(Week 18) Chapter 18: Punching Eggs

The only pictures that I received this week were from the lovely Matos family that are so, so good to Elder Anderson and Elder Williams.  They are so generous and are also very adventurous.  Elder A & Elder W are holding piranhas, yes, piranhas, that Presidente Matos caught!  

 

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

(Week 17) Chapter 17: The Skin of Pineapple is Nutritious...

Elder Anderson worked hard to clean his stove this week and was so proud of his efforts that he felt it was picture worthy.


Elder Williams' mom's chocolate chunk banana bread recipe made in a pot on a stovetop.




Wow...ummmm...not sure what caption to give this picture.  Watch out dirty dishes, Elder Anderson is ready to save the day!




Kids LOVE Elder Anderson!





This week was great but we're moving today so my entry's going to be a little short, hopefully I can call you later in the day.

11/12
Today was a great day! Williams and I got to study a lot because our lunch fell through (we only had lunch twice with members this week, so I got a lot of practice with cooking). I made a pizza which tasted great but was an actual mess because I did not have the self control to "let it cool". I also realized we had some guarana juice that was super potent (this stuff is like vanilla extract, if you drink it straight you will die) which I decided would be cool if we even more concentrated, so I boiled it down into a black tar substance. When Williams saw what I was doing he grabbed the concentrate, ran screaming to the street and threw it out. That's the story of how we carmelized the street. I've left my mark on Brazil, that caramelized death is never coming off. I got to use a ghostbusters gun to clean a fan and ac unit, turns out when your electronics don't work, you should just wash them off.
11/13
Williams and I gave a training today, it was a really great, spiritual experience. The older Elders here have a bad habit of teasing the younger Elders here. I am a "younger Elder" so today when I started my part of the training, one Elder made efforts to derail the conversation. So it was that I found great joy when later the same Elder was participating and testified about the message I shared; I had never seen him do that before. What caused that change? I bore my testimony about what I was sharing and the provoking ceased. 
11/14
Williams and I taught a lady who lives outside our area but is adamant about coming to our ward and our activities. We gave the Elders in her area her reference, but I guess they weren't interested in teaching her (?), so we'll gladly take that baptism, especially since it's the only baptism that's likely to happen this transfer. Williams and I also made Chocolate chunk banana bread today in our "I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-An-Oven!" with his mom's recipe and it turned out so amazing. I think I ate two whole circular loaves, it was amazing.
11/15
Today we found out that we're going to be moving for sure next Monday, so much for Pday; We spent all of today cleaning and I spent a significant amount of time cleaning our stove top which has definitely never been cleaned before by any missionary in the 10 years it's been used. At times I found it was more useful to use a spoon as a chisel than try to use a sponge because somehow I was removing the varnish without the stains just using a sponge. Now it looks new, several times I've put a pan on top of it and been like, "what the heCK, that's not my stov-wait, yes it is! Wow, that looks so good".
11/16
I'm terrible at fasting. Today after lunch I started a fast. Williams offered me a piece of his Kit-Kat, I did my usual polite decline but actually accept thing like normal, "no really, I'm good-well, if you insist", I may be a black hole, but at least I'm a polite black hole. I got halfway through that stick before I realized I had just broken the fast I had started 30 minutes earlier. Feeling bad but knowing that it wasn't too late to restart my fast, that's what I did, along with some repenting. We went to the house of an investigator a little bit later and she was like, "thanks for coming, I got you guys some cake and guarana!" I responded with something along the lines of, "why thank you! That was so thoughtful! Good thing there isn't anything stopping me from eating this cake!" To which she must have replied, "there really isn't anything stopping you from eating this cake?" and I assured her, "no, there really is nothing stopping me". Now for those of you who have a memory capable of remembering more than two seconds back, unlike me, you'll recognize a little bit of a pattern here: I got about half way through that cake before realizing, "oh my goodness. I really am hopeless".
11/17
People came to church with us today! A good number of our investigators, which was great to see! I also ate the skin of a pineapple. Missão Brasil Manaus!
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson

(Week 16) Chapter 16: How Many Pineapples is it Physically Possible to Eat in a Week Without Dying?

