Week 9

These two pictures are a few weeks old, but we just received them and thought others would enjoy seeing them too.

9/16

Today I did a lot of writing, a ridiculous amount that no one will want to read, but now people can know what's been going on.  I can't believe how much I have recorded here, I'm going to get arthritis. Today was an awesome day.  We practiced the baptismal invitation tonight so that I could try to commit people tomorrow. I understand all these words now, and when people talk I'm usually able to understand the ideas that are being shared, this is a really cool milestone! Before I really only understood when people would talk slowly, directed at me, and now I can sometimes understand Brazilians conversing with each other!

9/17

Today we had a practice with the rest of our zone and Presidente about committing people to baptism. It went pretty well, and getting to see Elder Gardner again was awesome! He was doing really well despite the fact that his ingrown toenail was a lot worse. Apparently he's spent the last like, 5 days walking around in one sandal and one dress shoe. I'm very grateful I'm walking on even ground (well as even as the ground in Brazil can be). Personally I think he should just full commit to the "Peter the Apostle" look and wear both sandals along with that weird dress thing and a massive scarf despite the fact that Jerusalem is pretty hot. Still, the heat of Jerusalem is nothing compared to Manaus. If someone wore a scarf here, I'm pretty sure they would spontaneously combust, despite the humidity, and their only hope to stop burning would be one of the freak outbursts where the clouds just decide to drop a sheet of water like, a foot thick, like a hammer. I remember listening to the rain inside a car in Washington and thinking how nice and gentle it sounded. Not here; Here, if I walked up to a person and said, "rain!" they would probably pee their pants, and if I shouted, "rain!" on a crowded street it would be so much worse than screaming, "fire!" in a movie theater; Men would cling to buildings trying to get under the 1" long overhang of the roofs while crying, women would grab their 14-16 year old daughters and those daughters would grab the children and they would all run for their lives, trampling the diseased dogs. The people on motorcycles (so half the city) would go crazy and weave around traffic in a horrifying way (so nothing would change for them). People would fight each other to escape onto an already 5x too packed bus (also no change). I'll have to try that later this week.

9/18

Today was so cool! For starters, I'm learning how to talk to people and not just scare them, so today I would briefly teach about blessings and we did two blessings of healing-one Kasnocha and I did, and another Torres and I did on another round of splits. The one that Torres and I did was to a Venezuelan baby this could be our "in" with them; and not just that family but with that entire neighboorhood, Venezuelans are tight-knit. Torres was telling me about that and I was like, "yeah, that's cool, I guess" but this is how he got 42 baptisms in a transfer, yep, 42: Venezuelans are super tight, you teach one family and then those guys turn into the ideal member missionaries. Some of the stories and pictures Torres has are unreal. The only problem is that they don't speak Portuguese, they speak Spanish, so now I need to learn another language. I'm so glad that I got to stay in my area for splits, because it meant that I had to take charge and be and acting senior companion for a bit, which was awesome, my Portuguese was so much better than I thought it was, this is really going to help me to be more bold when I'm teaching with Kasnocha. Kasnocha also has been slowing down lately so hopefully the boldness I learned today will help motivate him to do more work. I loved getting to work so hard today, and all the interest that was shown was awesome, even by those who seemed closed off at first; Some would listen and act like they didn't care about the lessons, then they would answer questions, then they were making commitments. I can't believe how well I spoke today, this split was definitely inspired.

9/19

Today Torres gave me a mission pep talk and it totally worked, I realized I had turned into a fubeca (slacker) but now I'm back and ready to do more work. Kasnocha spent the day telling me to "calm down", and "what's your hurry?" but this is the most important work that will ever happen, my most important calling, and I only have the power that I have now for a short time. Torres was also super funny; I made breakfast like usual this morning and when I told him to come get something to eat he was like, "heck yeah, dude! This is the whole reason I wanted to do this split!" apparently I'm one of two guys he's ever met who will cook. Mostly I just like the idea of not starving to death, I'm not sure what everyone else here does. Actually, when I went to Torres's place, all they had was crackers, so I guess I do know. I'm glad we have more than that. Torres also educated me on everything else important: P-nights and district and zone counsels where, surprisingly enough, they don't actually do that much counseling. I also did a fair amount of contacts through proselyting today. Kasnocha was so funny: Every time someone would say something like, "no thank you", afterwards Kasnocha would say to me, "man that is just the worst, what a wicked area" when we're sitting on our mountain of success, I always think people are so receptive to the gospel, we probably set up 10 appointments in a half hour, which is a big deal because Kasnocha's been slowing down recently, I'm starting to think that street contacting is the way to go; If we have appointments, Kasnocha will teach and we won't slow down, Muahahahahahaha!

