March 10

This week we taught lots of different people.  We baptized a boy named Gabriel and he is doing great!  His dad attended church yesterday so that was awesome, and we had 8 investigators attend church which is crazy!  And there was a boy there that we didn't even teach who came to church and stayed all three hours and listened the whole time and he said it was great.  We are going to teach him this week.

For meals we eat mostly rice, beans, and meat.  The rice and beans are separate side dishes, and then there is a separate meat like chicken or steak.  Very rarely I'll have pasta with the rice and beans.  My new favorite food is a Brazilian hot dog just because it is something new.  What you do is get a roll and hollow it out with a knife or spoon.  Then you fill it up with sliced up pieces of hot dog.  But first you cook the slices in a pan and then add a special tomato sauce that is only in Brazil.  And then after it is cooked you put it into the bread and add mayonnaise and it is awesome.

I found out there is an animal called a baisho shaka and it's like an angry yellow porcupine that likes to attack hands and knees and it comes out at night time.  And I think one lives in the roof because my companion says they like to live in areas with lots of cockroaches.  Lucky me!  We've heard scuffling in the roof.  Later today I am taking the light out of the ceiling and cleaning the interior of the ceiling.  So cockroaches are going to probably fall out of the ceiling along with angry yellow porcupine creatures!  Se eu morto, the amo - haha!

I'm staying here for my transfer and my companion is leaving.  I don' know more than that.  Only the zone leaders and the mission president know.  I got to see my mission president at a zone conference with four other zones. I ran into my first companion from the MTC so that was fun!

I got all the Dear Elder letters and I'll probably get more things in two weeks. I wasn't able to send anything last week because there is a horrible Satanic holiday here where people celebrate bad things.  It's called the celebration of the flesh and parents here send their kids away to camps to get away from seeing any of it.  It's all through Brazil and it's pretty crazy.  SO I can finally send a letter today.  That's good you got my first letter.  Yay!

I'll probably get the Easter boxes in a month and a half or so so not too bad!  I love Brazil so much it is awesome here.  I wish I could take more pictures but there is a high risk of theft!  And I can't look like a tourist and I stand out as it is a mile away!  People here love my American accent!  So that's fun.  There are a lot of poor people here.  I've learned that people here think the war with Iraq was fought in the United States so that was interesting.  Also people often think we are bus workers and they will stop their cars and ask us for directions!

 Baptism for a boy Gabriel.  It was such a great baptism and the spirit was so strong.

The trees here are very lush and there are lots of pretty flowers.  Brazil is beautiful.

March 3

Sounds like you and Blake had a lot of fun with all the DC stuff!  I want a burger so bad!  I'm craving mac and cheese and Mexican food but mostly mac and cheese. Weird right?  Cheese here is super expensive for a missionary,  and they don't sell mac and cheese -  only noodles and packets of cheese.  Also milk here is fake.  It's all in cardboard cartons and I buy a carton for 1.72 reals -  so its cheap. Then I put chocolate in it to have chocolate milk in the mornings.  I also buy cakes in these tiny packets and mix with milk and they're pretty good.  I love juice.  I buy juice packets so I always have juice for the week. It's pretty sweet.  That's funny how my room still looks exactly the same.  Did you guys figure out how to work the Gamecube?  Just plug in the black wires into the box that has other wires.  Well that´s as best as I can explain it so good luck!   I'm sending you guys more letters this week so hopefully you can get letters from me every week. 

February 24

so things to know about my area:

Everyone owns a motorcyle

Anyone who has a pickup truck puts speakers in the back of it so the sound its incredibly loud and my ears have acually poped when they drive by somtimes I dont know how they can hear.

Brazilian barbeques are amazing!!

People never take there shoes off. I tried and my companion looked at me like I was commiting a crime

People here love english language but know body speaks it

I hear american music like katy perry and marron five and people here have american t-shirts but they can´t understand any english what so ever so I found that kinda funny. 

When people findout I´m from the us they ask me to speak english and they find when I speak english that it sounds pretty so thats kinda cool

I have a wasp nest outside my window of my home I want to get rid of it sooo bad

And the people hear love talking about church and the subject of baptism

SO for this week I traveled alot between novo hamburgo and Saprianga and I got to go to Porto Alegre to get my brazilian passport for two years. And after got to eat lots of meat and that was sweet. Lessons with investigators is going great. We went to this one house and it is just filled with trash and smells really bad and the man is drunk and crazzy and kept patting my shoulder and offering me to drink so he was crazzy. His wife just was looking down and making necklaces out of plastic beads and I dont know what we taught them other than I dont want to go back there because they were crazzy but my companion really wants to teach them and so I´ll probally go back to that crazzy family agian but it keeps life interesting so its all good. THe man finds it amusing I cant speak portugese and then I´ll say things in english just to confuse him for fun. So him and I have fun hehe. The guy that wanted me to baptize him I went and saw yesterday and he had four friends so we ended up teaching 5 people at once and it was good. But I couldnt teach or communicate at all because they talk super fast and there were 5 of them and one of them was very confused about why we need the book of mormon and my companion tried so many things and the other 4 got it but he didnt... And at the end of the lesson he gave the closing prayer and 2 of the guys are very interested so that´s good. Also during the week I went house to house clapping out side gates. THeres no alarm systems in Brazil only for the super rich. The people here all own dogs and the big ones I call monstros for monsters and have big gates around all the houses. And for one of these houses we found a younge couple and they want to attend church with us this sunday so I´m excited for that. I went to a house to do a baptism inteview with a zone leader but he wasnt there, His wife invited us in. He has a mentally crazzy son. The son would look at me and say your crazzy and then start laughing. Then he put his hand on my leg and giggled. And then proceded to kiss me on the cheeck but I flinched away. And then he started laughing some more. And then he offered me some meat. NOW this part was awful I wanted to run away so bad!! He puts rotting solami a few inches away from my face I gagged. I grabbed his wrist and said por favor no hahahah and then the man finally showed up and he didn´t want to get baptized and I got the heck out of there!! Then later in the week I went with another zone leader and went to this woman´s house named Marly. And he interviewed her and so she´s getting baptized this week! Yea! And while the other elder was doing the interview I was all alone with her other family members and I was able to communicate with them through sharrades. And at one point I said isnt this fun? haha they were really cool. They asked about the church and said what church are you a missionary for? And then said the mormons. And they said`` ohh yea we have some friends that are mormon why can´t you drink coffe``? and in my bad portugese I explained how its addictive and how we believe how it has bad substances in it. And long story short im gonna go teach them sometime this week or next week so that´ll be great. ON sunday I went house to house and a lady invited us in and was super happy. It turns out the missionaries had baptized her and her son but not her husband and had not been to her house in 4 months! The husband this huge guy 6,4 with arms the size of twice my head hugged me and my companion and said thanks for coming back. And then he fed us sandwitches and I know that it was not a coincedience we walked there I looked at my friend elder Seidman and said why are we going this way and we walked and walked and then we found them. Miracles happen everyday here small and big and we squeduled an appointment and Im going back there this week. Miracles are everywhere on my mission the people I talk to the ones that let me into there home and we teach them somtimes only for 5 minutes and we give them a pamphlet of the restoration or the gospel of christ and we tell them to pray about it and they do and when they take the little pamphlet in there hands and pray about sincerly I know that they can get the answer they need. The mission is awesome, because every day I meet someone new. 

I love you guys it sounds like you´ve all had busy and exausting weeks as well! Well I´ll talk to you guys again next week Im sure I´ll have more exciting stories to tell!! 

AMO VOCES!!