lot farther than our chapel.  However I think we will only have Larissa so it shouldn´t be too difficult to figure out the tranportation.  

All the missionaries are supposed to watch the Sunday morning session of general conference but to watch the other sessions we are supposed to have an investigator with us.  On Sunday morning we will go to the stake center and watch conference.  I heard they have a seperate room with a TV for anyone who wants to watch it in English.  

On Tuesday we did a split and I worked with one of our Zone Leaders here in Vila Galvao.  His name is Elder Cleveland and he was Elder Bangerter´s trainer.  I like him a lot and learned a lot from doing the exchange.  My area is a pretty nice neighborhood compared to most of the areas in this mission.  There are some really nice parts in it with some big houses however we also have a couple favelas.  However we don´t really work in the favelas because they are one the very edge of our area which requires a 30-45 minute to get to the chapel.  The past missionaries have found that their time doing street contacts was better served if they did contacts near the church because the people in the favela often don´t have cars and the chances of one of them walking 30 minutes to church is slim.  Our apartment is in a pretty good place.  We don´t use the bus too much in our area because we can walk just about anywhere that we want to go.  I am pretty much used to all the walking that we do.  The chapel is only a 10-15 minute walk from our apartment.  So far we´ve been getting fed really well.  Beans and rice have been a part of every meal but they haven´t been the main course.  So far in the field I´ve only eaten brown beans no black beans.  The weather here is good.  It gets pretty cool at night but it feels really nice in the day.  That´s about all I have to report for this week.  I know that Elder Bangerter and I will be blessed with more success soon if we keep working hard.

Pai- Obrigado por sua email.  It sure sounds like you are staying busy with you church callings and volunteering for the community.  Did you get the link I sent you? I really liked that video.  I hope Mitt Romney does well.  Everyone down here knows who Obama is and most know about Romney.  They are all Obama supporters just because he´s not white hahaha.  Also I was thinking about you the other day because our ward had cleaned the church and it was quite a bit different than the Saturday morning ones we did back home.  There was a really big turnout and they were VERY thorough.  The members down here are really happy to serve.  People viewed cleaning the church as more of a fun activity than an assignment.  There was food and everyone brought their families.  Then afterwards the bishop did a big bar-b-que in the parking lot!  It was pretty cool to see. Elder Bangerter and I cleaned for about an hour or so to do our service. My mission has a list of approved movies that we can watch and the Best Two Years is on there.  So Me, Elder Bangerter, and Elder Cleveland watched part of the Best Two Years last night and the movie has a completely different meaning now haha.  I feel exactly like the greenie in that movie.  It´s really funny. 

Right before the baptism of Maria Lucia by her son Lindo Mar.

 

This is a picture of our mission ``family line`` for Elder Schenk. On the mission they call the missionary who trained you your Dad, and therefore whoever trained him is your Grandpa. It gets kind of complicated and a lot of missionaries are really into it. But anyways here is a picture of my missionary ``family line``. I am on the left, my trainer Elder Bangerter is on the right, and then our zone leader Elder Cleveland who is Elder Bangeter´s trainer is on the left. Elder Cleveland´s trainer was Elder Schenk who is the missionary who got hit by a bus. I don´t know if you heard about it. He served in my mission but the accident happened before I came to the field. He went home in a comma and was unable to talk or move for a while but he is recovering now. Anyways we took this picture the night of the transfer when Elder Cleveland was staying with us. We drew Elder Schenk in at the end and labeled him the Great-Grandpa haha. He is recovering but is still in pretty bad shape so we sent him this picture. We thought he would enjoy this picture of his missionary descendants.

 

 

A picture of me schooling Elder Bangerter in a Brazilian card game. 

 

Me and Elder Bangerter

 

This is us putting the peanut to work in our apartment.