Chapter 23: Gringos and the Fateful Return of Dan: The Pineapple Man

12/24

Today was a great day! We had a district reunion this morning. We didn't actually do anything, we just sat and talked to each other and every now and then our district leader would ask, "you guys want a training? ...Hey guys, anybody want to do a training?" In the most "I don't want to give a training" way you could imagine, it was pretty hilarious, he's a really good district leader. Everyone had made the district tie (even me (at 10:00 the previous night)), except for one companionship, so we made sure to give them a hard time. Feitosa gave them a slightly harder time than everyone else when he attacked Lopez, and all Lopez had to say to him was, "you're crazy". I hoped hazing wouldn't exist between missionaries. Today was really great because I finally got a little bible I can carry around with me! That's honestly the best Christmas present I could get, now I can finally bring a bible around to the lessons that we teach. The reason I was able to get it was because some other missionaries are amazing; There was a missionary who gave a training a couple of weeks ago who had a super small bible, I asked him where he got it and he told me his are was selling them for R$20 (incredibly cheap), and he offered to pick one up for me if I would pay for the bible. What an incredibly nice guy. Presidente said that we needed to be home by 8; I responded to that with, "sweet!" sleep is actually amazing. The only lesson we got to teach today (because there are so many scary people on the street) was to Moises, but it was a really great lesson, Williams committed him to giving up cigarettes for a time, and I'm really hoping he and Sara will want to get married soon because they're so close. I also took apart a blender: -1 blender, +1 motor that gives off green sparks.

12/25

Today was awesome! It was so weird to go out walking around because the roads were completely empty, it was like a ghost town, I thought we'd been hit by a massive plague or something because every store was closed, it didn't matter the size of the store, every single one was closed. There weren't any street vendors and it was rare to see a car. We almost had a white Christmas, because we got some precipitation, it was just about 70 degrees hotter than we needed it to be for snow. Our neighbors partied for like, 16 hours straight, I'm honestly amazed that they're alive after that much consumption of beverages that aren't good for you. My Christmas was amazing, my mom sent me a package that Williams and I opened today, and I learned that my mental age is three because all of the little toys have entertained me for hours: It was just so weird to see stuff from the states (besides Williams and I), so I couldn't get over them. A lady called us at like, 11am and told us we had lunch with her, even though she wasn't who we planned to celebrate Christmas with, so we went and ate lunch with that family, and then afterwards went to the Matos's house to celebrate with them and Sister Matos was like, "have you Elders eaten yet?" and we told her that we had, so she insisted that we just eat a small plate with her. Williams wouldn't (rude) but no one was annoyed because I ate for both of us which was fine by me, it was awesome food. Then we got to talk to our parents which was awesome, and my dad got to talk to the Matoses too since he's a Portuguese master. It was a very merry Christmas.

12/26

I fully expect the world to end tomorrow, because there were so many fruits being sold for so little, if you're trying to unload your produce like the street vendors were today, it's because you know today's your last day to sell, it's your last day alive. because it was the last day in the world, the pineapple legend, Dan, finally resurfaced. His full title is "Dan, the pineapple man, he has a super strong tan, and a plan to sell his pineapples for 1 real each in his magical van", that took both Williams and my head to create, as well as my entire second grade education and all my practice with rhyming. We bought 5 pineapples. Our freezer and house are now very full of pineapples. Our lessons today were also very fun, especially the one we had with Mara: We got to her house and she was eating the ugliest fruit ever, I'm pretty sure she called it a "Biri-ba". She was like, "Elders! I'm so glad you guys dropped by, this is my favorite fruit, you guys have got to try it!" It was a really good fruit, it had a lot of seeds slightly bigger than watermelon seeds and I did not want that ugly thing growing in my stomach so I got some more practice with spitting seeds. I also made Williams mad today when he taught me a new word:

DJW's: I may not be able to do much but at least I can say "otorrinolaringologista"

Me: otorrinolaringologista

DJW's: wait, seriously?! Well, you suck, that took me a year and two months to learn.

We went to see Elioni today and it's always cool to talk to him because he throws in a "graças ao Deus" (basically, thanks be to God), after like, every other phrase he says. When we showed up he was like, "finally! Elders! Do you guys think you could accompany my family to church this Sunday?" I love it when investigators do our work for us.

12/27

Today was awesome! The fun started with lunch: We showed up and started conversing with the husband until his wife walked in, "where is your shirt?" she demanded, and the husband pointed to his chest like, "right here", so the wife slowly takes off her sandal and holds it in a discreet but threatening way like she's trying not to draw attention to the fact that her husband's life is about 10 seconds from ending, before the husband gave up to go get a shirt on. I felt bad for the guy, spouse abuse shouldn't happen, especially inside the church. After lunch we were walking to the Matos's house when a lady called and asked if we could give her baby a blessing of healing, a super cool opportunity, but she lives almost on the exact opposite side of our area, right next to where the Matos's live, where we were heading to; We had already basically walked to her house and were able to arrive at her house within a couple of minutes of her calling. Williams anointed and I got to give the blessing, which was a really cool experience. Then we stopped by the Matos's house, Presidente welcomed us inside and it started to rain as we entered the house. It went from dry (but humid), to pouring rain in less than a minute, but we were able to pass the entire storm inside Presidente Matos's house which was a huge blessing. We had some great lessons today and made a weird appointment to watch a church movie with one of our investigators tomorrow because he wants to cry. I made another awesome dinner tonight which attracted our neighbors and Williams dumped the hot chocolate I worked so hard to make for him on the ground.

12/28

 DJW's: I love the smell of smoke from fireworks.

Me: I liked the smell of the smoke from when we burned the spider corpse.

DJW's: Isn't that one of the signs of a serial killer?

Me: ...    🔪 (Williams says I have to classify that the emoji is a "knifezino" (small knife))

Today was great! We had lunch with Karey Matos today and she taught me how to make pudin (her way), which I'm very glad about, because she has a bunch of great tips and tricks for it. We taught a lesson to Carinne and her husband today, but they didn't seem very interested, maybe it was just because the lesson was longer than normal, but we did mention a few times that church was 8am the next day. At the end of the lesson it turned into an inside joke to mention what time church was at, so if anyone really wants to be part of an inside joke and never has before, this is your chance, fly to Brazil, find Carinne, and tell her that church is at 8am. We tried to help Carinne and her husband with their process on getting a marriage license but her husband doesn't have a birth certificate which makes things a little harder. It took a lot of self control to not talk about forging legal documents; I'm a missionary now, breathe in, breathe out. 

We got to see some Sisters today, they welcomed us to the bank with, "Hey Elders, good news! We haven't gotten our money in our accounts yet (no living money for us today)". It is now 10:26 at night, Elder Williams and I are still waiting for the good news that they're going to share with us, because there was no good news there. Moises slept through our appointment with him, which is good for his health because today is his only day off from work and he's working a lot, but it's not so good for the whole "teaching him" thing. People were getting ready for the farmers market tomorrow by shutting down an entire road with just tables and tarps, it made for some angry drivers which was fun unfortunate to see.