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

(Week 15) Chapter 15: Let Them Eat Cake

Elder Anderson and his companion had a hankering for Mexican food and decided to make themselves a Mexican meal.  Elder A took a picture of a make-shift griddle that he created so that he could cook the flour tortillas he made.  (By the way, he used a Pringles can as a rolling pin.)

The Mexican meal that he created with rice, guacamole, tomatoes, homemade tortillas, tortilla chips, cheese, beans, and ground beef.

Mini bananas growing on a banana tree.

A green parrot that almost completely blends in with the leaves near him.

A drawing Elder A made last week as listened to General Conference talks in the mornings.

We won't have much time today so I'm just going to try to type this as fast as I can:

10/29

Today was the best day ever! We had a district reunion today, and I even got to participate in giving a message out of the missionary manual, so I chose to talk about the section: mission vehicles, and how we could qualify to be drivers. Lunch today was with Joyce who is basically a missionary's best friend, I've drawn a helpful diagram here to illustrate our relationship:

                                          _-->        o  o  o

  o  o          ____---->  o  _--            |_||_||_| 

 |_||_|   <---                 |_|<--------->  o  o  o

(two clueless         (Joyce)             |_||_||_|   (The collective desires

missionaries)                 --_              o  o  o     of literally every person

                                           -->        |_||_||_|     in our ward)

That was so hard to make. Lunch was really fun though because it was the first time I really had fun messing around with a member, I told her all about my personal experiences as a Chick-Fil-A [CFA] cow and she asked me if I used to be a "prankster" before the mission. Well, I don't want to brag too much, but I was North Creek's first Art Prankster, so I guess I'm what you would call a pro. Somehow Brasil doesn't have great milk, but has some amazing ice cream, and a GIANT ice cream cone cost me a total of 75 U.S. cents, which was also pretty cheap by Brasilian standards. I'm not sure how these people are making money off these things. We also taught Moises and Elingi tonight, at the end I got corny and told them how proud of them I was and how great that they were honestly seeking for answers to questions, and after Williams was like, "Wow. I can't talk that beautifully." I talked really, really well today which was really, really nice.

10/30

Today was the best day ever! Woah, déjà vu. We found out everything was confirmed for our move so sometime next week we're getting a new house! Today was really good though because we "coincidently" found lots of people which made contacts really easy. Williams and I gave Mara a blessing and today was a lot better than the previous times that I've gotten to give blessings in Portuguese because I actually knew some of the important words. The really fun part was her name though, foreign names are the actual worst thing ever. I called her "Mara of the people" at one point because of a slip of the tongue, but she was really nice, she said, "God will understand". That lady has a lot of faith. We also spent a long time today talking to people that we found on the road, which was fine because one of our lessons fell through. When we were talking to one of these people on the road we got to bear some real testimony, which was awesome. The person we were talking to had a lot of questions like, "Is the world going to be destroyed when Jesus comes again?" so we got to help out, I mean, first of all, she believes in the second coming, which was really cool, but we got to help assuage her worries, which was good, I felt like I was really doing the work I came here to do. Then, to seal the deal on what a great day it was, we ordered a pizza. Worst pizza ever, but if compared to hamburgers, I would say it was pretty good for a hamburger, because we got four hamburgers instead of our pizza. Oh well, it's a good thing that I'll eat anything and everything. We were like, "whatever, it's food, it's bad for us, it's close enough." So yeah, that was a pretty awesome day

