(Week 7) Chapter 7: And So It Begins

Visit to the Manaus Temple

Lunch at a church member's home with his new companion, Elder Kasnocha

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

On the flight over to Manaus (four hour flight) I met a guy who spoke Portuguese (big surprise) and a bit of English. His wife is a member but he is not, and I spent the whole flight talking to him. His name is Mario and he is just the coolest guy ever, he was super patient with my bad Portuguese and spoke to me a lot about what I could expect in Manaus.  I learned so much and he warned me about the parties that would happen every Sunday. He was dead on about those, we didn't even leave our house after church because people were not doing the best things, and I think I listened to more bad music yesterday than I have in my life, so that made my Book of Mormon studies interesting. After he told me about everything and we arrived I told him I wished there was something that I could do to thank him, so I wanted him to have this book [the Book of Mormon] because it was the most precious thing I had and I knew reading it would bring him happiness. He was super accepting and nice and said he would read it! Brazil is such a cool place!

I've been learning really fast, it's been amazing, when you trust the Spirit, it's amazing the things that you can do. I've had my mouth filled both with food by members who are so loving and good to the missionaries, and with words by the Spirit, I've been so blessed. We've been teaching this girl named Emily, who at first I was 90% sure my companion was just teaching so he could flirt with her; the popular 'flirt to convert' method. When my district leader called me he told me that I needed "chastity of the mind" when I was teaching, and he was right, we have taught a lot of people in a lot less clothing than I would have liked, but it's still been going great. Things went so well with Emily, that later this week we're going to baptize her, I'm ecstatic! Manaus is a really good area, people aren't super righteous, but they are super willing to hear from our message and very willing to abandon their lifestyles to follow Christ. There are still some crazy people though, one guy came up and started saying something about Joseph Smith (this was day two so I didn't understand much and wasn't as wary as I should have been) so my companion gave him a card with Christ on it. He ate it. Immediately. My companion went, "oh- mm..." it was hilarious afterwards but it was pretty weird at the time. We had a family who hadn't been to church in four years come with us on Sunday, which was soo cool! They are a great family, maybe the dad will be the Bishop since we still don't have one, and there are only 41 people in our ward, mostly kids, it is so small. The house that we live in is *super nice but not my companions favorite. I think it is so cool though, I'll try to send pictures on Sunday. The food is awesome, the people very kind. The weather is very hot, I've probably sweat more here than the rest of my life combined.  I need to go buy food so I'm going to stop here, but make sure to hug the family for me!

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson

*As far as houses go, mine is pretty nice. We have a fake tile floor, a watercloset instead of a toilet, and Brasil has really taught me all the things that I thought were necessary that, according to my companion, are just nice extra things, like toilet paper (fortunately we have toilet paper, but my companion's advice was, "don't get used to it"). Daily life for me is always interesting, every day I pick up more, but my companion doesn't speak English so he can't really help me out when I don't understand everything. I wanted this though so I was glad that it worked out this way, I'm forced to speak Portuguese, or I'll die. I am slowly learning what crazy people look like. I've always been pretty oblivious so my companion has had to help me stay away from a couple of bad situations. Manaus is more safe than Sao Paulo though, we heard two gunshots at night there and so far there haven't been any here. There are open sewers on the street, which means outside doesn't smell very good, and people don't have much to eat. We usually eat the big meal of the day, lunch, with members though, and they always give us so much. The mission does take really good care of us though. I can have a good meal for about $0.60, or about 2 reals, which is how much my gourmet breakfast of sautéd onion and egg with lime sandwich and a banana costs. We have about 150 reals to live off of for 15 days so we're not scraping by, I just wish there was more that we could do for the people here. On a typical day I spend about four hours studying and about nine hours proselyting/teaching lessons, usually more teaching than proselyting, the people here are really receptive. A pretty big difference though is Sundays. People absolutely blast music for parties on Sundays and if it were any day besides the Sabbath I would love it, because they were playing a lot of American music. Although I don't miss many American things, even music, I've just been loving the work. I've especially loved the food, people make food so well here, maybe it's just because I'm working all day but everything is just absolutely amazing. Everyone loves to talk to "the American" and they all ask me the same two questions: What I think of the temperature, and what I think of the food. It is very warm here but it hasn't been ridiculous, I really do love warm weather and I think I was born to serve here. I'm not perfect at speaking but I do have a lot that I can give, and I've found that every time I've tried I've had a lot more to give than I thought. My companion has been very encouraging of my help too. We don't have a dryer but we have a washer, blender, and refrigerator, so [my] dad would probably say that I'm not really serving a Brazilian mission.