12/29

Today was an amazing Sunday! It was the first one in a while that we've succeeded in bringing investigators to church: Elioni and his faithful family all came. Because not too much that was interesting happened today (except for the money that we got instead of lunch today to buy food on Sunday?), I'll recount all of the funny stories that happened through the week that I forgot to record earlier: The first story happened the last time we taught Mara; The missionaries here do a weird handshake with everyone, it's a hand slap to fistbump with a snap at the end, and all the church members do it as well, but sometimes the snap throws off investigators, as they aren't familiar with it. Well, one little girl was having trouble doing the snap at the end of the handshake, after we were done teaching Mara, she tried and tried, but could not do the snap, but Williams was very patient with her and kept trying it over and over until the little girl's thumb completely missed her middle finger and she ended up flipping off Williams. Judging from the reactions of everyone present, flipping off is also not the nicest thing to do in Brazil, I don't know what Williams did to make her so angry. The other story is from a couple of days ago when a cat completely destroyed the garbage bag we left on our porch at night. The cat's primary target was the leftover cake that Williams and I never ate from my birthday (don't tell our investigators). Several cats showed up that morning to eat and I did everything in my power to massacre those mess makers. I would not make a very good cat hunter. Also I can't recommend a sandal as a weapon.

Much love,

Elder Anderson

Chapter 22: Cake: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

4 birthday celebrations--this is one blessed missionary!

Beautiful sunset

Christmas celebrations

12/17

Today was fun, we had a district reunion where Williams taught everyone how to make ties, now we're all going to have matching Christmas ties, what an aesthetically pleasing district. My skin has been causing me pain for a while, and today it finally got bad enough that I asked for a blessing. It was a blessing in and of itself that on the day where my skin was hurting the most that I was able to get a blessing from my entire district. Today I got another cooking lesson, this time from an  Irmão, who taught me how the Brasilians prepare their meat. There was a flamingos game today, and judging from the number of times the sky turned into a warzone, I'm guessing they got three goals; Most of the time you can look out the window without going blind, but all of those fireworks going off at the same time was like staring into lots of mini suns. Every goal here is like an entire Fourth of July's celebration condensed into two minutes, fireworks here are super cheap (and not very safe (or missionary approved (sad, I know))), and because people here have no self preservation instincts, celebrations with fireworks are all too common. People here are incredibly nice to the missionaries: today while walking, we saw one of the nonmembers that we play soccer with, he was selling popsicles, one of the lowest income jobs in Brazil, and he gave us them free of charge, he wouldn't accept payment, even though he's probably making just enough to scrape by.

12/18

Today wasn't the most fun, but we got a lot done. The condition of my skin has been getting worse, so WIlliams and I spent a good amount of time looking for medicine. Our neighbors talked with me for a bit, they're very big on home remedies and asked if I had mayonnaise. I confusedly said "yes", and brought it out of the fridge and they admired it briefly before giving it back, I was just grateful they didn't tell me to apply it to my arms, I would rather not wear mayo. The lady at lunch told me there was an anti-itch cream called "milk of manganese" that I should get. The Portuguese words for manganese and mayonnaise are incredibly similar, so when I brought the Mayo to my neighbor and he admired it he was likely just as confused as I was. Great. While Williams and I were out today, we stopped by the Matos's house to talk about doing family home evenings with our old investigator who can't walk around and we got hit with the bombshell: "No, Elder, we're moving soon. We can't" Karey's husband, Vagner, told me that and when we saw Karey, I refused to shake her hand; "Why?" she asked me, and I told her, "1: Because you're moving and I feel betrayed. Who's going to teach me how to cook? I think I'll die of hunger. 2: Because I have raw flesh exposed on my hand." Then she told me about a pharmacy nearby that could create medicine by formula, she helped me figure out what I needed, and then found it at another Pharmacy right next to her house, I might actually be able to get better now.

12/19

Today was fun, we got to eat all three of our meals today with our neighbors, so that made life a little more fun, and we even got to do a service project: mixing up and applying cement, so I got to dig into some dirt and make up some concrete. Well, concrete or cement, I don't know the difference, I'm no expert like the Brazilians here. The smell of the dirt brought back great memories of the giant dirt hill I loved to play on as a kid in my backyard. The pet turtle of our neighbor kept walking across all of our beautiful hard work, and while that animal may be slow, it was surprisingly fast at destroying our work. After our service project, we went to our one and only lesson for the day, we taught Mara and we might've accidentally stayed there longer than we originally intended to because we had a watermelon eating contest. Okay, so it was only me in the contest, but I'm pretty sure I won. I heard several, "I don't believe it"s that put a smile on my face. Then we had another competition to see if I could spit a watermelon seed into a cup on the condition that if I could, Williams would carry my bag, if I couldn't, I would carry his; Neither Williams nor I had a part in choosing these terms. I landed a seed in the cup (first try, of course), and then Williams and I experienced Brazil's "wall of water" for the first time (an effect caused by the heavy rain going from nothing to pounding in 1/2 of a second. The rain made it difficult to leave, as our options were to stay with Mara longer, or walk into certain death. So we all huddled together under the 25 ft^2 of cover space. After the rain died down, Williams and I went to the church, and got to give a blessing which was a really cool experience.

12/20

Today was such a great day! Williams and I did a service project today; We helped a family move into our ward which means Williams and I moved a family into our ward since no one else showed up (except Tiago (at the end (but he's still a great person))), and the husband was busy, so Williams and I had a fun time. I got yelled at a lot which is how I learned that moving language is very different from standard language; I spent a very long time being confused but fortunately the move wasn't too difficult because of all that P90X! that Williams and I had been doing. Our lunch today gave us money and turns out all this home cooking I've been doing is a great money saver, so that's how Williams and I justified getting a liter of Açaí to split today after the service project. Williams and I had black beans and rice which turned out pretty good. As a side note: We had a Irmã think we were indecent today because we showed up to her house wearing our Pday attire (she was the lady who gave us money for lunch). She's probably 60 years old and when she saw us she actually covered her eyes and was like, "Elders... what are you wearing?!" The really awesome part about today though was our lessons though, we taught a couple of really cool investigators, but it was this single mother that we taught today who was by far the best lesson we had: Williams and I were impressed to stop by a house that we have before where a mother lives who's trying to provide for her family, and tonight she was very tired and I shared 2 Nephi 2:25 about how we're here to have joy, and now she's coming to our ward Christmas party tomorrow! 

12/21

Today was great! Williams and I had to get ready pretty fast because we cleaned the church in the morning which went great since I did twice as much work as Williams; We were tasked with cleaning the floor of our cultural hall and everyone else had a squeegee (that should not be a word), except for me, I had TWO squeegees, one for each hand which was pretty awesome because it made it super easy to push a massive water wall over the feet of other people who were cleaning. Then I got banned from having two squeegees because everyone was jealous and I was doing too good of a job, so I had to clean like a normal person afterwards. My mom gave me some awesome cookie recipes, but they were too good because everyone liked them, so I had to make them for our Christmas dinner. The Elders are very popular now. I found out today that one of the biggest differences between here and the U.S. is organization: Our Christmas dinner started at 7 Which meant that at 6:45 Williams and I were running to our church, we got there at 6:55, and then waited an hour and a half for the Christmas dinner to start. We had to go up with the children who were called up to get their food before the adults because we had to go so soon; It's a good thing I'm a child at heart because I blended right in. Then we ran to Moises's house to celebrate Sara's birthday as fast as we could, which was great, we had cake and really good ice cream and Sara had a great birthday, so all that running was totally worth it.

