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
