(Week 13) Chapter 13: Elder Williams

Thumbs up from a darling little girl and this awesome missionary!

Elder A with his new companion, Elder Williams, at the Manaus Temple

Elder Anderson with his mission president, Presidente Caetano, companion, and another missionary.

Making french toast for a church activity

On top of the world!

So, in Manaus some people have pet turtles that they raise until they are a decent size and then they...ahem...eat them.   Elder A said he talked with a guy who has a 50 lb. turtle.  I guess that's a lot of meat? (Yikes, but I guess since alligator tastes like chicken, maybe turtle does too?)

 A butterfly.

10/14

Today was my first day with my new companion: Elder Williams. He's pretty much the coolest guy ever! Sadly, he didn't get to sleep at all on his flight here, so we spent the first two hours with him napping, and then we tried to talk to his family so that he could tell them what was going on and at least what to expect with our P-day being later this week. We went to the internet cafe so that we could try to talk to his family, and that was the first time that I'd ever tried to enter the cafe so late in the day. Everyone was right, if you don't get there right away, it becomes super busy. I could see it was going to be pretty much impossible to get a computer so I said a prayer and then two computers opened up right next to each other, at the same time, an absolute miracle. It gave us just enough time to send an email to his family about what would happen this week, and me enough time to read some of the emails my family had sent me. In other miracles, my tongue has been loosed! I love this area, and now I can finally talk to everyone! One investigator, Alioni, said, "wow, you're speaking so much more than when you first got here!" All that I could do before was play with kids, which was fine, but I wanted to be able to do more. I don't know if I said a word my whole first visit, and now I was finally able to joke and talk with people when I said things like: *gasp* Mateus is having a birthday?! I love birthdays! Although it's probably just because I love cake. That's such a simple joke to make, but I couldn't do that before Elder Williams got here. Williams puts up with my crazy antics too, so many times today I stopped us and we introduced ourselves to people with absolutely no heads up so Williams could prepare, this transfer will probably be one of the best in my mission, how lucky I am to be here right now, I can really just feel everyone's love so strongly! Presidente Matos let us use his phone to video call our families, Williams really wanted to be able to call home, which is really important after changing locations, but Presidente called my mom too so I got to call her for a few minutes which was wonderful! I don't even know how he did that, come to think of it, I don't think he really has any contact info of hers, maybe he's a wizard...

10/15

Guess what, baby? I can talk! I can talk, and I can laugh, and I can make jokes, and the whole world has to listen and they're constantly thinking, "please, why won't he just be quiet?" Honestly, this whole thing is mind blowing, I'm speaking to people alone, without the assistance of my companion, people are understanding me, I'm a benefit in our lessons, and I can call people on the phone! My companion says it bugs him how well I speak, he just wants me to struggle a bit, isn't that reasonable? After two or three months in the field, his companion gave him the phone to talk to a person and he was like, "No no no no no no *comp hands him the phone* great... hey, how's it going? ...Uh huh. ...Yep. ...Wow, really? *Whispers to companion* I'm understanding nothing!" Tonight a Brazilian approached me and asked if I was American, I told him "very" and he asked me about how he could learn English, I told him about the church's program English Connect, he asked if I thought it was possible to learn English in two years, to which I responded, "absolutely!" and then he asked me how long it had taken me to become fluent in Portuguese. I had to tell him, "well see, the funny thing is, I don't know if I could call myself fluent, and... I've been speaking Portuguese for 12 weeks. So." Williams and I were incredibly busy today, we made many appointments and taught many lessons, and the 79 year old we're teaching received his response that the church is true! Now we have to find a way to get him to church, because he's pretty weak, but he loves the Gospel! We took Alioni and his family to talk to Presidente freitas about a marriage license. I don't know what will happen, my companion says it'll probably take at least a month to get it worked out, but they're still very excited. I cannot believe how much success we're having just because we're working! Elder Williams is so cool! He's really helping me with Portuguese too! Oh, and Alioni gave us a bunch of cake today which was soo good! That family has nothing to give and they're still so giving!

