BATISMOS!

Hello Everyone.

This week didn´t have as many crazy stories. So sorry. But, we baptized two men yesterday, and we have four more people scheduled for next week, so that´s awesome. I will tell you the stories of our awesome batisms. That word there is what happens when you try and say "baptism" and "batismo" at the same time...

Leandro: In reality, Leandro found us; we didn´t find him. We were walking one night and he came up to us and asked us what we were all about. He didn´t go to any church, wasn´t very religious, and admitted that his life pretty much just involved college and parties. BUT. Now he says his life has changed completely. The first time we taught him, we taught the Word of Wisdom. He was very clear that he did not think he would be able to stop drinking coffee. I don´t think he really wanted to stop drinking coffee either. But we called him a few days later and he was super excited to tell us that he hadn´t been drinking any coffee. He hadn´t wanted to drink any, and he was super happy and he didn´t know why. Don´t worry. We explained why. Because he had found the gospel of course. :) Anyway. We kept going and taught him all the lessons and he got baptized yesterday! Also. He is from farther north and he took a trip home for a few days to visit his family. When he came back he gave us "kits". Kits full of awesome native garb. I´ll have to send a picture sometime, because it is awesome. I have a skirt, shirt, dress, headscarf, giant necklace, and an awesome purse. It´s super cool. I love my kit. :)

Lauro: In reality, Lauro found us as well. We were walking along his street and we heard someone calling "Oi Sisteres! Sisteres!" It was Lauro. :) He had talked with some Elders before, and there was more to the story, but I didn´t understand the rest. In the end, we taught him, and he got baptized yesterday as well. Actually, he pretty much taught US the lessons. He came to church last week, before we had ever taught him, so we left him with the pamphlet for the Restoration and set up a time to teach it to him. When we got there, he had read the pamphlet, and proceeded to recite and explain everything about the Restoration. We just stared at him in surprise, but that rapidly changed into joy. He was super easy to teach. He is very very very smart. We found out one day that he taught himself English. He speaks better English than I speak Portuguese. And he taught himself by reading books and listening to tapes. How embarrassing is that? But he assures me that I speak very well. He is super sweet, and SUPER excited about being baptized and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. I´ve definitely never met anybody like Lauro.

OH  MY GOODNESS! I forgot the crazy story of the week! I learned just what it would be like to live in the zombie apocalypse. I can´t remember if that´s how you spell that word in English, but I´m sure you get the gist. We had a conference for just the sisters this week, and we were taking the train back with a bunch of other sisters. We were in the back of the car, and all the other people sitting there were like, "You have to go out the first door in the front". And we were super confused as to why, but they kept saying it, so we kind of drifted towards the front. As we pulled into the station they became much more insistent saying "You´re going to fall!" I was a little upset that they didn´t have much faith in my ability to stand as the train was braking. Surely it wouldn´t brake that hard. Then they said "They´re going to hurt you!", and I was like uh....what? Then I looked out the window. It was so scary. We were slowing down in the station, and there was a mob of people outside. They´re weren´t just standing there, patiently waiting to board the train....they were screaming and rioting and pounding on the doors and windows. Us sisters wasted no time in getting to the front of the car, but even still we almost died. As soon as the doors opened, men flooded into the the train and we were swept up in the sea of bodies. I body surfed to the door. It was kind of fun, but mostly terrifying. I was holding on to the bars that they have up by your head so I could guide my surfing towards the exit. In the end I got of the train without injury. Other sisters were not so lucky....One came out bleeding. Another got trampled. She was wearing a bright blue dress, and I saw here fly through the air as I was body surfing. And all that because these men were fighting over who would get a seat on the train. We are NEVER taking the train at that time again.

That´s all. Time to go to Sister Sorensen´s goodbye party. :) Have a good week!

Sister Peart

10/21/2013

Hi Everyone!

I´m sorry if none of you get personal emails this week, but the email time is extremely limited this week. It´s Sister Sorensen´s last p-day in Brasil, so we went to Brás and therefore only have a little time to do emails. Sorry.

