11/4
First Pday of the district! Of course, it wasn't my district, we just crashed another District's Pday activity and I am so glad we did. They were having a water balloon fight in the perfect place, underneath a chapel on pillars. The first mistake of the Sisters was to leave the Elders alone with the water balloons while they went to help the lost Sisters find the activity. THey left four Elders alone with a mountain of water balloons, I'm not responsible for what happened, even though I might have helped a bit with our plan of ambush: When the Sisters came back, they were rightfully cautious, I saw them peeking around a lot from my vantage point on the second story, however, everyone forgets to look up, or they would have seen one Elder reach out of the window and drop a giant water balloon on them, right as they locked the gate and sealed their fates. That already was a pretty awesome plan, but unfortunately for them, there was more; that water balloon dropped from the sky was the signal to the Elders hiding in various places that it was time to start our attack, and so each of my comrades launched their small stash of balloons at the Sisters. Fortunately they didn't stay wet too long, because they were fuming, and that does help with the drying off process a bit. The Sisters ran for the supply of balloons in the middle of the building under the chapel, and our beautifully coordinated attack did in fact earn us something, teams, boys against girls with death wishes for their attackers. Those premises led to the greatest water balloon fight I've ever gotten to be a part of, and the Sisters did in fact exact their revenge on those poor Elders who didn't do anything to deserve their anger. I have never feared for my life as I did when the Sisters found out it was me who dropped that first water bomb on them, some comrades, they didn't even make an attempt to conceal their teammate. I now know the meaning of the proverb, "It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house" because nowhere in that wide chapel was safe. I'll also include some quotes I heard today: "I wouldn't be surprised if they had brain damage because of you" (Elder Williams). "AAAAAHHHHH" (Sisters Bispo, Floyd, Williams, and P. Silva, which I had nothing to do with).
11/5
Today was awesome! Williams and I had another reunion of the district where I slammed a door really hard. The door was the biggest door I'd ever seen before, that's right, our chapel has actual castle doors, and I didn't realize they were the first zero friction objects to exist, so I exerted a decent amount of force on those doors to close them, and that's the story of how I almost made people go deaf from the sound of a door shutting. I got to give the spiritual thought and it went pretty well, especially because I prepared it a half second before I gave it. They asked me to give it and I was like, "yeah sure, I'm a missionary, that shouldn't be difficult, hey Brain, what do we have in terms of spiritual thoughts?"
"We have nothing" -My brain that I am indeed having a conversation with.
"Nothing?!" -The other part of my conscious being
"Yeah, we're going to die" -Me, of little faith.
And then I gave an awesome Spiritual thought that was so good we used it in our lessons for the rest of the day. I wasn't even worried. I also jumped high enough to have my fingers grab the bottom half of a mango, but I didn't pull it down, sad. Sure, Anabela says that she has no problems grabbing mangos off the streets, and she's like, 4' tall, but I'll be here too. I totally would have gotten a mango today, but someone stole the last mango that I was waiting to grab until i t had ripened, I put my name on it and everything! Thievin' little... Today our lessons went super well, I think it was just because we were teaching interested investigators, but the lessons felt so much better than normal! I have high hopes for these investigators.
11/6
Today was a great day, except for when Williams blocked me from getting my mango. I hope his family reads this so they scold him for being a terrible companion. I jumped to pick it off the tree and totally would have gotten it, but he put out his arm to block me, destroying my lateral, and then I was laughing too hard to pick it. Now I have to wait until next time. Today we didn't have a member to make us lunch so I tried to make rice and beans for us. Today was what an optimist would call a "learning experience". I could really use one of those fancy panelas de pressão that the people here have for making beans. Tomorrow I'm going on splits with Yancey, so Williams and I spent today brainstorming phrases I can use to paint ourselves in the best light possible, since he is our zone leader: " Wow, it's only 3oClock and we're leaving already? Williams and I never leave before 6", or "You want me to help teach The Restoration? Williams said you don't teach anything for your first six months". Just enough to get him mildly concerned that I haven't done anything for these last three months. Also, I believe that I wrote earlier that I'm not an impulse buyer. The five pineapples I bought today say otherwise. I have no self control. We also looked around for the work of one of our investigators so we could stalk him at work. We found him and his creepy manager (and that's coming from a couple of stalkers!) so now we can maximize our ability to teach by teaching all of his work friends at the same time. The creepy manager unfortunately liked us too, just because we're Americans. He didn't like us as much as the guy I got to know on the street today. I found out more weird things about him than I wanted to, when he palmed my face and ran his fingers through my hair and said that I was very handsome, which was only slightly more uncomfortable than it sounds.