12/22

Today was a great day! We only had an hour of church because it was our Christmas meeting, but I wasn't too excited for it because it was pouring rain, and because we were having a special reunion we were going to meet at our stake center, which was significantly further than our standard meeting house. Williams and I were walking, sharing our one umbrella, my left arm soaked and his right arm soaked from the rain that our small umbrella didn't protect us from, when a car drove past us, stopped, and started reversing until they had pulled up next to us, "you guys going to the church way over there?" We told the Irmão that we were, and he offered us a ride, a real blessing. Once we were travelling safely we asked him which ward he was a part of: "Oh, I'm not a part of your church", he told us, he was just an awesome person who helped out two struggling Elders. After church we had lunch with Joyce. Lunch was absolutely amazing, but the part that really touched me was after lunch: They brought out a cake and sang happy birthday, I joined in, clapping with them until I read the name on the cake and faltered, because it was my name. It was an awesome party, we got to give an Irmã a blessing, I learned how to make vinaigrette, and I got to give the message. Tonight was also fun, our neighbor showed up and was like, "hey, what's up, I'm in your house" which is always a nice surprise. His tactics to get food are getting better, instead of being shirtless outside our window he sat down at our table (with a shirt) and offered to eat with us. Well, I guess that's how I know my fame is growing, my neighbors are getting more aggressive in their efforts to eat what I make.

Muito amor and all that,

Elder Anderson

Chapter 21: Problems That Solve Themselves

At a birthday party on 12/8 for Sister Matos






 

12/10
Today was great, we had a reunion of the district this morning which was especially fun. I finally got to be the investigator in the trainings we do, which has been a dream of mine for the last ~three months, and today I finally fulfilled the only "bucket list" item I had: The missionary who was giving the training asked us for volunteers, I said I would love to be the investigator, and then the trainer took the missionaries who would be acting as, well, missionaries, out of the room to brief them on the objective of the training as well as the topic. They came back with a cup of water which should have been a dead giveaway to run. but I didn't, mostly because I'm oblivious and never notice any important details, but hindsight is 20/20. They launched into a lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and every time they said anything related to the word "baptism" they would throw water in my face which is blasphemy, but whatever. They said "baptism" a lot more frequently than they needed too, but it's all good, I wiped my face off with William's tie when we were done. The reunion was also awesome because my old roommate, Feitosa, is now in my district, so I got to talk to him for like, an hour and a half, which was awesome, he's a really good missionary. Then, after the reunion, Feitosa went around ranking us on our "flamboyant"ness, fortunately I wasn't very flamboyant, but it made for some confused missionaries, while the ones who had taught Feitosa laughed saying, "we're only teaching him the best of English".
12/11
Today was pretty great, I got so much studying done, It wasn't an amazing day for lessons, but I got a lot of stuff done that I've wanted to do for a while and now I'm on splits, so today's also been plenty interesting. The really funny thing that happened today was when I was still with Williams: I was studying when he took my journal and told me he was going to record an important saying of his in my journal so that I wouldn't forget him, then he ran off and locked me in our room (the key's on the outside of the door and there isn't one inside, so that's pretty easy to do). It took me all of two seconds to turn my head a little bit to the left, see our window, and hatch an escape plan thinking, "why not." So I put on a shirt because, surprisingly, I didn't want to be like the owner of our house, walking around on our roof without a shirt (It's hot in Manaus, I don't have to wear a shirt in my own house, stop judging me), then I climbed through our bedroom window, shut it from the outside, and jumped through our kitchen window over our sink, which made for a great ninja moment and scared Williams who was searching for the comp he had somehow lost in a locked room. Then I got my journal back, unfortunately, the addition of "waffle stomp" had been made, but it was pretty funny, so I let it stay. Our lessons were sad because our investigators are going through hard times; Moises's girlfriend kicked him out of the house, which we witnessed, and all we could do was hug the poor, crying dude. Eloni's wife had surgery so all of his kids are motherless right now. I'm excited for tomorrow, though, I'm on splits with Feitosa right now and we have plans to do more work tomorrow than either of us have ever done before.
12/12
Today was awesome! DIvisions went pretty great, this morning we taught Feitosa's golden investigator who was going to be baptized later today, she had so many questions, it was awesome! At one point she asked a question and Feitosa asked about her faith in return; He questioned if she still thought everything was true, even with this doubt, and without hesitating responded, "without a doubt", that is an investigator who's been searching for the truth. After that lesson we went to have lunch with Feitosa's bishop (lucky), and he was such a cool guy, but he had a lot of stories about lazy Elders and what Caetano did to them. Then their whole family assured us that we were far better, by comparison. I was left thinking, "okay, no one here knows me, but thanks." Then it rained for a super long time so Feitosa and I were trapped in with the Bishop but eventually his daughter returned with his car so he gave us a ride over to the church which I was incredibly grateful for because it was pouring. The pouring rain was to our advantage for a bit though, as we were walking to our house to grab my stuff and end transfers, Feitosa gave me an apologetic look, grabbed my umbrella and then asked a lady if we could talk with her about the gospel briefly. She looked at him through the rain that was pouring on her like, "seriously?" and then told Feitosa she was in a hurry since it was, well, pouring rain on her. So Feitosa asked if he could walk with her with the umbrella over her head which she accepted and at the end she let us give her a pass along card. In two minutes I had become completely drenched, negating the further need for an umbrella, but it was still a cool contact, I'll have to do more of those in the future. 
12/13
Today was a generic day. Just kidding, it was my birthday. It was an amazing day, this world which is already very kind to me was even more kind today. Our neighbors all sang "Parabens" (happy birthday) to me this morning, which was a little awkward as I wasn't doing anything but smiling there awkwardly as everyone clapped and sang for much longer than was necessary, but I appreciated that they wanted to celebrate with me. I got to open up an awesome care package my parents had sent me out with and Williams, bless his heart, had gotten me a non stick frying pan, that in fact was not imbued with pure hatred. I honestly don't know how to cook things without all the hatred my other pans gave me, it's like I'm missing a crucial ingredient. I'm also missing the cup of oil I'd have to use every time to compensate for all that hatred, my entire world has completely changed. We went to lunch with the best sister ever, she makes such amazing food, and I drank so much cupuaçu, I thought I was going to be sick for sure afterwards, because cupuaçu is super acidic and gives stomach aches if you drink too much, but I have a stomach of steel so I was completely fine. I got to video call my family, and then our day really began. We visited as many of our investigators as we could but progressively became slower and slower, because each one of them made an entire cake for us, and knowing that I eat a lot, demanded that I didn't leave any cake behind. I failed that challenge many times. All of our investigators were so excited to celebrate my birthday, there were a lot of tears. I was so grateful to celebrate with so many friends, these investigators really are amazing people.
12/14
Today was awesome! I guess the Consuelo's thought my birthday was today, because they gave me an amazing present: Irma Consuelo taught me how to cook! I learned so many great things about making black beans and rice, and she even had enough faith in me that she asked me to make a pasta, and it turned out very well, she was impressed. THat wonderful woman also gave me a metal form I could use to make pudin and bread, I'm very excited! I also got to try the juice of a graviola today which is awesome because the word sounds just like ravioli and always makes me think of the pasta oh, I guess it was also awesome because the juice tasted great. Our lessons turned out fun because we got to do lots of things we didn't expect because of them, like seeing a couple of missionaries who are going home in a few days, but they wanted to visit my ward so Caetano let them. We also got to have dinner with Joyce and her family, they had just been to their daughter's kindergarten graduation which put my high school graduation to shame, even her diploma looked cooler than mine. It's fine, I'm not jealous of a seven-year-old. The really cool lesson that we taught today was to Jefferson and his family, his wife finally invited us inside and we had a really meaningful lesson about the Plan of Salvation, it was really cool!
12/15
Today was great! It was another great Sunday, we woke up even earlier than normal to try and bring our investigators to church, we succeeded with none of them. We got to church and the second counselor was like, "hey, what's up missionaries, I love you guys, hahahacanyouguysgiveatalkinlikefiveminuteshaha", so Williams got to give a talk, I offered too, but they were like, "no, it's okay". So much for feeling better with the language. I'm convinced Andersons are just great people because today Irmao Anderson taught a class and gave a lesson and they were both super insightful. After church we got invited to the ward choir practice, but we weren't alone, the whole ward was there. We sang some Christmas hymns in preparation for the Christmas program that we're going to have in a couple of weeks. It was pouring rain so Presidente Matos very kindly offered a ride to us which was awesome not to walk across our area in the rain. The lady that we had lunch with today was very apologetic because lunch took a couple of hours to prep, but it was definitely worth the wait, it was awesome! Williams and I did all we could to encourage her but she was very disheartened that she had made the missionaries wait an extra hour, the chance to rest though was nice, I didn't mind. Today we saw all these flying bugs that matched the description of the flying bugs that come out once a year in Brazil you can catch, fry, and eat. I was super excited, Williams wasn't really feeling it, even after I told him about the wonders of these flying insects. Just to be sure, I made sure to stop a six year old on the way to our house, "Hey, kid, you see all these bugs flying around us? Can you eat them?" the child was very confused (probably awed to be talking to a real American, the look of wonder on his face gave his admiration away), he suggested maybe not eating the bugs, so I thanked him and heeded his advice reluctantly. Now that I think about it, he probably just wanted more for himself. I can't believe I was tricked by a six year old.
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson

(Week 20) Chapter 20: The End of the War

A picture of this awesome companionship along with Sister Matos (the lovely woman who kindly prepares lunch for Elder A and his companion every Saturday.)

Elder Anderson (on the left) at the Christmas Conference his mission president held.

This week was so much better getting to go back to working, I feel like my Portuguese is improving so much, it's really encouraging. These are all the great things that happened this week:
12/3
Today was so great! Williams and I are back, we spent all day cramming a week's worth of lessons into the few hours that we had to work. We were victims of our own success as everyone wanted to know when we could return, so tomorrow's going to be even more hectic than today. We visited Mara today where I severely struggled to pronounce "coconut"; Guess what you say if you mispronounce that word? Feces. I said a lot about feces which both Mara and her daughter thought was pretty amazing. Everyone wants to know what it is that I'm doing for my birthday, I thought nothing was an acceptable response, but I guess it's not because now I'm going to have my biggest birthday party I've had in my life. Missionary problems. Everyone in Brazil will party for literally anything, and now knowing lots of people isn't doing me any favors since I'm pretty sure there's an unspoken rule that missionaries shouldn't throw parties, it's probably snuck into our handbook somewhere but I haven't been able to find it so now all of our investigators want to do something big. I'm pretty sure they're conspiring against me: "Let's keep it small!" to which they're certainly replying, "sure, Elder Anderson..." and then very confused me has to ask, "Why are you winking? I can see you winking. We are NOT having a giant party". Maybe I'll get emergency transferred and Presidente will save me. Tonight we visited Moises and his family who were so excited that we had come back to visit them, we explained that we had just been sick and would never forget about them, but they were still so excited we hadn't forgotten about them, it was a good feeling, I haven't done anything to deserve their love, but they're still so kind to us.
12/4
(The last wave of the war)
I'm scared, the ants in our house have called in their special op friends: there are new really fast all black ants that I'm sure are going to be my death. Besides the new ants, today was great! I got a lot of studying done and we had lunch today which I always love. At lunch I asked the Irma what the word "arrebentar" meant, she showed me by trying to throw a two liter at my head. She also said there are many different meanings for the word, I don't want to know what the other meanings are. The really cool lesson we did today was with Elioni, not "Alioni" like I've been saying for the last three months, but it's fine. We made the correction because we gave blessings to his entire family tonight, they all had the gripa, so they were needing them, even their small toddler which was heartbreaking. I don't think I've ever given that many blessings in one day before, so that was a really cool opportunity. We also saw the wife of our super contacter in our ward, I learned that she doesn't trust me to push her daughter across four lanes of traffic (good choice), so I spent a good amount of time being morbidly offended and acting like my heart was broken. All I wanted to do was help because her daughter was sitting in the coolest mini car stroller ever, but it's fine, everything is fine, and all because APPARENTLY I act erratically sometimes (I was confused she limited herself to only "sometimes"). She says that my Portuguese is a lot better though, so I guess I forgive her. I've been noticing a lot too that it's been improving lately, it's pretty awesome to be able to communicate!
12/5
Brasilians will cheat in literally any game, even duck-duck-goose, I know because I lost the most epic round of duck-duck-goose ever. I don't want to talk about it. Early today we had a reunion with Presidente and Sister Caetano, they're so great, they gave some great trainings and after we all got to bear our testimonies which was so cool to hear from so many missionaries. We had to skip the lunch afterwards because the mother who doesn't trust me to push her child across four lanes of traffic (I haven't clarified the problem is the number of lanes, I'll ask her this week if five would be better), signed up to have lunch with us today and last time she said she wanted to have lunch with the missionaries, we reminded her the night before, she still forgot, and then randomly prepared lunch on another day and blamed us for not knowing; So not wanting to make her more mad, we skipped the awesome lunch with the Caetanos and had lunch with her which was also incredibly good. We taught a really cool lesson today, it was "The Restoration" but because the Sister we were teaching was crying we changed it up a lot. Her country, Venezuela is having a lot of problems with inflation with inflation and it's making for a lot of refugees. She's one of the victims, and feeling incredibly alone, so I bore testimony a lot about the perfect love our Heavenly Father has for us and how we're here to be happy. She seemed a little better afterwards, but also left pretty quickly after we were done talking to her, so we'll have to check up on her tomorrow and see how she's doing.
12/6
(The End of The War)
Today was great! We beat the ants that were living in our house into submission, Elder Williams and I committed several genocides against the ants and now they won't leave their holes to forage for food in our house. Mission accomplished. We're awaiting their embassy to discuss terms of surrender, but they will gain no mercy in my eyes, they ate my cutting board and it's sawdust calls for justice. Williams and I also have some expert level teamwork: Tonight a giant cockroach (thankfully not the flying satanic kind) heard our house was the hottest place in town (100% accurate on multiple levels), but unfortunately we have a human only policy for our "lit" study sessions where we go "ham" on the Bible (those were both of the slang words I know so don't ask for any more). Anyways, our house owner had delivered us a curtain rod today-or as I like to call it, a spear-which made for a nice object to, throw at the cockroach. I nailed it, but because it's a cockroach, it just ran away, so Williams was like, "Not on my watch!" and frying panned it over to me where I threw my sandal at it which made it explode. Cleanup was cool, we synchronously turned away from the cockroach, I opened our door up and Williams grabbed our broom, I put my hands up in a Mike Wazowski, "and he's out of here!" fashion as Williams shot the mess out our door in one smooth motion, backboarding it off the door and back down to the hot world it had climbed up from. Then we went back to our dinner. Our lessons today were so great! We were really led by the Spirit and re established contact with one of our investigators that we hadn't seen for quite some time and she was so excited that we had come back. We also taught the Sister who had been crying and her husband the Plan of Salvation and got some great contacts from them. Then we found out they're not married which is a pretty big setback. Oh well.
12/7
Today was fun, our morning was pretty mundane; I made pancakes that were dense as bricks, I mastered the art of "flip a pancake by launching it skyward with a pan" flipping method and didn't even leave a pancake on our ceiling in the process, which is good, because like I said, those pancakes are dense, and they definitely would have left a hole in our ceiling. We called for our lunch today and they didn't respond, so I started making some rice and beans. Then we saw a shirtless dude on the roof outside our window, it turned out to be the shirtless owner of our house, he motioned to open the window, which we did and then were like, "hey Ari, how's it going?" he was like, "wow, whatever you're making smells really good". Brasilians have a sixth sense for rice and beans, it's honestly mind blowing. After a pretty good lunch we got a call from the lady we were supposed to have lunch with. Williams was like, "oh yeah, we'd love to lunch with you" and I swear, you could hear wind whistling off me from how fast I 180'd, like, "Williams, you know how many lunches I can eat. It may be a large lunch but it's still only one, which we have already had!". To which he responded on the phone, looking me in the eyes, "yes Irma, we would love to have lunch with you." I got a lot fatter that day. After we had a great lunch we taught Mara and her family, we got so many people to commit to church tomorrow, it should be an amazing experience, I really hope they all come.
12/8
None of them came. Today was still a great day though, we had a birthday party for the Irma who always gives us amazing lunches and is teaching me how to cook. It was pretty great although I am so tired because I talked to people for the entire 6 and a half hour party, which already is a feat in your first language, but doing it in another one is significantly more difficult. We had a great time though, now that I can understand everyone a little better, everyone wants to know what my thoughts on everything American is. We also met a returned missionary tonight, she was really nice, but it was more funny to here her mom's perspective on her mission, she seemed to remember a lot more embarrassing facts than her daughter did. The party was pretty awesome and there was a lot of food. I will probably never stop hearing "come mais, Elder!" (eat more, Elder!) for the rest of my life, because people can always see the apprehension I have to turn any regular social event into a feeding frenzy. I hope this next week we can get our marriage licenses going but money is incredibly tight for Brasilians, but having too much enthusiasm for the Gospel and not enough money is better than the other way around, so I still have a lot to be grateful for.
Thanks for everything,
Elder Anderson