This week I learned and saw many funny things. Some things were also not so funny. The not-so-funny things all involved death. I saw my first leftover Macumba sacrifice. We were walking along the street and something smelled unpleasant. I start looking around and Sister Sorensen just grumbles "Ah. Macumba." There was a beheaded chicken right there on the sidewalk. Complete with clay bowls full of questionable substances. Lovely.

I also almost stepped on a pancake rat. There are many rats in the road that have been run over so many times that they look like pancakes. This usually isn´t a problem, except that this particular night was rainy. So the rat was soggy. I excecuted what I´m pretty sure would be an award-winning breakdancing move if anyone had been there to see it.

I also almost stepped on a dead cat. That was the only one that kind of fazed me. I didn´t see it at all, I just was walking along, and Sister Sorensen was like "Did you SEE the dead cat?" I was like "What dead cat?" Then I realized that not only had I almost walked over the freshly dead cat, but I had, in fact, walked through the evidence of how it died. Gross. These shoes deserve more credit.

Moving on from dead things. On Tuesday we were walking to our meeting (no sign of creepy marriage guy), and I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk up the road. My first thought was "Gross. Every inch of this sidewalk has been repeatedly covered in fecal material." My second thought was "Hm, from his posture and the bottle next to him I´m going to assume he´s drunk. That describes the willingness to sit in poop." As we got closer I realized he was on the phone, and that the phone was HUGE. Third thought: "Wow. It´s like one of those cell phones from the 80's!" Finally, we walked passed him and I realized that no, it was not an 80's cell phone. It was a music box. He was talking to a music box. My mistake.

We also saw a pimped out gangster bike. We´re walking along at night and I hear what has to be a "Wanna-be-gangster" car approaching. As it passes us, I realized that I was, at that very moment, seeing the strangest contraption ever. It was a bicycle. Just a normal bicycle. With a speaker system that blasted bass well enough to rattle your teeth. But wait, there´s more. It was decked out with those lights that change colors and accompany the music. And the seat was as far back from the handlebars as possible. Par-tey.

As for the new missionary training. I learned a very important lesson this week. Sister Sorensen informed me that she wanted to show me something, but she had to find one first. I was like "Ok.....vague, but ook." We keep walking along until she finds what she´s looking for. She points out one of those plastic microcentrifugation tubes in the road. She´s like "See that? Know what that is?" And I was like, "Yes. It´s a microcentrifugation tube." She stared at me for a little while. She has a very well-developed stare. I informed her that we use them in my lab at BYU. Her response: "Well Sister. They aren´t doing medical testing in the middle of the street in São Paulo Leste. Those are for cocaine." I see. Duly noted. Now I can judge just how much any particular street needs the gospel. :) Our area is in desperate need.

Sorry this letter is kind of short. Busy busy busy. :)

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

Another Crazy Week

Hi everyone.

This was a crazy week as well. I feel like it would be safe for yáll to assume that every week is going to be crazy from now on. President has a lot of faith, and his prayers work like charms...

Normally we have zone meetings on Monday nights, but this past week they switched it to Tuesday morning. So Tuesday morning me, my companion, and the two other sisters that we live with were heading to our meeting. We usually take one bus to the terminal and then take another to the church building where we have the meeting. We take the first bus, no problem. We get off the bus at the terminal and start walking to where we´re supposed to go while the other sisters go to put some more money on their bus card. We stop next to this man for a second, to locate where our bus is going to come in, and he starts talking to us.

The first sentence out of his mouth is "How do you say marriage?" We stared at him for a second, and Sister Sorensen was like "...what?" Again, he asks "How do you say marriage in English?" After a couple more seconds of staring we determine that he must be crazy and she says that she doesn´t know what that is. He starts to talk some more, but Sister Sorensen interrupts, saying we have to go catch our bus. So we walk walk to the opposite side of the terminal and sit down on a bench.

As we´re sitting there I see him making his way slowly towards our bench. I´m staring at the ground like the greatest secrets of the universe are written on the concrete while Sister Sorensen keeps saying "Just ignore him, just ignore him, don´t even look at him, blah blah blah."