9/20

Today was fun, our lunch appointment cancelled on us, but Steed's lunch appointment was super nice and said that we could go eat with them and it was sooo great. It was also amazing to get to talk to Steed because the only time I get to use my English is with other American missionaries, so the short time that we got to talk was great. After lunch we went to a store for starting Christian churches. They sold podiums for 700 reals, which would have been money well spent. I'm sure we would double, maybe triple the number of lessons we taught if we carried a glass podium, emblazoned with fire, from doorstep to doorstep and taught from that. Today was also disappointing though, because Kasnocha and I have slowed down so much that we didn't teach a single lesson today. I'm really trying to invigorate him but all I can do is poorly try to communicate the urgency of the message we have to share, and all he says is, "calm yourself, boy." After staying at a persons house for two hours with no sign of wrapping things up, I ended things. He says that we don't teach them lessons because we need to gain their confidence. Whenever he teaches, it's so great! I really try to encourage that, I try to have fun with him and serve him, he just doesn't want to find new people, and because I'm not following his lead it's stressing the relationship. We had an activity at the church tonight where they gave us food at the end which was such a wonderful thing, the people here are so good.

9/21

Today was a very interesting day. Our only appointment fell through (the words "only" and "appointment" should never be together here) although hopefully things will speed up now, because today I made my first contact completely on my own, with no hope of receiving back up because my companion was on the phone; The people I was talking to even understood which was so cool! I'm currently doing splits with another guy: V. Alves, the companion of Torres. He's being trained too, so We're All In This Together, but fortunately he's a native Brazilian so that makes things a little easier, at least for teaching lessons. Today must have been national Drop-Your-Appointment-With-The-Missionaries day because the guy that V. Alves and I were going to teach abandoned us too. I am so glad that he did though, becuase as we were walking back dejectedly and wallowing in our failures as missionaries, a member invited us in for food, and he had real bread! I never thought that density mattered in bread before I tried Brazil's Potato-Chip-Bag-Of-Air density bread, but the stuff that we had tonight was so good! He gave us tangerines, which were horrible to peel; he must have pre peeled the millimeter thick, rock hard skin beforehand and then superglued it back on. Although it was also awesome when I could finally eat it. I hope that man is greatly blessed. Today we came across a dog that was out on the street and just decided that the nice looking people in white shirts and ties were actually horrible people. That dog, that skinny dog with anger management issues, came up and started barking at us impossibly loudly when we were trying to talk to some kids. Usually the only dogs that will hate us like that are the ones that are gated off, so I've never had to do this before, but I used a trick that my dad taught me where you make a move like you're grabbing a rock off the ground, and when I dropped down and acted like I was grabbing something, that dog RAN, it was hilarious, V. Alves started laughing. They are all really well trained (the dogs, not my companions). V. Alves also bought me an Açai to welcome me to Brazil, that really made my day.

9/22

Today was stake conference and it was super cool to hear so many good talks, and I could even kind of understand them!  I was super grateful for lunch today since none of the four guys who live where I slept last night like to eat, so their fridge is always empty. They have more than enough money to buy food though, I don't know why they don't. In some ways, I felt like their area was more real Manaus, than mine, so I was still really glad that we did splits (stilt houses, actual forrested areas that are a part of where people live) but their area also has giant hills, so I think my place is pretty sweet too. For lunch today we went to the birthday party of one of our investigators: Juliana (18). It was awesome food and they used what looked like an emergency flare/firework for a candle on her cake (she didn't bother trying to blow it out). I was pretty surprised at the height of the flame and sparks but Kasnocha didn't react at all so I guess fire hazards are the usual way to celebrate here; I love this place so much!  I also told Julliana at her party that I felt bad about not getting her a birthday present, so I wanted her to have something very important and pulled out a Livro De Mormon, and she was like, "thanks..." not realizing I was joking at first before I earned an eye roll. I'm starting to be able to joke with Kasnocha too!

Muito amor and all that, 

Elder Anderson