(Week 19) Chapter 19: Sick

This week wasn't a blast, Williams and I were sick all week, but it was good to get a chance to study so much. There's not much that happened so I decided to spare you guys from the weird commentary and just share the highlights:

11/25

Today we went to the house of the Matos's for lunch, I knew it was going to be amazing because Presidente said that he was going to make Alligator to give me strength. It did give me strength, but I guess it wasn't quite up to his standards because he also offered to take some of the blood out of my arm and inject it into my posterior. Presidente Matos and his wife work in a hospital, but I was still feeling a little like that wouldn't be necessary, I know, I'm a little odd. Presidente Matos insisted on an injection so finally I consented to a power shot consisting of different vitamins, about 200 ml worth, which is a lot to have, you know, injected into you. Everything was going fine until about the last 20 ml worth, I started having a lot of pain, and then I got super nauseous, Williams says I started turning super white, even my lips were going white; I'm already very white, I don't know what "super white" is, but I'm guessing that's not good. Williams thought that he was going to be getting a new companion, since I was obviously about to die. Fortunately I regained my color and didn't die, and Irma Matos was so happy, she gave me an early Christmas present: A little grater I can take with me from transfer to transfer, I can't believe how thoughtful they are! That family's so sweet, but I think next time I'm going to refrain from any medical assistance. 

11/28

Today was a blast! We had enough commitments today that we said that it would be valuable to do work today, even though Williams and I weren't feeling awesome.We saw almost all of our investigators because they spontaneously came to our night of integration which made everything so much nicer, not having to hunt down everyone when the sun is blazing almost as strongly as your headache makes things much simpler. We tried to play football with everyone tonight which only had two problems:

1. We're sick

2. We're American

While we were waiting for the game to start, one of the youths there treated us to hear about his entire love life. He's 15. I sincerely hope I was never 15. We taught a lesson to Mara today, it was amazing because her testimony has really grown and even told everyone there tonight (addressing her daughter) that we should never be afraid or ashamed to pray, because God is our loving Heavenly Father and he wants to hear from us, and we need him. It was great to hear that her testimony has progressed so much. Then the real fun began. I once saw a picture of one of my grandmas eating out of a giant watermelon with just a spoon. That's the size of the watermelon that Mara brought out for us and her daughter, Julianna, told her friends, "that's Elder Anderson, he eats a lot" and then I ate half that watermelon, so I guess I do eat a lot. I suppose that's one way to hydrate.

Other fun notes of what happened this week: We had birthdays this week, both were in the family that lives under us which made it easy to celebrate since our commute took about 4 seconds. That whole family really likes me, which isn't fair because I've barely said anything, to them, but it's nice of them to be so welcoming. I have a shirt for one of the local teams and when a guy at one of the parties saw it, he was like, "darn right, even the Americans know what's up" (I guess he's a small fan of that team). A boy got a phone for his birthday which is only priced slightly above some cars, and yes, people do trade cars for phones, so that's quite the birthday present. Then I got elected to help him move over all his games onto his new phone because I'm a "Roblox professor". Williams and I also talked to some people for like, 4 hours straight, so that's how my Portuguese is going. Just kidding, Williams did all the heavy lifting, but I can understand what's going on, so that's cool.

Thanks for the love and support!

Elder Anderson

(Week 18) Chapter 18: Punching Eggs

The only pictures that I received this week were from the lovely Matos family that are so, so good to Elder Anderson and Elder Williams.  They are so generous and are also very adventurous.  Elder A & Elder W are holding piranhas, yes, piranhas, that Presidente Matos caught!  

 

Here's a picture I took of Elder Anderson while we were videochatting together and he was telling me a funny story.  (He calls from an internet cafe where most people go to play videogames.) By the way, a little Brazilian boy, probably around the age of 8, put his arm around the back of Elder A's chair and stared at me for at least 5 minutes during our conversation  :) Apparently light skin and hair on a woman is quite the novelty!

Here's all the fun things that happened to us this week:

11/18

Today we moved. We've been promised that this day was coming for a long time, almost every day for the last three weeks we've heard some variation of, "you guys will be moving in a time period ranging from 1-7 days", and every time we would get down to the last day I would be like, "Williams?" 