Obviously, ignorning him didn´t work and he started talking to us again. Sister Sorensen starts acting like she doesn´t speak very much Portuguese, while I pretend that I don´t know Portuguse at all. In reality I was wishing that I didn´t understand Portuguese, as he was telling Sister Sorensen all about how he wants to marry me. She´s trying to get him to go away, and failing, so she gives up and just starts talking to me in English. I´m like "So we´re just going to pretend like he´s not there?" And she´s like "Yep, just keep talking in English."

Unfortunately, he was very persistent and kept talking to us. I looked over to where the other sisters are and almost died of relief when I saw that they were coming over to our bench. Sister Alves is Brazillian, so I knew she could save us. They get to the bench and look a little confused as to why we´re blatantly ignoring this man that´s obviously talking to us. I inform Sister Jennings that this man is wanting to marry me, but I wasn´t sure how to discretely tell Sister Alves since she doesn´t speak English.

Luckily, she caught on pretty quick from the what the guy was saying and started telling him that I wasn´t interested. He began insisting that I loved him and that I needed to marry him and go live with him in Brasil. Pretty quickly, Sister Alves lost her patience and informed him that we were missionaries and that he needed to have some respect and stop saying the things he was saying. Finally, our bus arrived and the other three sisters shove me on the bus. It was one of the super giant ones, which was good, since he followed us onto the bus. I ran through the pay point, to the end of the bus while the driver informed the crazy man that he needed to leave. It was gross. Why me?

As we were riding the bus, the sisters informed me that I needed to buy a ring to wear like a wedding ring. Everyone else has one. Now they tell me...

Also on Tuesday, I was beginning to get sick and started feeling like I wanted to die. The lady that we had lunch with was convinced that I just needed to eat 4 more plates of food, and then I would be healed. False. I spent the whole day on Wednesday in my bed, except for a couple hours when I dragged myself to the lesson we had with Marcel that night. And only because he was getting baptized in a few days. The family was super nice though and fed me crackers and sprite and bought me some medicine.

On Saturday night we got to visit Sister Sorensen´s uncle. In reality, he is her grandpa´s brother, so he´s her great-uncle. But whatever. He has four children; two sets of twins. One set is 22 years old, and one set is 23 years old. Crazy. But, it was super fun. I had pizza for the first time in Brasil, and we got to leave our mission. The part of São Paulo that he lives in is super fancy. I felt very out of place. Also, they eat pizza with a knife and a fork. It´s very difficult. Eventually I just picked up the crust and ate it with my hands. Like a savage.

Our president and his wife drove us there and back, and it was super crazy. He has a GPS, but the map on the GPS looks like they gave a 2 year old some crayons and had them draw the road system of São Paulo. We also stopped on the way back and took a picture in front of a giant Cathedral....at 10:30 at night. Sister Ferrin said, "This appears to be a bit of a seedy area at night." Understatement of the century.

Speaking of seedy areas, I´m starting to be a lot better at identifying the more sketchy parts that we´re in. The road that our church is on would be one of those parts. That´s where we got mooned. We were explaining to a man where our church was, and he was like "That road?! That road is dangerous. It´s full of druggies." How do you answer that? "Yep, that´s the one! But the church is very nice. No drugs at all. We have a fence."

I know there were more stories that I was going to write, but now that I´m sitting at the computer I can´t remember what they were. I need to write them down, like I did last week....

BUT! Marcel did get baptized yesterday! It was exciting. I have pictures, but this Internet place doesn´t let you send photos, so I´ll have to do it another day.

Anywho. That´s all I have time for today. Everybody have a good week, and write me lots of letters. :)

Sister Jennifer Peart

RUA CAÁ-AÇU, 229

Belenzinho, São Paulo-SP

03171-020

Brazil

Interesting Week

Hello everyone!

So I was unable to figure out a way to take pictures of the graffiti without looking like a stupid American. So I´ll have to keep thinking of a way to do that.

There are many stories from this week, and let me explain to you why. We had interviews with the Mission President this week, and all was fine and dandy until he said the closing prayer. In his prayer he asked that Sister Peart would have interesting days and experiences in this mission. In my head I was like "Actually, I´m fine, thanks." Why would you do that to me President? Why? All I can think of is that he´s trying to help this blog become more popular by making my life crazy. Sheesh. Be careful with your prayers.

