4 birthday celebrations--this is one blessed missionary!
Beautiful sunset
Christmas celebrations
12/17
Today was fun, we had a district reunion where
Williams taught everyone how to make ties, now we're all going to have
matching Christmas ties, what an aesthetically pleasing district. My
skin has been causing me pain for a while, and today it finally got bad
enough that I asked for a blessing. It was a blessing in and of itself
that on the day where my skin was hurting the most that I was able to
get a blessing from my entire district. Today I got another cooking
lesson, this time from an
Irmão, who taught me how the Brasilians prepare their meat. There was a
flamingos game today, and judging from the number of times the sky
turned into a warzone, I'm guessing they got three goals; Most of the
time you can look out the window without going blind, but all of those
fireworks going off at the same time was like staring into lots of mini
suns. Every goal here is like an entire Fourth of July's celebration
condensed into two minutes, fireworks here are super cheap (and not very
safe (or missionary approved (sad, I know))), and because people here
have no self preservation instincts, celebrations with fireworks are all
too common. People here are incredibly nice to the missionaries: today
while walking, we saw one of the nonmembers that we play soccer with, he
was selling popsicles, one of the lowest income jobs in Brazil, and he
gave us them free of charge, he wouldn't accept payment, even though
he's probably making just enough to scrape by.
12/18
Today
wasn't the most fun, but we got a lot done. The condition of my skin
has been getting worse, so WIlliams and I spent a good amount of time
looking for medicine. Our neighbors talked with me for a bit, they're
very big on home remedies and asked if I had mayonnaise. I confusedly
said "yes", and brought it out of the fridge and they admired it briefly
before giving it back, I was just grateful they didn't tell me to apply
it to my arms, I would rather not wear mayo. The lady at lunch told me
there was an anti-itch cream called "milk of manganese" that I should
get. The Portuguese words for manganese and mayonnaise are incredibly
similar, so when I brought the Mayo to my neighbor and he admired it he
was likely just as confused as I was. Great. While Williams and I were
out today, we stopped by the Matos's house to talk about doing family
home evenings with our old investigator who can't walk around and we got
hit with the bombshell: "No, Elder, we're moving soon. We can't"
Karey's husband, Vagner, told me that and when we saw Karey, I refused
to shake her hand; "Why?" she asked me, and I told her, "1: Because
you're moving and I feel betrayed. Who's going to teach me how to cook? I
think I'll die of hunger. 2: Because I have raw flesh exposed on my
hand." Then she told me about a pharmacy nearby that could create
medicine by formula, she helped me figure out what I needed, and then
found it at another Pharmacy right next to her house, I might actually
be able to get better now.
12/19
Today was fun, we
got to eat all three of our meals today with our neighbors, so that made
life a little more fun, and we even got to do a service project: mixing
up and applying cement, so I got to dig into some dirt and make up some
concrete. Well, concrete or cement, I don't know the difference, I'm no
expert like the Brazilians here. The smell of the dirt brought back
great memories of the giant dirt hill I loved to play on as a kid in my
backyard. The pet turtle of our neighbor kept walking across all of our
beautiful hard work, and while that animal may be slow, it was
surprisingly fast at destroying our work. After our service project, we
went to our one and only lesson for the day, we taught Mara and we
might've accidentally stayed there longer than we originally intended to
because we had a watermelon eating contest. Okay, so it was only me in
the contest, but I'm pretty sure I won. I heard several, "I don't
believe it"s that put a smile on my face. Then we had another
competition to see if I could spit a watermelon seed into a cup on the
condition that if I could, Williams would carry my bag, if I couldn't, I
would carry his; Neither Williams nor I had a part in choosing these
terms. I landed a seed in the cup (first try, of course), and then
Williams and I experienced Brazil's "wall of water" for the first time
(an effect caused by the heavy rain going from nothing to pounding in
1/2 of a second. The rain made it difficult to leave, as our options
were to stay with Mara longer, or walk into certain death. So we all
huddled together under the 25 ft^2 of cover space. After the rain died
down, Williams and I went to the church, and got to give a blessing
which was a really cool experience.