"Yeah?" -DJW's [Elder Williams]

"Do you think we're going to move tomorrow?" I would ask.

"That sure would be NICE TO KNOW, NOW WOULDN'T IT?!" -DJW's

Finally, last week they (no idea who "they" are, just that "they" exist) were like, "Pday, you're moving", we were so freaking feliz, even though they stole our Pday from us; Joke's on them though, I didn't write my letter to the mission President like I was supposed to, now I won't receive helpful tips, general information, or encouragement, that'll show them! When the truck that we ordered came to help us, it only took about an hour to move everything from one place to the other and carry our stuff down and up endless stairs. I took for granted how flat stairs in the U.S. are, they aren't steep like they are here. The stairs really weren't too bad though, because we only had to move three appliances: A fridge, stove, and a clothes washer. Does a blender count as an appliance? Four appliances. After we carried everything up, the Sister who lives below us was like, "Elderes! Do you enjoy living in a pig-sty?" She was referring to the furniture we had just cleaned that morning, but we didn't say anything because it was obvious that we didn't meet her levels of cleanliness. Then she proceeded to clean absolutely everything in our house, put covers on it all, and now we're living in the actual nicest house ever. We ordered hamburgers to celebrate. Today was such a great day!

11/19

Oh my goodness, it rained so much today. <-- That's a period, not an exclamation mark, because there is no excitement in my voice, just hollow reverberations that could only be described as, "wow, you sound dead". Today was actually an awesome day, we have a beautiful house, amazing neighbors, good food, a 🎉 panela de pressão 🎉 [pressure cooker] and lots of new, fun spices. This morning Williams and I woke up (hurray! Gold star for basic achievements!) and I started making breakfast like normal, made some Swedish Pancakes and then the neighbor boy called up to us, asked if we wanted some bread, I looked over to Williams who was on his second pancake who said, "nah, I'm full" and called down to the boy, "yeah, Williams wants some" then I brought my pancakes down and the wife said, "oh shoot!" (in Brazilian" and we all had an amazing breakfast together, what nice people. We went to a reunion of the zone instead of the district today because the comp of our district leader was actually projectile vomiting. At the reunion I participated in a funeral; Two Sisters are going home so we held funeral services for them, as is the custom here. There was a lot of crying, it was a very emotional experience. We went to teach Alioni today, we might not have many fruits to show for our labores, but we do have some freaking amazing pastries that Alioni made for us, he also gave us cake and soda, and that family is super poor. I would have felt terrible eating the food but it was impossible because it tasted so amazing, it was obvious that he loves the missionaries and I am very grateful to be the recipient of that love. Those pastry things were amazing, I have never seen Williams eat so much. Then we got incredibly rained in. It rained hard for like an hour, which sadly is not an exaggeration, however, we were with friends, so it was a blast. Williams also asked me to do the dedicatory prayer for our new house which was an awesome experience, I'd never gotten to do that before.

11/20

Today was pretty uneventful, we went to lunch, the people were nice, we slid into an ice cream shop and the lady loved us (as all ladies do) so we got our ice cream cones for one real each. That's a pretty amazing deal for the giant cones she gave us. What a nice lady, we will be returning. We didn't go out today because Williams is actually dying. I don't think he wants people worrying about him, so to Momma Holly: Williams is... good... (yeah, let's go with that). Everyone has given us various homemade remedy tips, "lime water! has been popular, "ginger root" is another interesting one, " tie a shirt around your neck when you sleep" was our neighbors idea; I thought we had been good neighbors, but I guess not if we wants to strangle my comp. Or maybe he just had a really bad grandma who was missing her maternal instincts and suggested that one for her "dear grandkids". My nose has been running all day, that's the extent of my sickness, so I'm very happy. I basically just studied all day. I made rice and beans for Williams and I in the 🎉 panela de pressão 🎉 which was so amazing, and bread in our oven that works. Tonight I was getting tired of all the sitting and reading, so I decided to spice things up by [accidentally] punching a bowl of eggs. I would rate "punching a bowl of eggs" as a better outlet for anger than "table flipping", because it's so satisfying to watch what you could have used for breakfast tomorrow crash into the floor. I didn't think I had anger management issues, but Williams didn't say anything, he might've been holding his tongue in fear, I guess I'm a very intimidating person.

11/21

Today was fun, Williams is still super sick which made work very interesting. We got locked out of our house today for an incredibly long time, 2 hours, made longer because the sun was a little bit warm today. Usually the surface temperature of the sun only stays on the sun, but today we felt it in Manaus too. I walked outside today and was like, "aw, yeah! Today feels like a warm summer day" and it took about 30 seconds for that to escalate to, " hot, hot hot hot, HOT"; So being stuck outside during a day like that wasn't very fun, but the alternative of pouring rain would have been way worse, especially because we left all of our clothes hanging outside our window to dry since we have no space to hang that stuff up inside our house, so I was grateful my suffering meant that my clothes were nice and dry when we came back. Today we attempted  to do splits but it just turned into one big conglomerate mass of missionaries, which made for some awesome lessons. Investigators would walk over to us and be like, "wow, there's a lot of you today", although maybe the correct response wasn't, "thanks, we're trying to make a gang", it sure was fun. Today was our last chance to get a baptism this transfer, it didn't work out so that'll be a nice 0. Whoever's in this area next transfer will be set, because everything that we've been planting is finally going to be reaped. 

11/22

Today was great! Our neighbors taught me how to make beans, so now even when our lunches fall through, we'll be able to eat. The strangest part of the beans they make is the giant leaf that only a starving person would have been curious enough to eat, this leaf is probably six times bigger than an oak leaf, the leaf is bigger than a plate, and the Brazilians just roll the whole thing up, dice it up, and dump the vegetarian delight into a pot. Then we dumped in a bunch of meat which ruined the whole "vegetarian" idea but made the meal so amazing. Williams is still super sick so we stayed home today, at least, for the most part. Someone called  and asked if we could give them a blessing, Williams was feeling good enough, so we went to do that. While we were en route we saw four other missionaries trying to start a rival missionary gang to the one that Williams, Yancey, Smith and I started, however, because Williams and I are bandwagons, we joined the other gang too, this was good, because we saw a couple of our investigators in the street, yesterday when we talked with them there were four missionaries. Today they were scared, because we're multiplying. I promised the investigators that tomorrow we would storm their house with 8. The blessings that Williams and I got to give were awesome, blessings really are the time that I see God's children the most as they really are, so I was very happy that both Williams and I got to give one. The recipients must have been happy too, because they gave us cake, there's no better way to end a night than with cake, so today was a very good day.

11/23

All the cards on the table, I'm writing this on 11/24, because yesterday was very busy. We got home late because of a baptism, and definitely not because we were sitting in front of a pizza place on the curb, waiting for more than an hour to celebrate our success. We debated leaving without the pizza because, curfew, also, no pizza here is worth that wait. We probably should have left without the pizza because all it earned us was a conversation with some surprisingly perceptive drunkards, and worried the Sister that we share a house with. The drunkards recognized that I was a foreigner and using their best simple speech they said, "Hey   I'm   hungry   for   pizza", rubbing their belly and pointing at our pizza, to which I replied, "yeah, me too, see ya later." Oh yeah, I learned the secret to a baptism is to give up hope and then the investigators will ask to be baptized by themselves, because that's what happened with the Venezuelan lady we taught who doesn't live in our area. It doesn't count for our ward numbers, but it does to me! That's [baptism] number 2!