10/31

Happy Halloween! Except Brazil doesn't really celebrate Halloween, which disappointed me a little, but my companion and I did get a nice treat when we were walking down the road and saw a guy selling pineapples for 1 real each, about 25 cents in the U.S. Now, I'm not usually much of an impulse buyer, but it took me .001 seconds to switch from jolking (jog/walking, I had to come up with a term because we do it a lot) down the road to buying pineapple, because there's no way I'm passing up an opportunity like that. I think I freaked out the guy who was selling them a little because I suddenly veered at him and I am a pretty intimidating American. Apparently. So he was a little relieved that I just wanted some pineapple. After a successful encounter where I tricked that guy into thinking that I spoke Portuguese and getting some pineapple, The Two Legendary Missionaries walked down the road, triumphantly into the sunset, each with a pineapple in hand. I freaking love Brazil. We went to visit Joyce so Williams could call his family because someone in his family had a birthday. That would have been cool to know one week earlier because I didn't get to call my dad on his birthday. There was a guy at Joyce's house who was very animatedly talking about Jesus Christ, and asked if we had ever heard of him; Williams just pointed to his name tag, and the big letters that read "JESUS CRISTO" the guy thought that was pretty neat. Later he started preaching so I passed him a Book of Mormon and showed him a verse I thought he might like. He read it out loud to everyone and then was like, "this is the truth" and started preaching about it. It took me like, 30 seconds to realize that he wasn't of our faith and I had just gotten him to read out of a book that he probably doesn't believe in, so I guess that's one way to be a missionary. Tonight Williams payed me a nice compliment (at least, I hope it was a compliment, I guess it totally could have been in the negative), he said that he often forgets that I'm training and have been here for a few months. Probably because I keep usurping his authority whenever we go anywhere. It's so natural to try to share everything I have, but I should do a better job of following his lead.

11/1

Today was so great! Of course, any day that starts off with pineapple pancakes is pretty awesome. Here's how I made it for anybody who wants to eat the thing that made my companion say to me, "Oh my gosh. Thank you so much":

Flour: just drop the entire kilogram bag that you got from your local SUPERMERCADO in (you have to scream "SUPERMERCADO" or no one will know what you're talking about). Water: don't use a lot, just enough to go, "crud! I meant to use milk!" Milk: there you go. Eggs: one egg per person, and don't use bad eggs, those are for scaring away the diseased dogs; You fight fire with fire and disease with... more disease... Cinnamon: Use as much as you want, the limiting factor shouldn't be how much you can "handle" it should be how much you have; Go out today and spend $1000 on cinnamon, live life to the fullest. Sugar: use some sugar. Woah! Not that much, are you trying to kill us all? Salt: add some, I don't really care, I can never taste it. NOW, I'm going to do you a teaching, the flavor of pineapple, like water, is actually determined by its temperature; So stuff your freezer full of pineapple gelado because it's the best thing in this world. Cut up your pineapple rock with the sharpest knife in the world and throw it (the pineapple, please don't throw your sharpest knife in the world) on top of the pancake and freaking enjoy. If the pancake is on top of the pineapple, you've done it wrong. You're welcome.

Today we found a lot of investigators which was amazing! It was because of the pineapple pancakes. I know it. One dude gave me a bracelet because he really liked me, it's kind of weird, but I'm also attached to it because the dude's awesome. I used my CFA experience to make milkshakes for my companion and wow I have learned so much because they were even better than CFA's shakes (sorry for the apostasy, Heather). That earned me a second "Oh my gosh, thank you so much" from my companion, and the title of favorite companion for food from Williams. Personally I thought that should earn me the title of favorite companion, but I understand. It's not like it was a competition or anything, because I'm going to win. We also got to drink cupuaçu which was so good but it's also really acidic so Williams and I were hurting a lot afterwards. I regret nothing.

11/2

Today was a Saturday so we ran to as many investigators houses as we could. I say "ran" because we had to book it to fit in as many people as we could. Our main goal was to invite as many people as we could to church. I have high hopes for them, some of them were really interested in our invitation. Today was the birthday of one of our investigators. I said to her, "Williams doesn't know about this-" which prompted Williams to cut in with an "oh no" and then I continued, "but we got you a present! It's the Book of Mormon, you won't get a better present than this." She replied in confusion, "but you guys already gave me one?" and then I was like, "but this one's special, it's signed. Here you go Williams, we're going to sign it." She thought it was really cool that we're Americans so she asked us to sign it in English. Her daughter reads a little bit of English and tried to read my signature for her mom: "What does 'spunky' mean?" I replied to her, "it's a special word for fun". Williams is jealous that I don't need an alarm clock to wake up. Even if I wanted to sleep in, there's no way that I could. My body is my alarm clack and it's trying to die of sleep deprivation.