Also, keep in mind that most of the stories are not really related, and I´m just writing them as I remember them.

#1.  So the first sign that dear President´s prayer was being answered came the next morning. It was a little rainy and gross, and we were going to visit a lady named Marlí. As is the custom, my companion clapped outside the gate and yelled MARLÍ! Then I thought someone took our picture. In reality, it was not a picture. We almost got struck by lightning. Now, I know that I inherited my father´s love for exaggeration and hyperbole, but in this instance I am not exaggerating. It made all the car alarms go off, it blew out all the power in the streets (which they didn´t fix for like 2 days, by the way), and the thunder almost made me pee my pants. Well...skirt. All I could think was "Thanks President. You almost got me struck by lightning."

#2.  We were also teaching this adorable old man. I would tell you his name, but there is absolutely no way that I would spell it right, so we´ll call him Oliver. Anyway. We´re getting ready to teach this Oliver fellow, and I start to say the opening prayer. In the middle of the prayer, he gets up, walks into the next room, and I have no idea what he´s doing. I wasn´t sure if I should keep praying or not, so the prayer went something like: "Please help us to...have.....the Spirit........with us?.....what is he doing?" Turns out he doesn´t like the TV, so he figured that that moment was the perfect moment to go turn of the TV. Right. Unfortunately, we had to drop Mr. Oliver because he only wanted to talk about how we need to plant more vegetables in the yard of our church. Sad. 

#3.  I also got mooned for the first time since I´ve been on the mission. It was the first time for my companion as well, and she goes home in 3 weeks. So it looks like I´m ahead of the game here. Congratulations to me.

#4.  My companion also had the wonderful experience of trying to explain to a man on the metro, that not everyone in Texas is black. I was squished behind my companion, so I was not actually participating in the conversation, but I could hear her side, and it was quite humorous. This is what I heard: "We´re missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints......Yes, we´re from the United States.....She is from Texas......Yes, she´s white......Yes, she´s very white........Yes, there are white people in Texas.......No, not everyone is black......Well, yes, there are a lot of black people.......Well, obviously there is at least one white person from Texas......"  Yes, Mr. Highly-Observant-Man, I probably am the whitest person in Texas. Thank you, thank you.

#5.  Since my companion is important, she had to go to a Leader Council (or something) with some other important people. So I got paired up with the companion of another important sister, and we spent the day in her area. As soon as I got there, I realized how terrible this idea was. It was me, and a sister that arrived the same day I did....from the MTC. So we have me, who doesn´t speak Portuguese, and her, who doesn´t know what to do as a missionary. Perfect. With growing anxiety, I walk with her to their apartment so we can go over the lessons we had planned for the day. When we get there, she informs me that I´m in charge because I´m the one who has been out the longest. Awesome. Luckily, all our lessons cancelled, so all we had to do was try and make contacts all day. We pretty much wandered around, with me starting the conversations, and her finishing them when it was obvious that I had no idea what the people were saying. 

#6.  Something interesting about Brasil, is that no one here has a filter. Who would have thought that I would ever be in a situation where I was the one with the most affective brain-to-mouth filter? No one. At least we hoped that would never happen. For example, if you ask "Who is Bob?", they´re perfectly fine with saying "Oh, that fat man over there". Usually this is merely amusing, but while I was with this other sister I found myself on the receiving end. I was looking in the mirror and I was like "Oh, I have a zit!" She looks at my face and proceeds to say: "Yes. Many." Ouch. Lesson learned.