11/24

Today was great! We made it to church on time, and I impressed Williams because of my ability to go from pajamas to prontos (ready) in under two minutes. We got to church and the Sister that we were going to have lunch with gave us some money instead, I was thinking, "Today is Sunday. Today isn't a day for buying food." Then I had a revelation, "Oh! We could use this to start the fire to cook the rest of our food!" Fortunately, the living angel, Karey Matos, heard that we didn't have lunch, activated her defensive missionary mother mode, and invited us to eat with her. It was less fun for Williams because he has salmonella right now, but I thought it was actually amazing. Karey also let me make a bunch of stuff, so I learned some cool tricks. We weren't the only people that were invited for lunch by the family of Matos, though, Presidente Matos also invited a fisherman dude to eat with him, and I'm about 90% sure the dude is homeless, enjoying living off the land, because Presidente called him "Jungle Boy" and the guy took advantage of the opportunity of being in someone's house to shave. Because Presidente and his wife are back now, I asked them to show me pictures of Colombia which were beautiful, but took more than an hour (sorry, Williams). Somehow Sister Matos brought back an entire garden of flowers, so her house smells actually amazing and they got a cartoonishly giant bag that looks like it could carry 50 pounds of flour, but was actually full of natural strawberries (opposed to the artificial strawberries we have in the U.S.), and cost about $5 U.S., so there's your daily dose of jealousy.

Love,

Elder Anderson

(Week 17) Chapter 17: The Skin of Pineapple is Nutritious...

Elder Anderson worked hard to clean his stove this week and was so proud of his efforts that he felt it was picture worthy.


Elder Williams' mom's chocolate chunk banana bread recipe made in a pot on a stovetop.




Wow...ummmm...not sure what caption to give this picture.  Watch out dirty dishes, Elder Anderson is ready to save the day!




Kids LOVE Elder Anderson!





This week was great but we're moving today so my entry's going to be a little short, hopefully I can call you later in the day.

11/12
Today was a great day! Williams and I got to study a lot because our lunch fell through (we only had lunch twice with members this week, so I got a lot of practice with cooking). I made a pizza which tasted great but was an actual mess because I did not have the self control to "let it cool". I also realized we had some guarana juice that was super potent (this stuff is like vanilla extract, if you drink it straight you will die) which I decided would be cool if we even more concentrated, so I boiled it down into a black tar substance. When Williams saw what I was doing he grabbed the concentrate, ran screaming to the street and threw it out. That's the story of how we carmelized the street. I've left my mark on Brazil, that caramelized death is never coming off. I got to use a ghostbusters gun to clean a fan and ac unit, turns out when your electronics don't work, you should just wash them off.
11/13
Williams and I gave a training today, it was a really great, spiritual experience. The older Elders here have a bad habit of teasing the younger Elders here. I am a "younger Elder" so today when I started my part of the training, one Elder made efforts to derail the conversation. So it was that I found great joy when later the same Elder was participating and testified about the message I shared; I had never seen him do that before. What caused that change? I bore my testimony about what I was sharing and the provoking ceased. 
11/14
Williams and I taught a lady who lives outside our area but is adamant about coming to our ward and our activities. We gave the Elders in her area her reference, but I guess they weren't interested in teaching her (?), so we'll gladly take that baptism, especially since it's the only baptism that's likely to happen this transfer. Williams and I also made Chocolate chunk banana bread today in our "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-An-Oven!" with his mom's recipe and it turned out so amazing. I think I ate two whole circular loaves, it was amazing.
11/15
Today we found out that we're going to be moving for sure next Monday, so much for Pday; We spent all of today cleaning and I spent a significant amount of time cleaning our stove top which has definitely never been cleaned before by any missionary in the 10 years it's been used. At times I found it was more useful to use a spoon as a chisel than try to use a sponge because somehow I was removing the varnish without the stains just using a sponge. Now it looks new, several times I've put a pan on top of it and been like, "what the heCK, that's not my stov-wait, yes it is! Wow, that looks so good".
11/16
I'm terrible at fasting. Today after lunch I started a fast. Williams offered me a piece of his Kit-Kat, I did my usual polite decline but actually accept thing like normal, "no really, I'm good-well, if you insist", I may be a black hole, but at least I'm a polite black hole. I got halfway through that stick before I realized I had just broken the fast I had started 30 minutes earlier. Feeling bad but knowing that it wasn't too late to restart my fast, that's what I did, along with some repenting. We went to the house of an investigator a little bit later and she was like, "thanks for coming, I got you guys some cake and guarana!" I responded with something along the lines of, "why thank you! That was so thoughtful! Good thing there isn't anything stopping me from eating this cake!" To which she must have replied, "there really isn't anything stopping you from eating this cake?" and I assured her, "no, there really is nothing stopping me". Now for those of you who have a memory capable of remembering more than two seconds back, unlike me, you'll recognize a little bit of a pattern here: I got about half way through that cake before realizing, "oh my goodness. I really am hopeless".
11/17
People came to church with us today! A good number of our investigators, which was great to see! I also ate the skin of a pineapple. Missão Brasil Manaus!
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson

(Week 16) Chapter 16: How Many Pineapples is it Physically Possible to Eat in a Week Without Dying?

11/4

First Pday of the district! Of course, it wasn't my district, we just crashed another District's Pday activity and I am so glad we did. They were having a water balloon fight in the perfect place, underneath a chapel on pillars. The first mistake of the Sisters was to leave the Elders alone with the water balloons while they went to help the lost Sisters find the activity. THey left four Elders alone with a mountain of water balloons, I'm not responsible for what happened, even though I might have helped a bit with our plan of ambush: When the Sisters came back, they were rightfully cautious, I saw them peeking around a lot from my vantage point on the second story, however, everyone forgets to look up, or they would have seen one Elder reach out of the window and drop a giant water balloon on them, right as they locked the gate and sealed their fates. That already was a pretty awesome plan, but unfortunately for them, there was more; that water balloon dropped from the sky was the signal to the Elders hiding in various places that it was time to start our attack, and so each of my comrades launched their small stash of balloons at the Sisters. Fortunately they didn't stay wet too long, because they were fuming, and that does help with the drying off process a bit. The Sisters ran for the supply of balloons in the middle of the building under the chapel, and our beautifully coordinated attack did in fact earn us something, teams, boys against girls with death wishes for their attackers. Those premises led to the greatest water balloon fight I've ever gotten to be a part of, and the Sisters did in fact exact their revenge on those poor Elders who didn't do anything to deserve their anger. I have never feared for my life as I did when the Sisters found out it was me who dropped that first water bomb on them, some comrades, they didn't even make an attempt to conceal their teammate. I now know the meaning of the proverb, "It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house" because nowhere in that wide chapel was safe. I'll also include some quotes I heard today: "I wouldn't be surprised if they had brain damage because of you" (Elder Williams). "AAAAAHHHHH" (Sisters Bispo, Floyd, Williams, and P. Silva, which I had nothing to do with).

