Brazillian Christmas

Hey yáll,

First things first. Christmas. People don´t really do anything here on Christmas Day. They have big parties on Christmas Eve, open their presents, and then wake up and eat leftovers on Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we ran around like crazy, trying to give presents to all of our investigators and recent converts. Then we went to Vila Ré and watched the Joseph Smith movie with the Sisters there. Then a irmão in our ward called and was upset that we weren´t planning on going to their house for Christmas Eve. So we went there too. Santa came...several times....most of those times he was sober. There was lots of food, candy, and a Christmas tree. My favorite part was the spiritual lesson. This Irmã cut out a paper christmas tree and had people write what Jesus is to them on little paper ornaments and put them on the tree. So much false doctrine. Then we went home.

Christmas Day we went back to their house for lunch, then we went to a family´s house to Skype our families. That was pretty sweet. Only one computer was working right, so I ended up skyping on a cell phone. Which worked out fine. Except it started raining and the power went out for a minute, so that was a bit of an interruption. I didn´t realize until that moment that the power goes out a lot. I had noticed that the traffic lights all go out when it rains (because it makes crossing the street considerably more difficult), but I hadn´t processed it enough to realize the power goes off in the houses too. The power is kind of weak here...

This week we also had a training for the start of the new year....it ended up being super embarrassing. My first transfer here I had an interview with President, and I pointed out some things that bothered me. Because he asked. Then, he kept bringing them up every time he saw me. Every time. Whenever he saw me he would say "Sister Peart! I´m writing a new big list of mission rules, just for you!" And I would die and just start praying that he wasn´t going to tell the whole mission that they were getting a bunch of new rules because of me.

So we get to this training, and President says "Sister Peart, I know you´re going to LOVE this training!" I started to get nervous. The assistants gave their trainings on goals and obedience, and then the President got up to go through the packet of rules they had handed out. He got up there. I started praying. He started talking....and then out of the blue: "Sister Peart! Do you remember when we had that interview when you first got on the mission?" I started to die. The assistant gave me the hand microphone as President continued to ask me (from the pulpit) a bunch of very pointed questions. I very pointedly denied any involvement. So he gave up asking me to incriminate myself in front of three zones of missionaries, and just started explaining it. Luckily, they had given me a microphone to defend myself. So in the end I think people accepted the fact that I was not trying to ruin the missionaries´ lives. But I did like the packet of rules. :)

As for getting fatter. Everyone says that they can´t notice that I´m gaining weight. But I know for a fact that this is a lie, because it´s only the Americans that say that. The Brazillians have no fear of the truth. There have already been two or three Irmãs that have told me I look so much better now that I´ve gotten fatter. Then, we went to visit one of our investigators. Her sister, who we haven´t seen in almost two months, was there and said "Wow, you´ve gotten fatter since we last saw you!" End of the story.

Yesterday I got to enjoy the fact that we live in Brasil. We were walking home, when Sister Bruno pointed out that one of the houses on our street has a giant avacado tree that hangs over into the road. We spent a few well-deserved minutes trying to pick avacados off this huge tree. In the end, I managed to pick two of them. But only by literally standing on Sister Bruno. Success.

Last night Sister Bruno and I also created a new game to play. It´s called, "Was that thunder, or a firework?" It´s actually pretty fun. Sometimes it´s hard to tell, and sometimes they go off at the same time. But then it started raining/hailing super hard, so we had to plan for our day really fast so I could take a shower before the power went out.

Speaking of showers. THE BISHOP FIXED OUR SHOWER! It´s even BETTER than it was before! Turns out that the water pressure was so low that it wasn´t activating the heater thingie. At least that´s what I gathered from all the Portuguese plumbing terms. Moral of the story: we have a shower.

To end this week´s letter, I´ll leave you with a lovely quote taken out of context. These are always my favorite.

"How did she not notice that a bird pooped on her eye?!"

Happy New Year,

Sister Peart

Feliz Natal!

Hey yáll!

I´m pretty sure this has been the longest week of my entire life. Just so you know. First things first. There is a new Elder in my zone who happens to be BROTHER BELL´S NEPHEW! Figured I´d capitalize that for emphasis. Elder Bell. Poor guy. He got here a day late, so he had to introduce himself the next week, all by himself. The other elders kind of destroyed him, but I don´t think he understood what they were saying, so everything´s fine.

