last week and a small piece of this week. i was so busy last week I forgot to click send on the email

 Tue, Feb 21  

 I went to the Temple for pday so that was pretty fun although I really wanted to I couldn't bring myself to drop 60 dollars on the Portuguese quad of scriptures at the temple store, I'll do it one day I'm sure, going to the temple is always fun, if not a little bit intimidating in Portuguese, but I saw a ton of people from our stake and Said hi to them which was dope, Elder fish decided to buy a Japanese book of Mormon for no reason, and the cashier asked how long he's been in brazil when she saw the book, and when he said 3 months, she said he needs to focus on Portuguese, but he bought it anyways, we had a photoshoot with the book of Mormon in front of the temple because it was that funny to us ,  and at the temple ran into a member in our ward who served in Japan and asked him about Japanese, 

Sunday was a good day! Ngl its Nice when the brazilians do their best to Try and make you anerican Food, generally it just means that they make French fries with your beans and rice, but let me tell you I didnt realize how much I was missing taco salad,( walking taco)  and I'm not even sure if it's American food or not but they brought doritos to the table, meat, lettuce, tomato, and a large variety of sauces, I ate 6 plates, like it was just so fun to not eat brazilian food for one day and it was delicious and reminded me of home, (no disses to brasilian food though) but then she brought out desert, and it was something I've never seen in brasil because they don't make it or have it here, and its one of my favorite things in the world, the whole time the member was saying she didn't get to taste test it because she was fasting and its gonna be horrible, but she made cheesecake with strawberry jam on top, she said it's probably not as sweet as American cheesecake but I made sure to tell her that it was a perfect replica as I ate half of it, and I really did eat half of it and they were very happy to see it made me so happy, I'm really gonna miss cheesecake for the rest of my mission but it's fine, the whole time the members were telling us about their travels in the US and they really traveled a lot especially to a lot of places I love in the US so that was dope. 

 I managed to find a scale to see how much weight I've gained or lost on the mission although I already knew I lost weight because I needed to cut my belt shorter a couple weeks ago. because my pants won't stay on anymore. I started the mission weighing 265 pounds and now I weigh 228 pounds, which to me is pretty nuts, I'm surprised I lost 37 pounds, my clothes just are a little baggy now but as long as my belt fits I'll be fine, 

Elder fish commissioned me to make his really fat tie less fat because he said he won't use it if it's super fat so if I can make it skinny successfully for him he'd give me ten reais and if I fail I can just have it, given that I'd "learned" "how to sow" (meaning I can more or less repair a torn seam), 3 weeks ago it was a pretty daunting task, but I ended up doing it successfully it's just incredibly scuffed but he is stoked to have a skinny tie now, and I'm happy to have accomplished the task, and earned a bit of money and have some practice in a skill I'd describe to you guys how i did it but I'm not sure how I did it. 

In brazil soccer is politics and your team is your political party so it's been a little hard for me to choose a team we had four lunches with 4 different people who support 4 different very big teams, and I'm a fan of all these members, but yeah so we had all of them basically state their case for why we should support their team so that has been fun. 

We had a lesson we were running late for so we had to run which like my nightmare I really do not like running I can barely run on a flat track let alone up hills on broken sidewalks that are at a 45 degree angle side ways for no reason sidewalks are really weird here and the majority of people seem to have ankle and knee problems. But it's a 45 minute walk and we ran it and I was not a fan, 

A series of unfortunate events regarding the house yet again continued... when the people came to help with the person below our apartment with the flooding, we have to be in the house so he can be in our house too, which is alright it just socks and we lost lessons because they didn't schedule with us, but during this time a member had send a delivery guy to our house with our lunches, its just that after 45 minutes of waiting he didn't show up, so we left to grab lunch somewhere else but then on the way back the delivery showed up and so did the guy to fix our house, and then the guy got really nosy about everything that entire day, he even got his wife involved, asking repeatedly the whole day for the name of the member who sent the lunch, it took half our day of declining to give them the name and asking why because they seemed pretty heated about our lunch for no reason, before they told us it's because they want to tell the members of their wrongdoings the whole thing was pretty crazy, after they avaluated our house they said that we had to use only one bathroom to let the pipes dry, (I think I already said that) and that they'd send a guy 3 days later to fix the pipes, well then they rescheduled for 7 days later, and then when the time arrived for them to show up meaning we have to be in our house not working in the street, they never showed up or responded to our messages or calls, so that ended up wasting a bunch of our time..... again.... 

We had a lesson with Diana on Tuesday and like all lessons with her it was super good, she's incredibly smart and receptive, she has so many awesome challenging questions, and it also is the only time so far where "deep doctrine" knowledge comes in handy, personally I found that the simpler we teach things the better people understand, but diana wants to know the why to everything as well as historical context, she comes to every lesson with really crazy questions that make me happy I listened in seminary, but when we don't know we have a member who was a stake president in all our lessons with her and, he usually beats us to the punch on explaining things, our first lesson with her he taught her about the restoration plan of salvation, the gospel of christ, several commandments doctrine and covenants temple work and family history, the whole shebang, and he explained all the context and scripture references, for most people that's a whole lot of stuff to take in, but diana is super awesome and understands it all. Today she first read Nephi 1 and had a million questions about the historical context and stuff with the Bible, and I've never felt so prepared, because I found a book of Mormon institute manual in my house and learned tons of stuff studying with that. 

We had a lesson with a young 13 year old Man named Bryan whose mom just was Baptized! And he's awesome, he told us he didn't wanna be baptized yet because he wants a testimony for himself!! We taught a lesson about the 2000 stripling warriors. In Portuguese the name is really lame though it's the 2000 jovens soldados  which means 2000 young soldiers. And given that I learned the word soldiers during that lesson I ended up messing up the use of the word and I said 2000 jovens solteiros  which means 2000 young singles or single youth, so that was funny but Elder Fish said 2000 jovens salgados which means salty youth. 

We had a street contact with a guy while he was showering. He was in his house taking a shower and talking to us through the window. And We said a prayer with him. It happened 

We ended up running to another lesson this week as well, we ran it sucked my bag is heavy, and when we showed up at his house he canceled  😞  however we found a lot of awesome people this week, we received lots of references! A guy in high school which is just cool because we never see random high schoolers just asking to talk to the missionaries. We also found a guy who said his friend in the United States that he play video games with told him about our church, so now he is talking to us, which is just crazy!! And has a little special place in my heart just hearing the story and the idea is super cool to me! We've been knocking a lot of doors this week! We just take a street and have everyone in the trio take a house. It's pretty efficient with the trio. I found a guy who was super cool. I told him about temples and parts of the restoration right there in the street. We then a couple days later went to his house and taught him the restoration and it was really good. Of the probably more than a hundred houses we knocked that day, I spoke to 20 people, Elder Fish spoke to 3 and Elder poyfair spoke to 8 people, and we got to teach one guy afterwards which is awesome! 

We helped a family move houses into our ward, moving really heavy things from the top floor of their apartment building that doesn't have an elevator was a really exhausting exercise, oven, fridge, washing machine, couch, beds, cabinets, it was not fun going up and down those cramped stairs over and over with tons of stuff, but he's a really cool member moving into our ward. We also helped unload the moving truck.

We had a zone conference! It's always fun! Just a party with the zone, training, food, pictures, just good stuff. Sister Saucedo president saucedos wife came up to me and said "you're skinny are you healthy? Are you going hungry?" Guess she saw the weight loss. Let me assure your sister I am by all means not going hungry! The food here is amazing! She was genuinely concerned for my health though. 

We got beaten up by the rain again. Like the lightning was terrifying, thunder is way louder than a Cannon at a football game too, I've never heard a bomb go off, but thunder in campinas is the loudest thing I've ever heard, especially when the lightning is striking every ten seconds extremely nearby, the roads become rivers the canal receives a crazy amount of water! And off course I got completely soaked, it rains so incredibly hard here, like cars would splash us but it didn't make a difference because we were already completely utterly soaked. We didn't even feel it, rain is nuts here. 

