5/9-5/23 The Email Of This week :)

 well i hope you guys like two emails, because i wrote a whole email last week and forgot to click send

Tuesday our lunch kinda threw us under the bus and said she couldn't give us lunch, so i made us some pasta, 

Wednesday we went to Amparo, and we ate at a members house (if you noticed recently I've been talking a lot about lunches lately, its because i learned that looking at the lunch calendar is the easiest way for me to remember not only what happened during the week but also what day it happened on) it was good lunch we walked an hour to get there, then an hour back and we had a funny conversation about how much Brazilians use sweetened condensed milk in everything, because they really do, and they were self aware of it, Brazilians even have favorite brands, and brands they don't like, its funny, they use it instead of sugar in all of their desserts, oh they made jello, a Brazilian would look at the jello and say put sweetened condensed milk on top of it, same with ice cream, actually same with everything, it could be a normal food, and they would think, well what if i made it a dessert? meaning what if i put sweetened condensed milk and Creme de leite on top of it? they look at pancakes and are like...... but what about with sweetened condensed milk? cake. mouse. every single dessert, or non dessert you can think of, Venezuelan Arepas, lets just put Leite condensado and creme de leite on top, any ways she made a fire strawberry mouse dessert, and i asked how she made it, i think you can guess the main ingredient, 

anyways i feel like its worth mentioning that Brazil has so many different fruits and vegetables, that i had never seen nor tried nor heard off  before the mission, sometimes i think what if this is the fruit that kills me? because some of you might remember that i am allergic to Fruits Vegetables Nuts Weeds and Trees and Grass, and Cats and dogs, and Pollen, so its kind of like a fun game, what's gonna happen when i try this new thing, usually just pain in the mouth and throat, but sometimes i get caught off guard, and find out I'm allergic to something i really didn't expect, some guy on the street was selling sugarcane juice, they just stick the sugar cane in the grinder and the juice comes out, turns out I'm allergic to that too, we learn new things everyday, I'm allergic to so so many stupid things, and i keep learning more of them here in Brazil, so i came up with a way to describe what the pain is like, its basically just imagine your entire mouth and throat was completely filled with cancor sores

Thursday, we walked 2 hours to pick up our lunch money and i made fire pasta for lunch, and then i made scotch bars that night, Baking is always super stressful here, because you can really get your comp to pay for 50 percent of the ingredients if it tastes good, Ovens are a little inconsistent here, the only tools i have are a normal spoon, and two normal pots, im cutting my chocolate chips from chocolate bars, im buttering my pan literally, rubbing a stick of butter on it,  and the scariest part of all, the house does not have a single measuring cup of any kind, I started baking none the less, just hoping that it would turn out good so that my comp would pay for half of the ingredients, (its expensive) I preheat the oven, to 290 because unfortunately the oven doesn't go up to the 325 i need, and start cutting up my chocolate bars, i then turn back to the oven and turn it down to 180 degrees, remembering that it is in Celsius, (im telling you baking is stressful here in the mission) then i went back to my chocolate bars, I eyeballed eve single ingredient, flour, sugar, brown sugar, salt, baking soda, vanilla even the butter, i guess i didn't eye ball the eggs, that one was pretty easy, and i start mixing my batter all together using my arm and a spoon, and it looked pretty good, actually the best looking batter ive made in the mission not black like the first batter, not dark brown like the second, compared to the other two times i made scotch bars, and i put it in the oven, (I'm so glad i remembered its in Celsius) They came out perfect, and amazing, not burnt black like the first, and with a way better texture than the second time, I now rebuke anyone who wants to tell me how hard baking is or that its a science, Its in my family blood, don't even need to measure, 

my comp did indeed pay for half of it, it was gone the next morning early in the morning, 

we ordered some pizza that night, the delivery guy, said bon Appetit, but said Bom appecheech because he is Brazilian not French and i find that insanely funny