So that was Monday. When we got home from the zone meeting Monday night, we found another cockroach. Tuesday was the mission Christmas Conference, so we were going to have to get up super early, and I was NOT in the mood to deal with this cockroach all night. If it had been in the kitchen, I probably would have left it, but it was in the bedroom. While I was going to fetch the broom, the wind slammed the front door shut, so the roach fell behind the giant dresser. After moving around the huge dresser to hunt for the stupid bug, I found it. And it, of course, started running right for my bed. Not ok. What followed was what can only be described as a short game of murderous hockey. I kept swatting it away from my bed, trying to get it into a place where I could effectively kill it before it started flying, and it kept trying to go to the bed. Finally I got it out and destroyed it. That is the most accurate word. Destroyed it. Guts everywhere. It actually smelled REALLY bad after I smashed it. Also, this morning while I was sweeping the bedroom I found more cockroach legs. I killed it good and dead. Success. :)

Tuesday: Christmas Conference was ok. Bit of an awkward moment when an Elder pretty much started confessing his love for a Sister over the pulpit during the testimony meeting. But hey, it happens. Worst part was that we had to get up at 4:30am to get there on time. Took the metro during all of the worst times to take the metro. Those times where you pack in and all rules about missionary appropriate physical contact fly out the window. I always want to cover myself in Law of Chastity pamphlets during those times. We were traveling with another set of sisters, and on the way there we lost one. We got to our stop, and we all tried so hard to get off the train, but it just didn´t happen. Except one lone sister managed to get off. By herself. Poor girl. She had to wait until we could get off at the next stop, catch the metro going the opposite direction, and find her.

Wednesday: We were talking with this recent convert, and she was telling us about how that morning they had gotten the call that her cousin´s wife had died. Apparently they were pretty close and she was telling us about how her mom (who lives with her) had been crying all day and all this stuff. Sister Bruno was telling her that everything will be ok, and even though it´s sad, we have the gosepl, etc. Except, in the middle of the sentence she stopped talking. I looked over and she had fallen asleep. Right in the middle of her comforting sentence. Yeah, the mission is probably the most tiring (is that a word?) experience of my life so far.

When we got home Wednesday night we found that we didn´t have any power. We went to our neighbor´s house, and she called the power company for us. Turns out, that the Elder, who was living in our house before us, never paid the power bill from SEPTEMBER. Unfortunately, he went home a couple weeks ago, so I was not able to strangle him. She let us come over Thursday morning and use her shower though, since we wouldn´t have hot water.

Thursday: We went to the mission office for an interview with President and all that jazz. Paid the bill. They turned the power back on.

Friday: Went to go take a shower that morning, and made the worst discovery of my life. Even though they turned our power back on, the shower still wasn´t working. I don´t understand how this works, but the water in the bathroom is SIGNIFICANTLY colder than the water in the kitchen sink. I´m pretty sure it´s being taken from an undiscovered glacier pool in the Amazon. Turns out the shower is broken. So yeah. It´s Monday again, and the situation is becoming fairly stinky.

I honestly can´t remember what happened on Saturday. It´s all a blur.

Sunday: They called me up to say the prayer in sacrament meeting. This wouldn´t be so bad if they planned things in advance, instead of randomly calling people out of the congregation. It also wouldn´t have been so bad if he had remembered my name....."We´ll have the closing prayer by Sister....Sister.....the Sister from Texas." Thanks. Worst part is, we spent a LOT of time in this man´s house, because we taught and baptized his soon-to-be son-in-law. Don´t worry though. I chewed him out in front of the representative from the stake. :)

But yeah. I could write more...but I don´t want to. :) Hope everybody has a good Christmas and New Year and all that jazz. I´m going to be sunburned in all of these Christmas pictures. Weird.

Feliz Natal!

Sister Peart

My oh my!

Hello all,

This was a crazy week. Really, yesterday was just a crazy day, and now I´m looking at the past week through a filter of crazy. But first things first.

I did what I´ve always wanted to do. Bought bread from the bread man. He rides around on a bike with trays of bread, with this obnoxious, but very distinctive, horn. Sister Bruno and I were dying of hunger in the street one evening when I heard the bread horn squeaking. We stopped dead in the middle of the street to see where he would appear. When he came into view I waved him down like a crazy person. Then, after a couple seconds, I waved him down like three more times. Just for good measure. I was really hungry. 

