(Week 11) Chapter 11: It's All About Foo-Missionary Work, It's All About Missionary Work

A few pictures of Manaus.










On Saturday, Elder A and his companion had lunch at the branch president's home, Presidente Matao.  Presidente killed an alligator himself and served it for lunch.  The alligator meat is in the center of the table garnished with red and green diced vegetables.  Elder A said that alligator is really good and tastes kind of like chicken!


 

The skin of the alligator 



 
 
10/1
Today was the best day ever! It started off with our only "appointment" which was playing football with kids, falling through, so we had the whole day ahead of us and no idea what we were going to do. I knew if Kasnocha and I went proselyting we would have a lot of success, and thankfully Kasnocha was down to try and work, so we went walking down some new streets. We set up some appointments and then even got to do some teaching. It wasn't super successful, but I did realize something when we were done; No one has ever denied my testimony before, It has always been respected, always. Often a person of interest will try to fight on doctrinal points, and it's not like I try to "shut them down" but I don't want our lessons to lose the Spirit, so often times I'll bear testimony on a principle. People have never tried to fight after that. I think this is why I don't like teaching by the pamphlets, sure they're good, but they're not my testimony. The pamphlets have awesome topics, but I think in the future I'm going to loosely follow it and rely only on my testimony and scriptures, that is the way to teach. After our successes we talked to the richish brother and sister in our area, and I showed them the pictures of my family the Sister there has asked so much about. They thought my family looked very sweet, and it was cool to go through my pictures too, since I usually forget to do that. They gave us some butter and cheese rolls that were so good, and then afterwards we went to another family's house because they wanted us to stop by, they were about to have dinner and invited us to join them. The brother had cooked some meat over a fire and I am so glad that I lived this long, that was seriously the best thing I had ever had in my life. I almost died, I think my heart stopped beating while I bit into that, it was a spiritual experience. Because there's no way I'm passing up an opportunity like that, I asked the Brother what the heck he had done to that meat, and offered to trade my companion for the secret. Kasnocha's pretty cool, but food is my weakness. Fortunately, he let me keep Kasnocha saying he was, "'ta relado", which is a little bit of not so nice slang, and then told me that he didn't do anything to the meat. I'm hunting down the butcher now and asking him, there's no way something like that just happens. I also saw a facão being sold at a construction (or deconstruction, am I right, Ammon? Up top!) store, so this should make my hunt easier.
10/2 
The best day ever--part two. I'm on splits with Piava and Yancey right now because Kasnocha is off getting vaccines. I was concerned when he tried to tell me what he was going to do and pantomimed sticking a needle in his arm. This is the first time I've been part of a trio. This dynamic is really good for new people, because when Piava says something crazy Yancey can translate, so I'm learning even faster than normal. Also, today was easily my best day for speaking. Maybe it was just Yancey's confidence boost at lunch when he said that I was speaking better than he did at a month in, but the more I think about it, the more I'm realizing how much power is in the scriptures. I studied especially hard today, being in a new place made it so much easier to focus for some reason, and Yancey noted to a person at  lunch, "the more you study, the easier it is for you to speak the language." I was so glad to hear someone else say that because that was what I had said in the CTM when people asked me what I was doing, but hearing the same words from someone else's mouth solidified my confidence about them. If you have any doubts still, maybe you'd like to know that my studying today consisted of listening to general conference talks in English, and singing hymns, also in English. It's such a strange coincidence that all that English helped my Portuguese so much. I really felt the Spirit when I was studying, that's why I was able to speak so well for the rest of the day. As if being able to talk wasn't sweet enough, Yancey and Paiva included me in teaching lessons today, and they went so, so well! People understood me, even the Venezuelans we taught, and everyone thought my jokes were funny, I'm finally connecting. The families are also unbelievably kind: One lady asked me what my favorite thing to eat here is, I told her açaí, and then she sent her daughter out to buy the stuff so she could make us açaí. I played with her kids and relaxed talking to the rest of her family while she labored for me, I can't believe she worked so long for me, I hope heaven pours out blessings on that woman.
10/3
Well, splits ended, Yancey and Paiva are ridiculously nice. I read theose scriptures about how if someone asks for your coat, give them your cloak too, but I must have missed the ones about offering strangers your bed, food, friendship, and then giving them your pants and shirt because that's what that companionship did for me. I already loved those guys just for being so patient with me and trying to include me in lessons, that's my favorite thing ever, but they are so incredibly giving. I can't believe Paiva leaves in 12 days, what will this mission be without him? We had lunch with our mission mom, that lady is just amazing, and the food she made was so great! After lunch Kasnocha and I returned to our area and then went out proselyting. As a general rule of thumb, asking 79 year old men if they can read something for you is probably not the best thing you can do. Not that I would do that or anything, I'm good at assessing the situations I'm in. We talked to the richish family again today, they gave us so much food, I don't know what we would do without them, and the Sister is so funny, she threatens Kasnocha all the time, which I think cuts his pride a little, but oh well, he gets himself into those situations, he can deal with the sassy lady and her metal ladle of death she so violently threatens him with. We got to play football again, people say I'm pretty good, because I disgraced a bunch of kids. I'm so proud of myself. The kids on my team thought it was pretty funny when an American kicked their friends' aspirations to be the next Neymar to the curb. Silvia doesn't seem to want to talk to us anymore, which is really sad, her heart is so big, it's sad that she doesn't want our friendship or lessons.