11/5

Today was awesome! Williams and I had another reunion of the district where I slammed a door really hard. The door was the biggest door I'd ever seen before, that's right, our chapel has actual castle doors, and I didn't realize they were the first zero friction objects to exist, so I exerted a decent amount of force on those doors to close them, and that's the story of how I almost made people go deaf from the sound of a door shutting. I got to give the spiritual thought and it went pretty well, especially because I prepared it a half second before I gave it. They asked me to give it and I was like, "yeah sure, I'm a missionary, that shouldn't be difficult, hey Brain, what do we have in terms of spiritual thoughts?"

"We have nothing" -My brain that I am indeed having a conversation with.

"Nothing?!" -The other part of my conscious being

"Yeah, we're going to die" -Me, of little faith.

And then I gave an awesome Spiritual thought that was so good we used it in our lessons for the rest of the day. I wasn't even worried. I also jumped high enough to have my fingers grab the bottom half of a mango, but I didn't pull it down, sad. Sure, Anabela says that she has no problems grabbing mangos off the streets, and she's like, 4' tall, but I'll be here too. I totally would have gotten a mango today, but someone stole the last mango that I was waiting to grab until i t had ripened, I put my name on it and everything! Thievin' little... Today our lessons went super well, I think it was just because we were teaching interested investigators, but the lessons felt so much better than normal! I have high hopes for these investigators.

11/6

Today was a great day, except for when Williams blocked me from getting my mango. I hope his family reads this so they scold him for being a terrible companion. I jumped to pick it off the tree and totally would have gotten it, but he put out his arm to block me, destroying my lateral, and then I was laughing too hard to pick it. Now I have to wait until next time. Today we didn't have a member to make us lunch so I tried to make rice and beans for us. Today was what an optimist would call a "learning experience". I could really use one of those fancy panelas de pressão that the people here have for making beans. Tomorrow I'm going on splits with Yancey, so Williams and I spent today brainstorming phrases I can use to paint ourselves in the best light possible, since he is our zone leader: " Wow, it's only 3oClock and we're leaving already? Williams and I never leave before 6", or "You want me to help teach The Restoration? Williams said you don't teach anything for your first six months". Just enough to get him mildly concerned that I haven't done anything for these last three months. Also, I believe that I wrote earlier that I'm not an impulse buyer. The five pineapples I bought today say otherwise. I have no self control. We also looked around for the work of one of our investigators so we could stalk him at work. We found him and his creepy manager (and that's coming from a couple of stalkers!) so now we can maximize our ability to teach by teaching all of his work friends at the same time. The creepy manager unfortunately liked us too, just because we're Americans. He didn't like us as much as the guy I got to know on the street today. I found out more weird things about him than I wanted to, when he palmed my face and ran his fingers through my hair and said that I was very handsome, which was only slightly more uncomfortable than it sounds.

11/7

Today was a blast! We started splits today, I'm with Yancey right now, and he really helped me see what we needed to focus on, baptisms for this transfer are going to come down to the wire. Yancey and I spent as much time as we possibly could have doing contacts and teaching lessons. Yancey helped give me a lot of awesome tips and confidence. Today was also awesome because I broke my cooking curse, for the first time in like, 5 days, I made my omelets without ripping them and they tasted freaking amazing. I'm pretty sure it's because of the power of cilantro. Just having some new plants imbued me with strength. Also a freaking wack green bug just assaulted my journal, I went to take a mugshot of it before I jailed it under the weight of my quad, but then the fugitive flew away, escaped out a barred window, a true master criminal. Tonight we had a night of integration which was super successful, Yancey and I gave a blessing to a sick six year old. About five minutes after the blessing the girl had gone from bawling her eyes out to completely happy. We had 36 people attend our night of integration, way better than the seven from last week. Evidently there's an important message in the Lion King that I'm not understanding, because we watched it again tonight. Yancey and I did a great contact in the street where people were so interested, they invited us to share our message right there. Unfortunately, we were running late for another appointment so we didn't get to share a lesson, just a spiritual thought, but it was still good. I told everyone today variations of "Williams is dead" or "Williams was transferred". I'm such a great companion!

11/8

Today was awesome! WIlliams switched back and then we went and talked to our favorite member, Tiago, because he's a better missionary than we are. Tiago led us around to make a bunch of new friends although sadly enough they don't speak Portuguese which will probably make our lesson tomorrow a bit more difficult. We got to talk to Moises and Elingi today which was the best thing ever, our lessons with them are always so good, they are seriously the best; Maybe just because they gave us cookies which were like the widow's mites. We also taught a less active family today. Basically their whole family was sick so I offered them blessings which they were super interested in, so we blessed the two sick people who were there which was the first time I got to do the part of sealing the blessing. I did the sealing of the blessing for the son, he hadn't slept for the last couple of nights. I promised him he would be made well.

11/9

Today was such a wonderful day! Williams and I went to lunch with an amazing family; The Irmã taught me how to make feijão although I still don't have a pressure pan (I think that's what it's called) so I can't do much with that knowledge yet. She let me help her make a pasta too, and I am so grateful that she did, because those were seriously the best noodles ever! What a wonderful, beautiful meal. Then we went out for the day and walked so, so much, my feet are in pain. Our first appointment fell through, and it was far, on the opposite side of our area, so that was a little discouraging, but the rest of our appointments went really well! Once again, we spent our Saturday's trying to invite as many people as we could to church, but with a slightly different approach, we asked if we could accompany them all to church. A surprising number of people accepted, I have no idea how we're going to help them all. If they all really do come with us, we'll end up leading a small army to church. I'm really hoping some people on the street will be like, "I have no idea where that gang is going, but it's much safer to join them than oppose them so I'm just going to start walking with them." and then that army will go do some good Sunday activities. Mission accomplished. Tonight was the first time I challenged someone to baptism. I looked at Williams afterwards like, "surprise! Why would we ever talk about that before hand or anything, it's not like that's a big deal or anything." The man, Adonielton, 79 years old, accepted, joyfully, but it wouldn't be able to happen this transfer as he's house bound and we're still looking for a way to get him to church. I really hope I stick around here.

11/10

Today was an awesome Sunday! Williams and I woke up super early to talk to the army about coming to church. Unfortunately, that army was a lonely "1" but the person who came could be baptized this transfer, which would be amazing! The less active family that Williams and I gave blessings to also came to church today! Sunday mornings are rather painful though, they're the days we have to get ready the fastest which means less time for our heater (the sun) to warm up the container of water. Our heater seems to be weirdly affected by the outside weather, especially when it's cloudy, so on days like today, super cloudy, I walk to the shower about as excited as someone walking to the electric chair. Actually, I think I would prefer the electric chair to using ice cubes to shower. Manaus is always warm, even at night, except for our shower's water supply, which is somehow the first object to perpetually emit cold. Manaus is full of mysteries. I'm actually surprised that water is capable of travelling through the pipes in that ice-like temperature, because whenever it touches my skin I unconsciously react with an, "ohpleaseno". Lunch today was at a family's house today who were robbed of 7,000 reais.  They still gave us an incredible amount of food, I can't believe that they wanted to provide for us when they would have been totally justified in asking someone else to help because they were lacking. This ward is full of such great people. Today I earned a new badge of honor, I beat Anabela in a hand clap game. That's how good I am.

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson