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
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