Funny things, and quarantined because of covid.

Mon, Nov 21, 2022

 This week Elder Bada, who we live with, realized why Portuguese has that name because it came from Portugal. He also learned this same principle works for almost all languages including Spanish, his native language. It was so funny because he had like a moment where he thought it was impressive and cool until we started making jokes about it pretending we also were just realizing the same thing "why iS the lAngUage caLled JapaNese??!! Because the Japanese speak it hahahahaha"

A woman pulled over and stopped us on the street to tell us she needed to return some of our religious books back to us. She said one of them needs to return to an Elder , someone I don't remember the name of. Given that we are pretty sure it's just books of Mormon we told her she could just keep them but she insists that we take them, but also she hasn't texted us back when we can take them lol.

Elder Almeida who we live with called us to tell us that there's an emergency and he needs our help. He then tells us that he's at the church and he's completely split his pants open. We tell him we are headed to a lesson so we bring him the pants after. We had this lesson with Joaquim in the park (he's very receptive) and then we headed back to our apartment, grabbed his pants and started on the 30 minute walk to the church then we gave him his pants. 

I tried to make scotch bars this week and it failed really badly for a couple of reasons. 1. My mom's baking instruction are a nightmare and have zero details 🙃 

2. I put them in the oven at 290° thinking the oven just doesn't get the 350° I needed but deciding it's fine. I later realized that the oven is in Celsius and I'm just stupid. So instead of baking it at 350° I baked them at 550°. I had visibly done something wrong before putting them in the oven because the "batter"? Was dark brown and not light tan but I'd hoped for the best before I cremated my "scotch bars" . On the plus side, the entire pan of this burnt flour and sugar got eaten by the elders I live with, it didn't look good or taste good but it didn't taste bad. Elder almeida asked if this is what brownies taste like in the US I said no. Elder Bryan asked if I made brownies. I said no. And elder Bada also asked the same question. But at least they got eaten despite failing.

After last week's pday everyone in my district has been sick. We later found out that all the sisters in our district have covid. And also our zone leaders who were with us at district council with these covid sisters also have covid. One sister went to the hospital. Us four elders went to go buy some covid tests and it was the kind that goes up to your brain, and it's not any better when your the person putting the stick way up your nose. All our tests came back negative but because elder bada and elder bryan were still sick we were advised to just stay home all day and if we needed to leave we needed to wear masks because chances are it's most likely covid because we had been around the sisters in our district and our zone leaders so much this week. 

During a comp study elder bryan began to tell me a story of a man who was a seventy who served his mission on a island and because of the scenario they were in they were rationing food for a long time and that in the end all this missionary did was read his scriptures under a tree because he was so weak. As he was telling me why this story was so interesting in regards to his study I then asked him. If this story came from a movie, or an elder groberg. He then realized that it did come from the other side of heaven and that's why the story sounded familiar to him. I said elder groberg is a really cool guy. He asked if I met him. I replied with he's in my ward. He replied with surprise that he was in my ward and that he was still alive. Because he thought it was a much older story. But that was kinda funny and elder bryan thought it was really cool he is in my ward lol. 

I went to the store to buy a water bottle one made of nicer plastic because the bottles here a generally made of very bad plastic it's one of those things we take for granted in the US and it's something I never would have thought of as making a difference. But here when you pour soda out of a 2 liter the bottle basically collapses in your hands because the plastic is so weak and doesn't maintain its shape. So I chose my water bottle (it came with water lol) and I left. When I got back I realized I had bought not a liter of water but a liter of sparkling water. 🤮 all of us buy a lot of these d4ink mix things at the store you just mix it with your water and you get "juice" they have a lot of really cool flavors but I decided to mix one of these with my sparkling water thinking I'd just make soda. However as I started pouring this power in to the water it reacted like coke and mentos maybe even a bit bigger. And lucky me it happened on my desk. It was quite crazy how long and huge it kept fizzing over. My desk and the floor all the way to the sink got soaked by mildly flavored sparkling water. And I gotta clean it up with my towel because we don't have a mop. Note to self you can't mix these two things because a crazy reaction will happen. 