10/16

Today Elder WIlliams and I went home hunting. The people that Kasnocha didn't want to ruin our relationship with have a house on top of theirs that they're trying to sell, and the reason Kasnocha didn't want to teach them is because he really wanted to move into that house. When we had been there before, I had jokingly said, "oh man, I could totally live here!" because that was a super nice house, and way above what I thought the missionary budget was, but Sister Caetano really doesn't like the leaky house that we're living in right now, so fingers crossed we get to move into that house. Williams and I had an awesome plan for everything that we wanted to do today, but God knows WAY better, so all of our appointments fell through, and instead we got to go looking for new Investigators. We found some new people and even got to teach a lesson to one lady who's super spiritual, so fingers crossed she remembers our commitment to pray. That lesson was pretty awesome, actually, at the beginning Williams asked her, "how long do you think he's spoken Portuguese for?" about me, to which she responded, "6 months?" So I got to be our example for when we talked about spiritual gifts! I have truly been blessed. I was able to communicate really easily with her, she only had to ask me like, 4 times over the course of an hour to repeat a phrase I had said. We also spent a while trying to set up this big night of integration for everyone tomorrow, it's going to be awesome! At least, I hope it is, because Williams and I are running it. Williams is super funny, and I'm as gullible as the Brasilians, he told me he was shot by a gang member and I believed him. Yep. I can only assume this is my punishment for always using the same type of humour and making horrible puns.

10/17

Today was such a great day for me! Williams and I had a ton of work to do and we did so great! We met with Ari in his super nice house for lunch and his wife makes the best beans and rice! After that, we were pleasantly surprised when Presidente showed up to our house to be an Uber for us. Turns out that it's good that he doubles as a Mission Presidente and a crazy Uber driver because there was a mountain of dirt in our path and Presidente carved his way straight through it in his SUV. Man, I miss driving so much. Afterwards, he picked up a brick off the side of the road to dust his car off, Brasilians are very resourceful. We all talked with Ari about his super sleek house, and I really do hope that we become neighbors, or whatever the vertical equivalent of neighbors is, since we'd be living above his family.  After talking with Ari, Williams showed Presidente the map and how the house was outside the boundaries, Presidente was like, "eh, close enough" so I guess now I know why the mission is so flexible on the rules. After lunch and talking to Ari, we ran around, inviting people to our activity. Lots of people were very interested in coming. We wanted to share a brief spiritual thought at the activity, I prepared a talk. A general conference talk which was pretty awesome, but I didn't want people to fall asleep so I cut the talk more than in half, but it was still pretty awesome/long. Awesong (?) yeah, let's use that, it was very awesong.  Oh and I also made about 30 eggs of french toast (that's a valid unit of measurement) I'm pretty sure it was about 80 slices? I don't know, it was a lot, that part I know because I ate my fill, and WE STILL HAD MORE! I think that's the first time I've eaten without shame here, because I made the food, who are they going to cry to when all the food is gone? Me? No, they'll be running away, in fear that I'll eat all their food while they're complaining. Although it's been a good hour since I ate that meal, I feel empty inside, I can't wait for breakfast tomorrow.

10/18

Today was the best P-day ever! We went to the temple and I got to see all of my friends in the zone and take pictures with them and the Manaus temple is just SO amazing! Williams says that each transfer if you're in Manaus you get to go to the temple! I hope that's true, that would be so cool! This is just the best area ever! We also took some buses to get  to the temple and I definitely have become more appreciative of personal space, because it does not exist on those buses. I feel horrible for the little old lady who was crushed into my back, I thought for sure that was the end of the line for her, there was no way that she could breathe in the mass of bodies that were crouching in on her, she must have gone 10 minutes without oxygen, but when the doors finally (thankfully) opened so we could disembark, she just ? peeled herself of my back, and hobbled out on her cane walking into the torrent of bodies rushing for the exit? That lady has more courage than I do, Brazilians are a different breed. We also got to go to the LAN house today for an abbreviated email session, because it was already pretty busy, and that late in the afternoon, the chances of getting a computer were pretty slim. One Elder waited an hour and a half to get a computer, I was very blessed though, and got one within a half hour of arriving. Williams and I did some exercises yesterday, and they really hit him hard today, poor guy. Our schedule for tomorrow is already packed! I'm so excited!