11/3

13 people invited to church, and none of them came ): but we did have another dude who's not baptized but supporting his baptized wife there, so that was cool. In other news, I feel like a highly functioning adult because I remembered that today was a fast Sunday. I shared my testimony again which went as well as it could for someone who has 15 weeks, and Williams gave the second hour lesson, so that was fun; Especially the part about William's lesson, because we had prepared to talk about Filipenses, and instead found out that we would be teaching about Timothy as Williams began to teach, so that was a nice little bit of rearranging. Then Presidente gave us a ride in his Dethicle (death-vehicle) at mach 2 over speed bumps and maybe small animals. I thought maybe it was just me that was screaming on the inside, but his wife was gripping the "oh, shoot!" handle on the ceiling with all the force her little body could manage, so I think we were all a little terrorized. We had lunch with the guy who asked me all my views on Trump my first time eating with him; When he saw Williams, American, he was like, "ooh, another victim!" and went through all the same interrogation questions with Williams that he did with me before. Poor guy. Tonight the Brazilians added to my list of things they wanted me to do for them "teaching dancing". They heard that stake dances were pretty big in the U.S. and Williams was like, "no, just outside of Utah" and with that one casual line, excused himself from that duty and left me the duty to teach them "cotton-eye-joe" and the "pb&j" dance.

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson

(Week 14) Chapter 14: Wet Cement

Elder Williams and Elder A

Getting completely spoiled with a chocolate dessert at Presidente Matos' home.

Elder Williams knows how to make ties, so he taught Elder A and here is the tie that Elder A made and embroidered!

Elder A's new hammock.  He is sleeping a lot more comfortably in this than he was in his bed.

Just in time for Halloween, a spooky clawed hand reaching toward Elder A.

This picture is a bit gory, so skip it if you have a weak stomach, but here is an alligator arm, because as you probably guessed, Elder A was able to eat alligator again.  

We had interviews with Presidente Tuesday. He talked to one Elder today and I think he might have forgotten about him because he's been there for a long time and Presidente couldn't recall how many transfers he had been there for. I hope that happens to me because I love this area! I keep getting the horrible feeling I'll be leaving soon though, I hope at least I stay here through Christmas though. Today we did more practices in front of everyone, which I didn't mind, because I needed the practice and I thought they were pretty fun. I was able to tell jokes which was a huge confidence boost.

I made a tie this week which was pretty fun and it turned out pretty well. We had a lot of fun hunting for houses on a 45 degree incline which the Brazilians have figured out how to walk up but I'm just a weak American who doesn't have suction cups for feet so for some reason that felt more difficult. I was sick for a day on Saturday which stank, but other than that, I had some awesome experiences teaching this week and have absolutely been loving it. We also had a Mexican night because my companion and I have been missing Mexican food and even though we had to make everything from scratch, it turned out pretty awesome. 

Sorry this is so short, but some people needed my help today so I didn't get to spend as much time on this.

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson

(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

(Week 12) Chapter 12: You Guys Are Too White!

Elder Anderson was able to baptize a young man in his mission!