I must have sung really well or something last pday because different sisters in my district asked me to sing in zone conference which is terrifying but I decided to do it anyway. On Thursday I will be singing "i need thee every hour" by myself in a zone conference. 

More about covid: the next day after we took our tests Elder bada became way more sick he had a fever of 100.7° and elder bryan continued to be sick like he had all week so we were again in the house all day. All we did was play card games and call people with very little success. Yesterday and Sunday we continued to stay inside all day. I never got sick, lucky me, but elder bada went to the hospital. He was there for 5 hours. And we only got one text and it was that they were giving him an IV. Eventually very late that night they returned and we found out that elder bada has a recurring infection in his throat that just shows up makes him sick then goes away and comes back another day. They said he'd have to come back to the hospital later this week and then he'll probably need to go home to Chile and have a surgery done. Rip. again all we did was stay inside and play card games and call people, but on the plus side now that we know elder bada didn't have covid. We are quite confident none of us had covid either. So we should be able to leave and go to work now. 

We talked with one woman who then said goodbye to us in English with whatever some jokester told her to say. For good bye she said "heelllo baabyy" which was hilarious to me.

Living with elder bada and elder almeida is a nightmare because they never do the dishes ever. Two weeks ago we had a talk about it with them, but they didn't fix it. Last week we stole and hid the dishes until they agreed to wash them it didn't fix it. Maybe this week I'll go to the store and buy my own dishes. They also use my desk as a kitchen counter because they trash the kitchen to the point that it's gross enough and the counters are so covered with garbage that they don't want to use it. However because I keep my desk neat and clean they go and put their stuff on it all the time. And they steal the candy I buy. 

Spiritual thought: read it🤨😡 

In every case in the scriptures before anyone was destroyed because of their wickedness there were always prophets telling them to repent or else they will be destroyed. For example Lehi and Jeremiah were both in Jerusalem telling them they were going to be destroyed. Right now ive been reading a lot of Isaiah and 2 Nephi so more Isaiah. And Isaiah talks all about the last days and the destruction of the wicked before the coming of christ. Now admittedly I haven't been a big fan of Isaiah because it sure isn't easy to understand always. But then I got to the 2nd Nephi Chapter 25 where Nephi roasted me. He says that Isaiah is hard to understand because it's written for the jews in a way that they would understand, so therefore Nephi delights in how simple it is and Nephi loves Isaiah. Nephi tells his people that Isaiah is simple to understand for any person with the spirit of prophecy so anyone who is with the holy ghost or in other words learning by the holy ghost they will understand it very simply. So I guess I need to re-read it because I didn't gain anything from these Isaiah verses until I got roasted basically. After Nephi roasts his people he says that Isaiah is specifically for the people in the last days and that all men will understand Isaiah in the last days because they will be seeing the prophecies be fulfilled right in front of them. Which makes it seem really important to study in my mind. 

Now how does this relate to the first statement I wrote about how there are always prophets (multiple prophets) prophesying of our destruction before it happens? Because Isaiah is one of those prophets (this is what I did gain an understanding by the spirit of this week lol) Isaiah I telling us we will be destroyed before the second coming if we are wicked. In Joseph Smith history Joseph Smith says that the angel Moroni said that the prophecy in isaiah 11 (or chapter 21? Of second Nephi I think) is going to happen soon, and soon was 200 years ago, and Nephi has always been very specific about what he puts in his scriptures but for some reason (god) and he really felt they needed to put Isaiah in the book of mormon, and we know that the book of mormon was written for our day. We have parts of the book of mormon, Nephi, angel Moroni, Isaiah, and our prophet Russell m Nelson here telling us we need to be prepared for the second coming, or the destruction of the wicked because it's happening soon, we got a whole bunch of prophets warning us just like Lehi and Jeremiah, and we need to be prepared unlike the jews in Jerusalem. And one way to prepare is to read Isaiah as Nephi tells us too in chapter 25 of second Nephi. 

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