we taught a woman named Vania, she started talking and being taught by the missionaries three years ago, and has been taught ever since, never been to church, but has been taught everything a thousand times, so we are trying to help her truly understand our messages, this week we taught her a little about the Plan of Salvation for the second time, with her this time we were gonna focus on her question, we taught her about the plan of salvation a week or two before, and she didn't understand why god created Satan, because statin works against him, well to me that is a really really good question, this time we taught her and read revelations 12 with her in the bible, that talks about the war in heaven, and that basically our response was that god created Satan, but Satan chose evil god did make him evil, which revealed her deeper question, that is much much much more interesting and profound, which is Why does god let Satan exist, or do evil when evil only works against god? that sounds like a pretty dumb thing for god to do Afterall, well she asked us this question, and that pretty much threw our lesson plan away, so it was just time to follow the spirit, Luckily i had just studied 2 Nephi chapter 2  in the Book of Mormon, which answers this profound question perfectly, as well as many other very profound questions, and so we read it together its a chapter that has always been really difficult for me to understand, and i learn something new without fail every single time i read this chapter, because every single time i go to that chapter with a question, it answers mine, and and makes me have an even more complicated question, and the cycle just continues, and i truly gain a greater understanding of gods plan every single time i read this chapter searching diligently to understand, and i would recommend you read and study it today to try and understand it truly, asking god for the spirit to be with you because the spirit will help you to understand it, its how Vania got her answer to her question (that for the record, the first time we taught her the plan of salvation we answered one of her questions using the chapter, but the chapter gave her these two questions mentioned in this email, and once again the same chapter answered her questions just as i just mentioned it was with me), and now she understands our message even better now

i don't remember Friday, your welcome,

Saturday, we had a mothers day activity in the ward, and i ate a lot of fire food, Did you know the food and desserts are amazing here? have i mentioned that?  its amazing, we also ate with the Venezuelan family for lunch, they made "Dominican food not Venezuelan food" and it was pretty good too, idk what Dominican implies in that sentence but they said it, they only spoke Spanish, while we spoke Portuguese, it worked out, Garces understands spanish really really really well because his parents are both Hispanic, while i really just had to focus really hard, but i was able to understand and learn some interesting differences between Spanish and Portuguese, one of them was that, to say i am the oldest child in Portuguese you say im the Mais velho (more old) where in Spanish, I'm Maior (maybe the meaning is different or i spelt it wrong but its a word in Portuguese which means bigger, and visa versa for youngest, Portuguese: mais novo (more new, or more young), Spanish: menor ( once again a word in Portuguese too that means smaller)

Sunday we ate lunch with a family that i really love her in jaguariuna, mostly because the family has my favorite person in Brazil, Miguel the their twelve year old son, who i beat in everything, we played four square while the food was being made, but just one on one so i guess two square do to space limits, and i destroyed him, all his friends were over, and he always argues with his friends about whether the ball was in or not, basically anything to try and win, but he just accepts when i beat him, because he knows he cant, he may beat all of his friends but despite his amazing cockiness attitude, i beat him every single time but he never stops trying, one time he tried to argue that i hit the ball out even though in reality i put the ball in the most beautiful corner spot and got him out, ( i felt like i was playing volleyball) and all his friends were on my side that it was in, but wouldn't stop arguing with them, so i said its fine we can just redo it, and ill just do it to you again, anyways i beat him, and i beat him in everything, everything, nothing brings me more joy than beating this cocky kid, who wins everything against his friends, i win against him, he always brings new competitions against me, its like he brings a new game over, tells me the rules, talks trash that he is going to beat me, and i beat him relentlessly over and over, but it doesn't bring him down, he just tries harder, or brings a new game in, he is super cocky with his friends so i have to step in and beat him, idk why beating this 12 year old kid is my favorite thing ever, but it really does bring me such great joy, me and him are best friends, he wants me on his team in everything, he hypes me up to his friends, because i really do beat him in everything, me and this 12 year old kid are absolute best of the best buds here in jaguariuna, he is hilarious, 

me and Elder Garces decided we will have a competition, to see who can loose more weight before the end of the transfer, 5/25/23 ,  whoever loses more weight gets 20 reais, we weighed ourselves today to start it up, i weight 104.90 kilos now, so it looks like last week when i learned i gained back 2 kilos i already am back, which really surprised me and elder Garces, and scared him a little bit for the competition because he thought i was gaining weight, i didn't even exercise ( more than walking) to lose the kilo, where as he weighs the same as last week, I'm pretty excited and have been talking trash already, I'm excited to see the results of the competition, because nothing motivates me more than competition, if any of you guys are worried about me losing more weight after having already lost 16 kilos, during the mission, and me being much much skinnier already, don't worry because I'm not going hungry here nor do i want to go hungry, food is amazing here, and i still got a lot to lose, and muscle to build, and ill stay in great health, my clothes still fit, there are no risks involved in this competition