October 15, 2012

Hello!

Another week gone by. I'll start with answering your questions. We email in a cyber cafe in the middle of town, it is out of our area so we have to walk 20 minutes or so into the elders area, but it is fun because we get to chat with 4 of the elders in our district. I think that I can only send a couple of pictures per email or they don't come through. I will try again today. Thanks for Emerson's information. I have an hour on the internet, but I have been printing out the emails from Emerson so I have more time. I like them emailed to me. I like to be updated on what is happening and not wait a couple of months for them to arrive in the mail. You know, it's good to take advantage of being able to email family. My comps family is supportive. She just has one sister, but every week she gets emails. They are really excited because she will be coming home in December so every week that is what they have to say to her. 

Interviews with the mission president were good. It was really short. He came to the church here for a few hours and then immediately after finishing interviews he headed to another zone to visit them. João Pessoa is about 8 hours by bus, but he has a car so it is much quicker. I got so much mail. Like really, wow. I have so many people who love me. Multiple letters from some people. Dated back to august. Yeah, it was pretty funny to read updates over 2 months in some peoples lives. I loved hearing all the news from Cedar!!! I mean, the most recently sent letter was Sept. 19 I think so I still don't know everything that is going on, but I got a lot of the back to school news which is always really great. Really it was a little overwhelming to get so much mail, but it only took me like 2 days to read it and now I am looking forward to the next mail call. And I will have something to do this afternoon... responding to letters. Thank you for sending Emerson's talk! It was really good. Made me sentir saldades (feel a longing?) for the temple! Good news though, at the end of my mission I get to visit the Recife temple. At least that is how it is now, so hopefully things don't change in the next 15 months.

A couple of questions that multiple people asked I figure I will just respond here. I walk everywhere. Public transportation doesn't really exist here I don't think. Our area is kind of big, but we stay mainly in the central neighborhoods so it isn't too bad. I mean it is a lot of walking, but not unreasonable. Lots of people take mototaxis, but we aren't allowed to separate and the mototaxi people can only fit one person on the back of their motorcycle, so we walk. Once with a member we took a regular taxi, that was nice. Also, we eat lunch with members everyday. It is really nice to have a meal waiting for us and usually good food. I haven't eaten anything I don't like. Lots of people ask me if I like Brazilian food, but it is basically beans and rice and meat and salad and fruit... not that different from American food. I like to make them feel good and tell them it is wonderful though. We ate at one members house this week who was by far my favorite meal. I don't know exactly why it was so much better, but it tasted delicious. Super fresh, no flies, LOTS of food. Oh and fruit salad with mango and banana and melon (cantelope maybe?) It was sooooo delicious. The fruit here is really good. Another funny meal we had this week was with a member who lives alone and she has 13 cats. Yeah 13! And her house is not huge. I stayed in the same chair basically the whole time so I didn't accidentally step on a cat. She gave us a huge bowl of ice cream after lunch though so that was really awesome.

It doesn't rain here ever. And that is weird because in Natal apparently it rains like everyday, but here they have gone almost a year without any rain. A lot of people don't have water in their houses sometimes because of the dryness. It is a problem. We teach all our investigators to pray for rain. 

More about my interview with Pres. Hall. He is super inspired. Told me to be patient with myself and we talked about the culture and the mission here and why it is different from every other mission in the world and he helped me realize a lot of the blessings about serving this people. Also, I realized that the reason waiting to learn Portuguese is so hard is because I am not used to feeling dumb and when I can't even talk I feel really dumb. It's okay though because I know that I am not a huge idiot, I just sound like one when I speak a different language.  We also watched a video about the Atonement and Christ and how it relates to missionary work. Super powerful. Salvation is not easy. It wasn't easy for Christ and since we represent Christ as missionaries we are going to experience just a little bit of suffering in order to bring the message of salvation to the people here. It was a really incredible video, made me appreciate difficulties and discouragement. 

                                                Zone Conference October 2012

Something that would be really cool is if you want to send a copy of your favorite talk from conference! I don't have access to any of them, but the Ensign will probably come sooner than I will get mail. But I don't know if I will get an Ensign... I don't know. Either way it would be good to be able to read some in English. And I really want Sam Taylor's address in Texas so if anyone wanted to send that to me that would be cool. 

                                                Sister Ferreira cooking lunch for me.

A couple of crazy things that happened this week: I woke up one day and my finger was orange all around my fingernail. I was freaking out, but I figured out the problem and it is all taken care of now and back to normal. Another crazy thing was a 20 minute blackout. PITCH BLACK. The entire city. It was night and sis. F and I were freaking out! We could see the stars SO good though. Like I have never seen so many stars in the sky in my life. It was beautiful, but really scary too. We couldn't see anything around us. 

                                                          Sunsets are beautiful here.

Well! I love you all! Have a great week!

Laurel