10/8

Today wasn't the best day, my companion didn't make the best decisions yesterday, and I'm super oblivious so I didn't completely realize what was going on. He didn't do anything horrible, today was just kind of a waste because we spent the time that we could have spent proselyting doing the stuff that we should have done on Pday. Everything else was really good, though. We had a zone conference so I got to see Steed and Gardner, and we had a blast! Of course, from the number of looks we got, we're either just incredibly attractive (we did have Steed with us so that's totally a possibility) or we were having too much of a blast and bugging others. It was an awesome conference, though, I did a practice in front of everyone and could actually speak this time, although I still had my regular amount of nerves, those missionaries are a scary bunch. We also met with Presidente and Presidente tonight. I'm not sure which one is our branch President, and until tonight I'd never seen them in the same room so I thought maybe the two guys who we call Presidente were just an alter ego thing, maybe really bad schizophrenia. It was genuinely shocking to see them in the same room, I think I audibly gasped when we entered, there was so much raw power, you could feel it. Kasnocha also loves me (the usual) because tonight I made a popular guarana drink that's pretty expensive, and now we have more than a litre of it in the fridge, so it's Christmas for us. Although, after the half litre of it we drank today in our primal excitement, I don't think it'll last long.

10/9

Today was a great day! We went to visit Mara today, and I am so glad we did. Someone had tried to rob her Sunday, fortunately people had been there to help her out, but she was still incredibly shaken up. She started crying and I felt like Ammon when the King's servants started crying: I was rejoicing thinking, "Wow, what a great opportunity the Lord has given us, I'm so grateful this happened." I don't think that's quite what "mourning with those that mourn" means. Well, Kasnocha kind of dominated the conversation, and I'm super glad he was talking so much and really wanted to help her, but it was like a socratic seminar: The kind in school that's a bunch of cutthroat savages who will do anything for a grade, and the teacher said for the grade you need to be nice and talk lots; Those things never went together, and socratic seminars are just vicious beasts sitting in a circle with a mask of manners on. The thought of those gives me shivers. Fortunately Mara asked me to say the closing prayer so at least I could talk unhindered (well... it is still Portuguese) then. Whatever I said must have been the right thing because she started crying again (or I accidentally said something offensive, which is totally a possibility). We also went to see two of our new investigators, Sisters, one who is 16, and one who is 14 according to herself and 12 according to the 16 y/o sister. Honestly I have no idea, I've seen kids who I would have guessed were 14 who were nine, it's anybody's game at this point. The first time I spoke to those Sisters they shared the funniest look of surprise with each other and started nervously laughing, they didn't understand me unless I spoke really slow. Although when Kasnocha said, "he's from the United States" one sister said, "lies!" so maybe my accent is almost passable for a Brazilian who's been stranded on some dessert island for the past 20 years and completely forgot how to talk (yes I said "dessert", I'm not cruel). There were other people on said hypothetical island, but they were too busy stuffing their faces to talk, so they all forgot how. That's the way I talk.

10/10

Hey baby, if you want to know how I'd rate... your personality... just write out today's date. Today was awesome! We started off by going to the house of a lady to do Kasnocha's hair, which I wasn't super enthusiastic about, but it put Kasnocha in a great mood for the rest of the day, so maybe it was worth it. His hair turned out horrible, if you were wondering, but it was pretty funny to see. I guess a comb over is becoming a style? I don't get it, but Kasnocha loves it. After Kasnocha was finished wishing we had never entered the lady's house, we went to the house of Mara. We watched the church's film, Joseph Smith with her, and the Spirit was so strong! It was a beautiful film, and fortunately I'd watched it before in English so it was actually fairly easy to understand. After the movie, we testified and left her and headed over to the house of Presidente Matos so he could give us some new contact info, and his wife made these little fried bread things. I hope blessings never cease to be poured out on that woman. The real blast today was during football. We saw Emily and she said she wanted to speak to me in private, so I told Kasnocha to stay by me for the rest of the night. Then we played football, and heavens only knows why God gave to me what he did, but I lost count of my goals, I wasn't even trying either, when possible I set up the kids on my team to take the goals. Kasnocha and the other football legend on the opposing team weren't as keen on my newfound abilities, but the Brasilians love me more now, so I'm very happy. Never in any other sport have I seen men pretend to cry, but frequently in football this happens. Must be a very sad sport.