11/7
Today was a blast! We started splits today, I'm with Yancey right now, and he really helped me see what we needed to focus on, baptisms for this transfer are going to come down to the wire. Yancey and I spent as much time as we possibly could have doing contacts and teaching lessons. Yancey helped give me a lot of awesome tips and confidence. Today was also awesome because I broke my cooking curse, for the first time in like, 5 days, I made my omelets without ripping them and they tasted freaking amazing. I'm pretty sure it's because of the power of cilantro. Just having some new plants imbued me with strength. Also a freaking wack green bug just assaulted my journal, I went to take a mugshot of it before I jailed it under the weight of my quad, but then the fugitive flew away, escaped out a barred window, a true master criminal. Tonight we had a night of integration which was super successful, Yancey and I gave a blessing to a sick six year old. About five minutes after the blessing the girl had gone from bawling her eyes out to completely happy. We had 36 people attend our night of integration, way better than the seven from last week. Evidently there's an important message in the Lion King that I'm not understanding, because we watched it again tonight. Yancey and I did a great contact in the street where people were so interested, they invited us to share our message right there. Unfortunately, we were running late for another appointment so we didn't get to share a lesson, just a spiritual thought, but it was still good. I told everyone today variations of "Williams is dead" or "Williams was transferred". I'm such a great companion!
11/8
Today was awesome! WIlliams switched back and then we went and talked to our favorite member, Tiago, because he's a better missionary than we are. Tiago led us around to make a bunch of new friends although sadly enough they don't speak Portuguese which will probably make our lesson tomorrow a bit more difficult. We got to talk to Moises and Elingi today which was the best thing ever, our lessons with them are always so good, they are seriously the best; Maybe just because they gave us cookies which were like the widow's mites. We also taught a less active family today. Basically their whole family was sick so I offered them blessings which they were super interested in, so we blessed the two sick people who were there which was the first time I got to do the part of sealing the blessing. I did the sealing of the blessing for the son, he hadn't slept for the last couple of nights. I promised him he would be made well.
11/9
Today was such a wonderful day! Williams and I went to lunch with an amazing family; The Irmã taught me how to make feijão although I still don't have a pressure pan (I think that's what it's called) so I can't do much with that knowledge yet. She let me help her make a pasta too, and I am so grateful that she did, because those were seriously the best noodles ever! What a wonderful, beautiful meal. Then we went out for the day and walked so, so much, my feet are in pain. Our first appointment fell through, and it was far, on the opposite side of our area, so that was a little discouraging, but the rest of our appointments went really well! Once again, we spent our Saturday's trying to invite as many people as we could to church, but with a slightly different approach, we asked if we could accompany them all to church. A surprising number of people accepted, I have no idea how we're going to help them all. If they all really do come with us, we'll end up leading a small army to church. I'm really hoping some people on the street will be like, "I have no idea where that gang is going, but it's much safer to join them than oppose them so I'm just going to start walking with them." and then that army will go do some good Sunday activities. Mission accomplished. Tonight was the first time I challenged someone to baptism. I looked at Williams afterwards like, "surprise! Why would we ever talk about that before hand or anything, it's not like that's a big deal or anything." The man, Adonielton, 79 years old, accepted, joyfully, but it wouldn't be able to happen this transfer as he's house bound and we're still looking for a way to get him to church. I really hope I stick around here.
11/10
Today was an awesome Sunday! Williams and I woke up super early to talk to the army about coming to church. Unfortunately, that army was a lonely "1" but the person who came could be baptized this transfer, which would be amazing! The less active family that Williams and I gave blessings to also came to church today! Sunday mornings are rather painful though, they're the days we have to get ready the fastest which means less time for our heater (the sun) to warm up the container of water. Our heater seems to be weirdly affected by the outside weather, especially when it's cloudy, so on days like today, super cloudy, I walk to the shower about as excited as someone walking to the electric chair. Actually, I think I would prefer the electric chair to using ice cubes to shower. Manaus is always warm, even at night, except for our shower's water supply, which is somehow the first object to perpetually emit cold. Manaus is full of mysteries. I'm actually surprised that water is capable of travelling through the pipes in that ice-like temperature, because whenever it touches my skin I unconsciously react with an, "ohpleaseno". Lunch today was at a family's house today who were robbed of 7,000 reais. They still gave us an incredible amount of food, I can't believe that they wanted to provide for us when they would have been totally justified in asking someone else to help because they were lacking. This ward is full of such great people. Today I earned a new badge of honor, I beat Anabela in a hand clap game. That's how good I am.
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson
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