10/19

Today will probably be amusing for everyone that reads this. I got a newfound appreciation for lunch and the fact that in the US one road name maps to a single road, because we walked for more than an hour today to find our lunch. We can also walk from one side of our area to the other in ~20 minutes (our area isn't a circle, it's the lower half of a leg with a MASSIVE calf), and we walked that area many, many times. We were passing a bible store that sadly did not have any Books of Mormon, and didn't even want to stock them when I offered them the cutthroat deal of zero reals, which is a pretty great deal since the book is priceless. Anyways, even though we had walked right next to where we needed to be for lunch, the lady called us and told us to bring containers she could fill with food so she could just give us our lunch, and not risk being tempted by my gorgeous blue eyes. Smart lady. Well, we walked home and then back across our area to get food from her. Well, after talking with a confused lady at the door and calling the lady who had promised us lunch, we realized there were two members in our ward living at houses with the same address, but the houses were on completely opposite sides of the area. That's fun. The other address pointed to a road right next to our house so we both facepalmed for having walked so much more than we needed to and headed back to that road, right next to our house. Well wouldn't you know, one address doesn't map to one house here, not two houses, but THREE houses! We found this out after knocking at the door right next to our house and calling our lady again, who was, in fact, on the other side of our area... At this point, my companion's crying into my shoulder and I'm stoically looking into the distance as the wind ruffles my hair which I really need to cut and I say to my companion, "be strong Elder, we WILL find our lunch today." And we were able to find our lunch that time, so we meandered back to our house with our spoils of war. I just know the city designer in Brasil was drunk when he was designing the streets, he couldn't see the plan correctly he was so intoxicated, and lost track of whether or not he'd designed a street 15, because the number "1" is pretty hard to keep track of, I guess. Better have three, just to be sure.

10/20

Today was the best day ever! I just love Sundays! My companion and I got to bless the sacrament because our ward was especially small today (26 people) and we were without other Priests. Directly afterwards, I found out I would be giving a talk. I've always wondered if we have a timer counting down over our heads to our death that the Bishopric can see, and when they saw that mine was within 60 seconds and I was still going strong they were like, "well, it's his time. I know how to stop his heart!" But little did they know, I'm actually a battle hardened, steely eyed, always ready missionary and when they asked me to speak in 30 seconds, I told them in my deep, resonating, beautiful voice, "I was born ready." unfortunately I didn't have aviators or background music, but I'm pretty sure some lady in the congregation still swooned when I said those words. I gave the full version of that general conference talk I had prepared for our night of integration, with one difference from before, I didn't use a script this time, because why would I need one? It's not like I'm speaking another language or anything. I ate all the food at lunch today. Yes, all of it. Yes, that means 4 or 5 plates, I lost track. We watched The Other Side of Heaven 2 with the Matos's today. It was a beautiful film, very emotional. I had a "marriage" counseling session with my companion that went something like this today: 

W: What do I need to improve?

Me: Idk, nothing?

W: cool.

Me: What do I need to improve?

W: Idk, nothing?

(But with a lot more, "sorry man, I can't help you, I'm not perfect, but this is what I think you're awesome at"'s)

Then Williams took a fat nap and I made an awesome cake that looks like a stack of pancakes and dinner and Williams comes out and is like, "great. I can't leave you unattended for an hour (he was NOT sleeping just for an hour ;) )". Also, the gift of tongues is real, this week I've been able to talk unlike anything else, I'm understanding Portuguese!

Muito amor, 

Elder Anderson