10/11

Today was an amazing day! I tried making Elana's fried bread today and it turned out pretty well, not that Kasnocha would have an aversion to it if I had completely messed it up and made something that only loosely resembled it, that fried bread is his favorite. Then we went to a barbeque for lunch and everyone looked at my giant plate of food that I grabbed like, "Can you believe the nerve of Americans, grabbing all that food? That guy's not going to eat more than a third of that plate." After I devoured it, and still felt empty inside, Kasnocha graciously gave me some of his food because he had taken too much. That place really lived up to the barbeque name, the meat was amazing, I love Brazil so much. After a wonderful lunch, Kasnocha asked if we could stop by the post office quickly, since we were right there. Turns out we weren't right there, but I didn't mind, it was great to see where I needed to go if I wanted to send a letter. We also met a dude there who makes trips to visit the Indians in the jungle and offered to sell me a bracelet. Presidente Matos verified it's authenticity for me, so now I have the contact with the tribes here that I hoped I would get. One Elder bought an Indian headdress, I think this is enough... Then I got to do my first baptism! It wasn't a guy I was very close with, but Kasnocha and I haven't had a lot of success lately, so Torres and V. Alves had me do this baptism. It was so awesome to do, the Spirit was so strong, I didn't stutter at all and afterwards I even got to offer some words of encouragement to him. For every parent that's been asked of their kids who are envious of Father's day and Mother's day when Children's day is, it's the 12th of October. You're welcome. And it's a big celebration here! After eating a bunch of cake and watching kids dance their heart out (the ward celebration was today), I talked to a person we were making contacts with, I was teasing and laughing with her, she was shocked to learn I was American. "But he speaks Portuguese so well!" today my speaking was awesome!

10/12

My heart is broken. It really is, because Kasnocha's being transferred. I don't think I praised him enough in my writings, it's easy to complain about faults, but I certainly have my fair share of those, I'm a hypocrite sometimes because of that, but Kasnocha was an awesome companion! We met lots of people, I learned lots from him, and he was a great leader. Today was children's day, I thought earlier I was going to be writing about how much I loved today, but today is incredibly sad now. I don't know if I'll ever stop saying "whatch?!" (what) or "let's bora" (let's skedaddle) like Kasnocha does. He also taught me to be a much better companion, and he ate those onion and egg sandwiches for like two weeks straight, because that's all I could make at first. My new companion is an American, so hopefully I still learn lots about the language. Today we visited the family of Anabela's, had the closest thing to mammoths [a burrito my mom makes] I'll probably have for the next two years, and pudin [like flan], which was great. Then we went to our diamond investigators house where he was making a cake and gave it American colors, so I made sure to take a picture. He actually made three cakes, one being a pudin pão cake which he also gave to us, and was even better than the other pudin. Probably because he had nothing and still wanted to give so much to the missionaries. We met a person who justified being an excessive alcoholic by stating that that Jesus's first miracle was turning water to wine, but it's hard to tell him about the word of Wisdom when you're chowing down on a barbeque stick he's given you. His master plan actually worked.

10/13

Today was a wonderful Sunday, it was a fast Sunday, somehow my first fast Sunday in the field. I bore my testimony and it went really well, people could understand! What a confidence builder. Although, now that I think about it, I could have just shared the first vision, said "amen" and probably had the same effect. Church was also good because I got to tell everyone I would be staying here, and they were all very excited, which felt great. I haven't even really talked to these people yet, I guess I did throw a ball at one Sister's head, so I can see why everyone loves me so much. We spent the rest of the day visiting people's houses, telling them Kasnocha was leaving, and hearing many, "oh, happy day!"'s, people were kidding though, Kasnocha loves to mess with people and now they were finally getting some revenge. We took lots of pictures and one girl made me an Instagram (heaven only knows why) and one sister gave me supplies to make a cake! And then I forgot them at another person's house! I'm so horribly forgetful... Kasnocha's giving me all of the things for the area since I'll be the oldest companion in the area, I'll get to pick how hard we work for a bit.

Muito amor, 

Elder Anderson