I also learned how to fly a kite like a moleque this week. All of the street boys run around in the streets flying kites. It makes walking in the street a little dangerous, since you always have to be aware of the strangulation hazards. But hey, they say São Paulo is dangerous, right? Anyways. These kids get these crappy little kites, and they get them SUPER high up in the air. I don´t know how, since they have to weave them through ten feet of intense power lines, but they do. Then, when the kites get up there, they fight each other. They try and cut the lines of the other kites. When a string gets cut, it´s finders keepers. We were sitting there with Guilherme the other day, and in the middle of his sentence he shot off without warning. We were both really confused, but he came back with the kite. Then, the other day, we were watching the kite fights with Guilherme and Steven. We saw one drift our way and Guilherme grabbed the line when it got stuck on the roof. Then we got to fly it for a little bit. It ended up getting cut again though, and we watched as all the kids stampeded down the street to catch it. Fun stuff.

Most importantly, Sol got baptized yesterday! It was the craziest baptism I have EVER seen. She has asthma and some other unidentified health problems, so after she got baptized she passed out and two other men had to jump in the water, in their Sunday clothes, to keep her from drowning right there in the baptismal font. After we woke her up, we realized she´d lost all control of her legs and feet. She ended up having to be carried everywhere after that. As of last night, she still hadn´t regained full control of her legs. Most stressful baptism ever.

Anywho. That´s pretty much all I can remember about this week. I´m sure other things happened, but they´ve all been overwhelmed by the emotional distress of thinking your investigator is going to drown during her baptism.

Boa semana!

Sister Peart

Updated tan line

Craziest baptism ever

My companion, Sister Bruno. Who is probably the shortest missionary here. 4'11''. With Elder Tall (we forgot his real name), who was on the same airplane with me to get here. He´s probably the tallest missionary here. 6'7''. They´re both from South Carolina.

12/09/2013

Hey Yáll!

It was an interesting week. The last week of the transfer is always interesting. As I´m sitting here, I´m stressing out about what is going to happen with transfers. They call us Monday night, and transfers are at 9am Tuesday morning. Not cool. I´m pretty sure ours is the ONLY mission that gives such late notice. But whatever.

I forgot the list of stories in our house, so I´ll have to go with what I remember and fill in the rest next week. Sorry. :/

First of all, we got a new cell phone! Yay! My companion has yet to get a new public transportation card, since we don´t know where to get one, but it´s a work in progress.

Our new house is a dream. There is someone who lives nearby that has what is either a VERY annoying dog, or a piglet. It´s very loud during the night times. Plus, the other day I came home to find that in the hours since I had made my bed in the morning, as giant spider had moved in and made his nasty web on my bed and everything. Gross.

Speaking of gross things, our house is apparently infested with cockroaches. Never in my life had I killed a cockroach before the mission, but these Brazillian cockroaches put the little ones in St. George to shame. Two nights ago we came home and there was a huge one on the floor. But when we tried to kill it, it just ran INSIDE the couch. My suspicion that the couch is filthy has been confirmed, and I´m very glad I´ve been refusing to sit on it this whole time. Last night, when we came home, there was a giant roach up on the wall near the ceiling. Probably the same one. We were wondering how we were going to kill it, when another, even bigger, roach started running/flying up the wall. At that point I was like "Screw it, we´re getting the neighbor´s kid."

We dragged this poor boy Guilherme away from his computer and when we got back the cockroaches were (according to my companion) breaking the law of chastity. I´m pretty sure they were just standing next to each other, but she swears she knows what was going on. Guilherme tried to kill them, but they both just fell down and disappeared. Then he went back to his computer game. I didn´t feel like I could make him try again since that was the first time I´ve ever spoken to the poor boy.

So instead we made the Elders come over. They took forever, and pretty much dismantled the entire kitchen, but eventually they killed both, and ended up finding a third. Then, on the way out, they found another on the stairs and kind of killed it. I´m pretty sure cockroaches don´t die. But at least they broke all the legs and all they could do was lay on their back and move their feelers. Gross.