10/4
I was very anxious today. Elder Kasnocha "accidently" stole a football yesterday and hid it in our house, so all day today I had to deal with the guilt of being an accomplice. The sun didn't shine today, the clouds were thicker than I had ever seen before, I could barely see before I turned on a light, it was like the day had turned to night (I'm a poet, I know). Today I made pancakes for the first time in my life. Kasnocha came over and asked what I was making, when I told him he was like, "oh, *previous companion not as cool as Elder Anderson* made those, they were horrible." So the race was on to see who could make a better pancake, me? Or the less cool Elder from Kasnocha's ancient history? It was right about then that I really wished I knew the ingredients used in making pancakes. Turns out I could be on that Great British Bake Off show my mom loves, because I freaking killed it, the only thing I need now is the accent. Take that, other Elder whose name I don't remember (and no, I'm not going to ask Kasnocha again, that would be preposterous (preposterous? The British accent is kicking in!)). Our lessons today went pretty well, but it was lunch that was really cool; after my companion not so gently asked another girl to defend her false beliefs so he could shoot them down, I tried to befriend her to show her that not all missionaries are crazy, and then I gave the spiritual thought and used the Joseph Smith vision I've been working so hard to memorize for a whole day to explain about prophets, tie in to general conference, commit her to watching and baptize her (just kidding about the baptism part (for now ;) )). Oh, and Kasnocha lost his keys to the church, so if someone breaks in to steal our giant water container, first of all: Why and how? That thing is ridiculously big, you could swim in it. And secondly: It's Kasnocha's fault.
10/5
General conference day! Emboldened by my pancake success today I decided to try to make bread. I should have listened to that sound advice, "stop while you're ahead" -Kanye.  At least my cooking didn't kill anyone... yet... The bottom of the bread was as hard as a rock, "The Brick 2.0, now edible". It's ready for the testing phases where you chuck it off the top of a building, hit someone in the neck, paralyze them. There's a myth about how you could kill someone dropping a penny off the top of the Empire State Building because of how fast it would be traveling by the time that it gets to the bottom. I know it's a myth because I tried it and it didn't work. Oh, hi mom! Anyways, that's not true for "The Brick 2.0" with a terminal velocity of mach 5. This is why missionaries don't cook. The parts of General Conference I understood were amazing! I especially liked the messages about relying on the savior to push the bad out of our life and not just trusting in the arm of man. In addition, making sure that we've buried our weapons of rebellion with no handles sticking out and of course, the changes that President Nelson instituted were phenomenal. Members might have to start playing a bigger role in our baptisms. We had lunch with Presidente Matos today and I [ate] allligator for the first time ever. That was the most amazing thing ever, the meat here is just amazing! I got to record a video to send to my family, which started off pretty awkward because I thought it was a picture so I'm just smiling blissfully for the first 20 seconds. Presidente helped me watch the morning session in English, but we went to the chapel for the afternoon session and that was not the best conference I've ever listened to. The accent of the translaters was just sooo hard to understand. In other news, if all the music we ever had was destroyed except for Bruno Mars, Avicii, and Zedd, humanity would be totally fine. I hope everyone else in the world appreciates the blessings they are, because it'll be two years before I hear them again.
10/6
Today was pretty great, we had lunch with the same people that asked me about Trump before, and fortunately they didn't ask me to expound on any of my previous answers or say anything about America at all. Guess that Declaration of Independance tattoo I got isn't very useful now. Maybe if I got one of the constitution too... Lunch was great though, because I understood most words in most sentences, whereas before I was lucky to understand the more part of a single sentence; Because of this, conference was a bit better today, I understood a good amount, but  got pretty burned out after an hour. President Nelson just couldn't let me be though and HAD to make conference exciting. I hope we get another book of scripture! After conference, a lady said she wanted to talk to all the missionaries, so we followed her and sat down in a room where she held us hostage and demanded that we give her the names and contacts of every 30+ member and investigator in our area. If someone ever approaches you and says, "can I speak with you?" at least find out their name first. Their purpose would be a nice second. Single and ready to mingle, of course, is third. Social Security Number also is a nice icebreaker. I also baked bread again today (on purpose) and set a pan handle on fire (not on purpose). This is where we play my variation of two truths and a lie, called two lies and a truth in the above entry. Sadly the tattoo and hostage lady were the lies, the hostage lady was actually quite nice and helped us get some new contacts. The pan handle catching fire was, an unfortunate truth. My cooking is some hot stuff. Pan flambé is definitely on the lower end of meals that I would recommend though.
Hugs and kisses and all that icky stuff,
Elder Anderson