12/20
Today was
such a great day! Williams and I did a service project today; We helped a
family move into our ward which means Williams and I moved a family
into our ward since no one else showed up (except Tiago (at the end (but
he's still a great person))), and the husband was busy, so Williams and
I had a fun time. I got yelled at a lot which is how I learned that
moving language is very different from standard language; I spent a very
long time being confused but fortunately the move wasn't too difficult
because of all that P90X! that Williams and I had been doing. Our lunch
today gave us money and turns out all this home cooking I've been doing
is a great money saver, so that's how Williams and I justified getting a
liter of Açaí to split today after the service project. Williams and I
had black beans and rice which turned out pretty good. As a side note:
We had a Irmã think we were indecent today because we showed up to her
house wearing our Pday attire (she was the lady who gave us money for
lunch). She's probably 60 years old and when she saw us she actually
covered her eyes and was like, "Elders... what are you wearing?!" The
really awesome part about today though was our lessons though, we taught
a couple of really cool investigators, but it was this single mother
that we taught today who was by far the best lesson we had: Williams and
I were impressed to stop by a house that we have before where a mother
lives who's trying to provide for her family, and tonight she was very
tired and I shared 2 Nephi 2:25 about how we're here to have joy, and
now she's coming to our ward Christmas party tomorrow!
12/21
Today
was great! Williams and I had to get ready pretty fast because we
cleaned the church in the morning which went great since I did twice as
much work as Williams; We were tasked with cleaning the floor of our
cultural hall and everyone else had a squeegee (that should not be a
word), except for me, I had TWO squeegees, one for each hand which was
pretty awesome because it made it super easy to push a massive water
wall over the feet of other people who were cleaning. Then I got banned
from having two squeegees because everyone was jealous and I was doing
too good of a job, so I had to clean like a normal person afterwards. My
mom gave me some awesome cookie recipes, but they were too good because
everyone liked them, so I had to make them for our Christmas dinner.
The Elders are very popular now. I found out today that one of the
biggest differences between here and the U.S. is organization: Our
Christmas dinner started at 7 Which meant that at 6:45 Williams and I
were running to our church, we got there at 6:55, and then waited an
hour and a half for the Christmas dinner to start. We had to go up with
the children who were called up to get their food before the adults
because we had to go so soon; It's a good thing I'm a child at heart
because I blended right in. Then we ran to Moises's house to celebrate
Sara's birthday as fast as we could, which was great, we had cake and
really good ice cream and Sara had a great birthday, so all that running
was totally worth it.
12/22
Today was a great day!
We only had an hour of church because it was our Christmas meeting, but I
wasn't too excited for it because it was pouring rain, and because we
were having a special reunion we were going to meet at our stake center,
which was significantly further than our standard meeting house.
Williams and I were walking, sharing our one umbrella, my left arm
soaked and his right arm soaked from the rain that our small umbrella
didn't protect us from, when a car drove past us, stopped, and started
reversing until they had pulled up next to us, "you guys going to the
church way over there?" We told the Irmão that we were, and he offered
us a ride, a real blessing. Once we were travelling safely we asked him
which ward he was a part of: "Oh, I'm not a part of your church", he
told us, he was just an awesome person who helped out two struggling
Elders. After church we had lunch with Joyce. Lunch was absolutely
amazing, but the part that really touched me was after lunch: They
brought out a cake and sang happy birthday, I joined in, clapping with
them until I read the name on the cake and faltered, because it was my
name. It was an awesome party, we got to give an Irmã a blessing, I
learned how to make vinaigrette, and I got to give the message. Tonight
was also fun, our neighbor showed up and was like, "hey, what's up, I'm
in your house" which is always a nice surprise. His tactics to get food
are getting better, instead of being shirtless outside our window he sat
down at our table (with a shirt) and offered to eat with us. Well, I
guess that's how I know my fame is growing, my neighbors are getting
more aggressive in their efforts to eat what I make.
Muito amor and all that,
Elder Anderson
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