I also had to share this realization I had this week. So the public bathrooms here don´t have toilet paper in the stalls. There´s one giant roll in the front of the bathroom, and you have to get your toilet paper first. Super annoying, because I´m always analyzing how much I´m going to use, worried that I won´t have enough. But then I feel like people are going to judge me for wasting toilet paper if I take too much. It´s quite an ordeal. But as I was sitting there this week (people watching), I realized that the worst part is that everyone in that bathroom can take one look at how much toilet paper you took, and know EXACTLY what kind of restroom visit you plan on taking. I found it extrememly amusing, but only because I wasn´t the one using the bathroom.

This week I also received an award-winning backhanded compliment. We were teaching this man, who was actually super annoying, about the Restoration. He kept inturrupting every five minutes to ask us if we wanted pineapple. But anyway. I was sitting there, talking about the Atonement and the role of Jesus Cristo in our lives, and he was like: "Have you ever thought about getting smaller lenses in your glasses?"

I was a little confused about what that had to do with Jesus, and responded with a very profound "huh?" He proceeded to tell me, that if I got smaller lenses in my glasses, that I could go back to the United States and find a boyfriend real quick. Ouch. Before the lesson we had already established that he thought we were marriage rejects, and that´s why we were on a mission. So that stung. But Sister Bruno says that he was trying to say he thinks I´m pretty. Who knows. Crazy pineapple man. The worst part is that I didn´t even know how to bring that back to Jesus. So I just ignored it and moved on. And then he asked if we were sure we didn´t want pineapple. Then he got mad that we were saying that we had the true church of Cristo and he started going off about American imperialism. As he drank a glass of Coke. Whatever.

BUT, my dear little friend Hamilton loves me. He´s 2 or 3 years old and he´s the son of our recent convert and he LOVES the sisters. We´ve gotten him to the point that he can almost say "sister". It´s a milestone, let me tell you. So now he calls me Sister Peter. Because that´s what his mom calls me. Anyway. He was talking with Sister Bruno and she asked "Do you like Sister Peter?" And he said "Yes.....I like princesses." HaHA! Princess. That´s me. Then she said "Do you like me?" And he said "Yes........I like balloons." 3 year old logic, you´ve gotta love it.

I´m sure there are some things I´m forgetting, but I´m almost out of time on this computer, so it´ll have to wait until next week. :/

Have a good week everyone!

Sister Peart

Our Thanksgiving Feast

The Elders killed the cockroaches

Guilherme getting ready to pass the sacrament in his new white shirt.

12/2/2013

Hey everyone!

Boy, I have a lot of stories for this week, but I think they´re all going to be trumped by the reason why I only have a little bit of time to do emails today.

So in the middle of São Paulo they have this giant market. It´s got probably the best fruit in the entire world, but you have to pay out the nose for it. They also have a bunch of little crafty vendor people from other countries. Anyway. We decided to go there today and take a look. We weren´t 100% sure if was inside our mission or not, but we went anyways. It was pretty cool. Bought some cool stuff, tried some tasty fruits (for free), saw a bunch of tourists (they´re funny), etc. Then, when we were done, some of the other sisters decided they wanted to go to this really tall bank where you can go up to the top and take a picture of the whole city. I voted no, since we would have to walk through a part of the city that we definitely are not supposed to go in without permission, but we ended up going anyways. (Just had to throw that in so yáll know that the following events are NOT my fault)

We walked towards the bank. The shyest, sweetest, newest sister pretty much got attacked by a Jack Sparrow street actor. We got to the bank and only and 2 other sisters and I could even go up to the top because we were the only ones with ID. It was going to be a half hour wait before we could even start the tour thing, so we ended up not going anyway. And then. We parted ways. My companion and I headed for the metro. Entered the metro. Went to use our metro cards and.....discovered that my companion had been robbed. Awesome. Now she doesn´t have a public transportation card, and we don´t have our cell phone. Obedience brings blessings folks. :P

So now we don´t have a lot of time because we need to sort out this mess.

We also got to go to the hospital this week. For two weeks now my companion has been getting a horrible cough at night. Only when she tries to go to bed. She starts coughing so hard that she throws up for like 15 minutes. Every night. Problem. Finally she called the President´s wife and she said we could go to the hospital. Problem #2: we didn´t know how to get to the hospital. The secretary in the mission office told us what metro to take, which Ónibus to take afterwards, and then told us to just ask the driver where to get off. Totally fine. Except that the people in that particular area are horrible. The driver never told us where to get off, and after going in the wrong direction for half an hour, this lady told us to get off and catch a bus going the other direction. We did that and asked THAT driver to tell us where to get off. Except he didn´t. So then, we ended up causing a scene and everyone on the bus got really mad at us, but hey. Who cares? Not me. We finally got off at the right stop, and then it started pouring down rain, so that was a fun walk to the hospital. We got there, neither of us had ever been to a hospital in Brasil....so we ended up dripping water all over the poor information lady´s desk while she explained the health care system of Brasil.

