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