#7.  Another story with this sister. We were talking about the differences between American money and Brazillian money. She asked if we had a coin for $1. I informed her that we do, but that it´s not very common and we usually use paper. I was like "Yeah, we have paper bills for $1, $5, $20, $50, $100........and maybe $10. Do we have one for 10? I don´t know...I think we do....maybe we don´t. It doesn´t really make sense to only have a 5 and a 20 though....I CAN´T REMEMBER!" It was really distressing. I went through in my mind, picturing all the bills, but every time I thought of $10, all I saw in my mind was the red Brazillian 10. I was too embarrassed to ask my companion, so when we got home that night, I asked the other American sister that we live with. We do have a $10 bill guys, don´t worry. :)

#8.  The other day we were looking for an address we were given by some other missionaries, and we could NOT find it. We asked this old man if he knew the street and he informed us that he had lived here for 40 years and never heard of that street. He was super nice and went and got a phone book and map to help us anyway. While he was in the house, a few of his grandchildren came out and started talking to us. They were pretty shy at first, asking about us being missionaries and stuff. Then they asked where we were from and my companion said we were from the US. This little boy´s face lit up like she had informed him that today was Christmas. In about 2 minutes we were sitting on the sidewalk with a swarm of children around us. The were delighted by how terrible my Portuguese is, and proceeded to speak all the English they knew. Which did not make me feel very good about myself, because I think they speak better English than I speak Portuguese. It was pretty cute.

Here are some facts that I learned this week:

• It is so humid here that your scriptures will start to mold, just from sitting on the kitchen table.
• The runoff in the streets is not green because it´s clear water running over a buildup of moss; it is green because it´s sewer water.
• Tarantula´s carry about a thousand little babies on their backs.
• Brasil has candy made out of pig feet.
• Brasil does not have baking soda.
• Those cool little shops are not for tourists....they´re for Macumba.

We also had General Conference! Yay! We only got to go to the Sunday sessions though. We aren´t allowed to go to the Saturday sessions unless we bring investigators, and we couldn´t get anyone to go. But Sunday was cool! The first session we watched with some recent converts. In Portuguese. I understood about one or two sentences of each of the talks. Except for Elder Scott´s. Fun fact. Elder Scott does his own translation, so instead of having a live translation, they have a recording of him giving his talk in Portuguese. Except it is way harder to understand because he has an accent....

The while we were waiting for the second session, this man walked up to us and informed us that he could set up a room in English. I was all over that, so me and another sister who has only been here one transfer went and watched it in English. Much better. She felt guilty at first; like she should be watching it in Portuguese because she´s a missionary in Brasil. I informed her that: 

1. I felt absolutely no shame, 

2. I haven´t even been here three weeks, so anyone who expects me to be fluent in Portuguese at this point is, quite frankly, an idiot.

3. I need someone to go with me, so she was serving me.

After that she agreed to go, and in the end was very glad that she did.

OH MY GOODNESS! I ALMOST FORGOT THE BEST STORY! It´s been almost a week, and I still bust up laughing every time I think about it. That´s why I almost forgot...I had to stop thinking about it because I look like a crazy person when I´m laughing all by myself. I´m just going to copy it right out of my journal. It happened Monday night, but I couldn´t write it down until Tuesday morning.

"I almost killed a man last night. We were on the ónibus, way in the back where they don´t have any buttons. (You have to push the button to tell the driver to stop at the next stop. I didn´t know that before I got here...obviously not a city girl) I´m sitting there, staring out the window, when my companion is like 'Push the button Sister Peart!'

I have my purse on already, so I grab my giant, heavy shopping bag in one hand, and my giant, 3-foot long umbrella in the other. I try to quickly, but gracefully, hurry down the stairs to the nearest button. Of course, the driver decides to turn right then, so I end up hurtling down the stairs and flying towards this poor, innocent man. He sees me coming, totally out of control, and his face turns into this mixture of fear and utter panic. In the end, I think I bashed him in the head with the shopping bag and almost stabbed out his eyes with the umbrella that I was holding like a spear. After the bus stopped, I exited quickly, with as much dignity as I could muster."

I know there is no way I can describe just how funny this was. Even as I was typing it, I was cracking up. I can still see that poor man´s face in my head. Everyone is looking at me like I´m an idiot, but for all they know, I could be reading a funny story that someone emailed me....I think a lot of the staring is because my nose is really runny, so I´m trying to not laugh, breathe, and not shoot snot all over this computer at the same time....

Anywho. That´s all I have for this week. Hopefully you thought at least one of the stories was funny. :)

Have a good week!

Sister Peart