Week 38, what a week, Animal crossing signs continued

 Monday June 5th, 2023

 This week was so much to remember, so let's take a look at the lunch calendar to help me out 

the days were we get money for lunch instead of eating with the members are the hardest to remember

Tuesday, i really dont know i think we went to the store for lunch.... ah yes the day i went to the store and bought a cake, turns out when you are 6'4" blue eyes blond hair in brazil you stick out, but you really stick out when you buy a cake, i think it means you are rich or something, everyone was looking at me, usually i feel pretty ignored at the store, but when i had the cake everyone was looking at me, maybe buying a cake wasnt the best choice, but it was kinda one of my mission dreams, to just buy and eat a cake, as its something i always enjoyed doing before the mission, the bagger at the store, looked at it and said it was so pretty it doesnt even matter if it tastes good, i kinda wish i gave it to him, i think it would have made his day, so on the walk home feeling a little guilty, pondering about whether buying a cake is against the mission standards, i decided if a homeless guy knocked on our door again id offer either ham and cheese sandwiches i bought that day, or the cake he could choose, and no man knocked on our door, so i ate it over the next several days, as far as teaching goes tuesday was a rather unsuccessful day, so eating cake made it better, nevermind it was pretty good, we went over to teach one lesson that went pretty well, with Marcia shes super awesome, she lives with just her daughter and it was raining so we had to sit on her wet bench while she said in her wheelchair (because of her broken leg) in the doorweigh as we read 3 Nephi 11 together, me holding my umbrella, and she got an umbrella for elder larsen, 

oh yeah and on tuesday i Took another legendary photo with another animal crossing sign, its so epic i'm gonna put it on facebook, yeah anyways it's a capybara crossing sign, brazil is wild huh, I also after asking around, learned what was on another animal crossing sign i've seen a bunch of times, you see when you take the bus to pedreira the bus takes the freeway, and well, on the freeway out the window i always see an animal crossing sign not knowing what it is, it looks like a cat, well i learned its actually a jaguar crossing sign, i then also learned that Jaguars is how this city ( jaguariuna) got its name, that all over the forests surrounding me there are Jaguars, somehow ill get a pick with a jaguar crossing sign

wednesday, we had an exchange with the Elders of Amparo, the goal was basically just to have me help show the area a bit to them, this day i learned id done many things incorrect this transfer so far as a district leader, because that day was finally the day we received training from the Ap's for how to be district leaders, so after having done every single responsibility of a district leader throughout the last week except a baptism interview, i finally got to learn what i'm supposed to do and how to do it, as i'm writing i just heard my comp say " WHAT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE'S A LIVE ACTION LITTLE MERMAID!" , my comp says the darndest things every single day i probably need to start making a quote book, one funny thing he does is he kinda like tries to justify every sentence i say, whether i say something jokingly or sarcastically, or completely normally, for example there is a park right by our house, like 10 seconds away, he goes "have you ever done morning exercises here?" "no" "ah.. well.. *tongue click* you know.. i guess you would have to.. go down the hill.." and like he's not making fun of me for not going, its he's just trying to logically justify why me and my past comp didn't go and what would make it annoying to go,

i was with the only elder from Portugal, and his Portuguese is very different i learned at lot about their Portuguese, me and him went pretty far to the other side of the city basically just talking about how awesome the area is, its hilly, and annoying to walk around because of this, but wow amparo is such a beautiful city, its sooo cool, i tried to focused on working and being a good example, elder Larsen and elder Rojas went up to the Christus in amparo and took 52 pictures together, and all i'm gonna say is im jealous, at the end of the day we all went to get Açai together, Elder Da de Portugal, doesn't like açai though so he got a milkshake and i got one with him, just to see if it would be better than açai, eh its not bad but idk that its better, we ate well during the exchange we made lunch, got açai for dinner, made pasta after nine, and ate it right before bed, then when we woke up, we made " not quite french toast, and we definitely did something wrong" it wasn't bad though

thursday, we took the bus back to jaguariuna, got back at 1 o'clock and checked the bus hours at the church, at 1:45 we went to our house to make lunch, but grazi was in the street so we talked with her, at at 2:30 we told her that unfortunately we had a call at 2 and we need to catch the bus at three, so we had to go, we ran in our house quickly called our 2 o clock lesson, and made sandwiches at the same time, and started walking to the bus station, well when we got there, grazi texted us saying she was coming over to bring us some good food at our house, we informed her we were already at the bus station waiting for the bus, and so she ended up walking all over the city, but showed up at the bus station, and says " i just got my exercises in today!" elder Larsen probably not hearing what she said, responded with "really?" and grazi told him she was offended now, but gave us some coconut cookies and yogurt, the yogurt was from some weird fruit i've never seen before, but yogurt is processed enough i'm luckily not allergic, oh and yeah Elder larsen has had his Portuguese brutally criticized by grazi this whole week, She was like "you talk so slow im starting to fall asleep" "you take so long to get the point i'm falling asleep" "when your thinking or nervous you click your tongue" I know who wrote this text message because its writing wrong it was new elder" "you don't know how to conjugate the verb Fazer" and i said "me neither" but she said i do it right and he doesn't , my Portuguese has not been criticized by her once this week, Elder Larsen is feeling a little bummed by it because he has more time then me on the mission, i told him he doesn't even know half of what she said to elder Garces, In truth though she does help a lot with our Portuguese, because no one here in brazil is willing to correct us but her, 