Now that I'm writing this at the end of the week! I've reached the last click on my mission belt again! So maybe I'm gonna have to make it shorter again. And maybe buy new clothes. Mine are getting rather baggy. 

After I unflattened Elder fish's tie I was feeling really crafty throughout the week. Wanted to use my new learned skill. Of really scuffed use of thread and needle, and one of the Sisters had made Elder poyfiar a little book of Mormon case of our a cereal box and tape. And I thought to myself "I wanna make myself a little case for my mini BOM I have an empty box of laundry detergent powder, but I don't got tape.... well I got needles and thread! So I like a crazy person spent at least an hour  of my day during lunch or after nine, sowing cardboard together for 5 days. I was beginning beginning loose my mind because I have to punch all the holes in before I actually can use the the needle and thread. But I ended up making it and finishing it in the end. It just took like 5 or six hours of work. Elder poyfair also gave me a 2x2 Rubio cube so I learned how how solve that this week. Learning and practicing is fun, especially when your hobbies are reading the Bible. It makes sowing and everything not reading the scriptures very exciting. Making peanut butter, literally anything can be exciting when your a missionary!

A series of unfortunate events that still continued... yeah so the guy didn't show up to fix our house we still got one bathroom. But the guy did show up outside of our house and told president saucedo about a shirt and a pair of shoes on our window seal drying (after the crazy rain) and how we are breaking the apartment rules... the guy called us while we were helping the member move. Really we had no idea it was against the rules. The shirt happened to be a missionary decoration of a shirt that Elder Pereira used an incredibly hot iron on and burned a whole strait through it during a comp exchange. He wrote Pereira was here on it. And it's hung in that window seal for 2 months without anyone saying anything, and I'd be lying if I said I handed dried my shoes in the sun, every single time until now. We just didn't know that we couldn't. But what is this really unfortunate you may ask? It's because right before he called up he called our mission president, who then sent a message to our whole mission about not hanging clothes in the window seal, " especially for those living in apartment buildings'' presidente Saucedo already had to be involved in this series of unfortunate events way more than he should have had to. Because he shouldn't have had to be involved at all. The people who work at the apartment building think we are disgusting idiots, the guy who keeps calling our mission president rather than us keeps treating us like children, and still has not fixed the one thing he showed up for almost 3 weeks ago. And now our mission president probably thinks we are stupid too. I'm not having a great time with this dude. We cleaned our house and found the mess the other elders left. Did our best cleaning, but some maggots escaped. Our toilet had a piece break at the same time the flooding started below us, but they aren't correlated. The guy wants to start beef with the members giving us lunch, he keeps calling our mission president, we get called out for not following a rule we did not know about... our house is sparkly clean we are doing our absolute best to Try and handle everything, but because of some people, who only see a small part of the perspective complain and lie. We look like idiots. I'm not vibing with it. 

END OF SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK START OF THIS WEEK

We woke up and received a message from president saucedo saying good morning. Then he didn't say anything until we had gone shopping and were at the church at twelve then we got a call from pres saying that I would be getting an emergency transferred to ouro verde. be comps with elder Haacke so that is where I am. 

we had a crazy thing happen going to a consultation with Elder haacke, we took wrong buses that were actually the right bus. We took a million buses and everything went wrong. We ended up 2 zones north of our zone. We left the house at 11am but didn't make it back until 8.10 pm because of that bus madness. we taught a really cool lesson to a pastor, who said he believed our words and the story of our restauration but that he wouldn't pray about it because he can't stop being a pastor, it was an amazing lesson super spiritual, and powerful, just a little sad he rejected the message although he believes it,

i live 15 second from our church now which is way better than the 30 minutes it was in my last area, 

We had district pday i'll talk next we about it. I'm out of time. transfers our next week too idk what's gonna happen.