In the end, they took an x-ray, and she doesn´t have pneumonia. She´s just allergic to the pollution in the air. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned it before, but the pollution here is absolutely terrible. They also gave her a prescription that we didn´t have enough money to buy. :)

The next day was THANKSGIVING! :D Sadly, Thanksgiving is just another normal day here. But we wanted to make it special. That morning we looked at what we could use to make a feast...and remembered that the only food in our new house is salt, oil, and an unopened package of fake coffee. Plan B was to go the store and buy something to eat....but the mission allowance didn´t go through. So between us, we had 1 cent. The most ironic part of this is that Brasil doesn´t even use a 1 cent coin. Someone gave it to me as change because they thought it was a 5 cent piece. So we had an old, valueless, 1 cent piece. Hmmmmmm.

After a very trying Thanksgiving day, we gave up and went to the store to buy a lime pie with our personal debit cards. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. I also bought a bar of chocolate, but the termites got into it before I could finish it....sad.

The funniest thing that happened this week, was by far the BEST rejection I have ever seen. I always enjoy seeing the ways people come up with to avoid talking to us, but this one takes the cake.

We walked up to this guy who was sitting on a wall and my companion said hi and went to shake his hand. He avoided the handshake and just gave a thumbs up. Undeterred, she started to talk to him and he started gesturing about how he´s deaf. I was sitting there trying to see if I remembered any sign language, when I saw that he was sitting there with a PHONE in his hand. A house phone. Not even a cell phone that you can use to text. A completely normal house phone. Sister Bruno tried to give him a pamphlet, which he turned down, since apparently fake deaf people also can´t read. I barely made it around the corner before I started cracking up.

These next two stories pretty much explain why an old man here once asked if I was a vampire. We were talking to this girl in her house, and she was talking about my companion´s green eyes. Then she told me I had dark eyes. I was like...what? My eyes are blue. She was like No, your eyes are black! I was like no....I just have abnormally large pupils. After stealing my glasses and performing an uncomfortably intense analysis she agreed that I just had freakishly large pupils. Then everyone who lived in the house had to come see. So that´s why people never talk about my light eyes. They think I have black eyes. That´s interesting.

Second. We had a stake FHE last night and we were taking a picture with our district leader because he goes home in a week. His companion was taking the picture, and after a couple pictures he started asking how to turn off the flash. We asked why, and he informed the whole room that I wasn´t showing up in the pictures because I was too white, so he wanted to try it without the flash. 

Moral of the story? I really am a vampire...

Also at that FHE. All the missionaries in the stake were sitting up on the stand and after they closed the meeting they announced over the pulpit that they had found a cell phone in the bathroom. I automatically knew it was ours. And it was. And they made fun of us in front of the whole stake. Thanks.

This last story is a little embarrassing, and a little bit gross, but it´s too funny to keep to myself. :)

We got to lunch yesterday and we commented on how the lady had rearranged her kitchen. She was like "Yeah, the walls were super dirty and it was driving me crazy, so when I cleaned them I just rearranged everything." And they are very clean walls. Perfect white with little flowers sprinkled on them. Very cute. We ate lunch and everything, and then she brought out the dessert, which happened to be red jello. We started eating the jello and everything was fine and dandy until I put a huge spoonful of jello in my mouth. Out of nowhere I got a randomly HUGE sneeze. With a mouthful of red jello. After the sneeze I assessed the damage and realized that I had sprayed red jello all over my hand. Gross. She gave me some toilet paper, and I cleaned it up. After lunch, I was helping her clean up and I saw that there was half-dried red jello sprayed on her nice clean, white wall. I started wiping at it with the toilet paper, but it was too late. I informed her and she was super nice and said it was no problem. Shame. Burning with shame.

Anywho, that´s all I have time for! Sorry everyone that I didn´t email back!

Tchau!

Sister Peart