after eating, we took our 3:15 bus to Pedreira we got there at 3:45 and knew we had to get back to the bus station to catch the 4:50 bus home, leaving therefore one hour and five minutes to deliver a book of Mormon and do a visit, its just that here is what google maps told us the travel time would be walking to where we needed to go to complete this goal, 18 minutes south (to the house to give BOM), then walk 48 minutes north ( uphill a lot to do a visit), and then 30 minutes south (to the bus station) , well when you do the math, thats 96 minutes of just travel time, not including time for the visit or to talk, so clearly there is a flaw in our plan, but luckily god gave me incredibly long legs, (unfortunate for my much shorter comp) we speed walked let me tell you, what a crappy day to wear a long sleeve shirt, we speed walked so fast, and somehow managed to do the visit in only 5 minutes, and absolutely booked it back, when we were closing in on the bus station, i looked at my watch and saw we only had 4 minutes left so we started to run, we didnt quite make it to the bus station, before the bus driver saw us running and stopped the bus to let us on, (it was funnily enough the same bus driver who drove us from Amparo to jaguariuna that morning deja vu) he aparently saw us super speed walking north towards our visit, and was very impressed with how fast we made it around the city, when we got on the bus he said" you remember that woman standing by the telefone pole you guys past?" (points back in the bus) me "oh" she was on the bus already... bus driver (while he continues driving to the bus station) " theres a stop here... and here... and here.. and here... " to be fair basically none of the bus stops are marked in brazil, the people just know, 

Friday we ate lunch with members, they made a ton of food, i was stuffed and they were still saying the dreaded words "eat more'' i convinced them to focus more on what my skinny companion is eating by saying " look he's skinny he needs to eat more so that he can be stronger and happier" it worked they started talking about how he needs to gain weight, that right now he weighs 65 kilos and needs to weigh at least 85 kilos by the end of the mission to be healthy, 

I learned Friday that on Thursday Grazi and Vando both went to the temple with the youth to do baptisms for the dead! and that Vando not only got baptized but also baptized others in the temple! now let me tell you when i heard that and saw the photo of them at the temple i totally remembered how true the promise is that " if you bring just one soul unto me how great will be your joy" i sent it to my old comp elder garces and he told me the same thing 

we also taught andré the english teacher about the plan of salvation, and what's necessary for salvation and exaltation, he invited us to come the next day in the morning and talk with his students in english and that they would love it and really appreciate it

Saturday, 

in the morning we went and spoke to 4 kids learning english, they are of ages 15 to 17, and they basically just had lots of questions about america, and why we are here as missionaries, 

its was pretty fun talking with them

We had my second service project so far in the mission which was helping a non member move, it was pretty fun, turns out it wasn't really service because she paid the member who helped out and told us about it 100 reais, but at least she said we could stop by her house and teach her a message if we wanted to, the member tried to give us 50 reais but we told him we couldn't, but then as we were working online we got invited to go to there house and eat dinner with them, and we did, they went and bought pizza and we ate it together, so now that i'm writing this i guess it wasn't service at all because i ended eating pizza in the end, most likely with that money the member earned, but we will go back to her house and her friends house to teach them, because now i know where they live!

Sunday we went to church it was good, we went back to the same members house we were at last night for dinner and had lunch it was lasagna it was awesome, they are probably my favorite family i've met in brazil, because they have miguel the epic kid, and they always help us out a lot,

Today monday, well really just a normal pday, i just remembered a really funny story from a long while back that i forgot to write in an old week email, so here it is

we receive media references, they either saw a social media post and want to talk to the missionaries or they went directly to our site and said they wanted to talk to missionaries, well one day we received a reference from a person who went directly to our site to talk to us, we entered in contact with them asking if we could share a message, and she told us that the real reason she wants to talk with us is because she said that her husband said he was gonna leave her, and she doesn't want him to leave, and that she thinks that she's pregnant, and wants us to pray to see if she is pregnant so she can tell her husband.. yeah so.. we told he we can't give counsel as missionaries, but that god answers prayers, ( we also shared a little bit about the need of honesty and integrity just in case) and that she can pray and that maybe god would answer her IF she is honest and has real intent with god, well two days later she texts us again asking if we can just pray for her so she can know if she's pregnant, (i was getting more of a crazy lady vibe than anything else plus we cant its against the rules) so i told her that god gave us may tools through science to help us in our lives and one of them is pregnancy tests, 

she didn't ask for prayers after that, maybe she was honest, maybe i did the right or wrong thing, either way ill never know all i know is that i was feeling crazy lady vibes more than anything else, 

I hope you guys enjoy reading these emails because i spend 4 hours each pday writing them