Surprise again!

Oh hey!

So I have had many many people telling me that I should keep writing on this blog. I tried to explain that the adventures-of-a-broken-ex-missionary-as-she-courageously-sits-on-her-couch-all-day can't really compare to the stories of the past year. But I will try my best.

I guess I should start with Physical Therapy. I am currently doing PT once a week at a sports fitness place. My therapist (Troy? Possibly Tony.) is very nice(ish), went to BYU, RM, blah blah blah, It took an impressive amount of time to convince him that I don't DO anything. I realize that it could be confusing, since we're at a sports place, but I had to firmly inform him that I live a very sedentary lifestyle and am horrible at all forms of physical activity. It's pretty much a miracle that I can successfully walk and breathe at the same time. My father informed me today that I have been this way ever since I was about 4 months old. With that positive outlook, I don't really see this fact changing in the near future.

So we set our forward-thinking goal as working up to being able to walk around campus all day. Just in time for Fall semester. I like it. Simple. Achievable. Realistic.

I am happy to report that it's going well. The first day he had me doing some exercises that were deceptively simple. I was doing them and feeling pretty proud of myself, because they really were't that difficult. He told me to do them every day and come back in a week. My mindset was definitely one of pride. That kind that comes before the fall. The next day I could barely walk because my muscles were on fire. Careful with physical therapists; they are quite tricky.

I also got called on to substitute for the sophomore seminary class. For 6 days. In case y'all weren't aware, I am NOT a morning person. Read as much emphasis into that as you can. I hate the mornings. It was pretty lucky that they were great kids, because otherwise we may have had problems. It went pretty well. I only caught myself relapsing into Portuguese a few times. They were nice. Quiet. Which could be considered a problem, but if it becomes between a 45 minute monologue and having to struggle for control of a talkative class.....I'll take the monologue any day. Luckily it was only 6 days, so I could get back to my intense sleeping schedule. Guess they didn't want me corrupting the young, impressionable minds of the Church's future leadership. Perfect.

Other than that, it's been a lot of tying up loose ends, and starting up things that have been on hold. Also, in case you were wondering, you actually CAN get culture shock coming back to your native country. Strange, but it happens. 

Sorry that this is all I can remember right now. I know there's probably a couple more things that happened in the past three weeks, but we can't use up all the stories in one sitting, right?

Have a good week!

Surprise!

Hey Y'all!

So probably most of you are aware that I am no longer in Brasil. Turns out that walking missions don't have much use for missionaries that can't walk. So they sent me home. I got the results of the MRI on Friday, my mission president showed them to the mission doctor on Saturday (who said, "Absolutely  not, get her out of here or she will break her foot in half"), and I flew out Sunday night. It all happened rather quickly. On the plus side, if you ride through the airport with a boot and a wheelchair, you get to cut all the lines. Fun fact.

So here I am! I guess this is the end of the blog, because nobody wants to read about how I sat on the couch all this week, watching movies and knitting a blanket. Doesn't have quite the same appeal.

I just want to say thought that I am really grateful for the opportunity to have served as a missionary. I learned a lot; none of the things I thought I would learn, but it was all a good lesson. I also want to say thanks to everybody who read. Knowing that I could turn around and write my experiences on the blog helped me get through some rather unpleasant situations. Like projectile vomiting in the street. I was able to turn to my companion and say: "Well at least this will make a good story." And while I'm pretty sure she questioned my sanity at those moments, it still helped. :)

Hopefully at some point I achieved my goal, which was to give the view of missionary life outside all the spiritual moments. Because everybody has been on the mass email list of missionaries. I have, and I will totally own up to what happens. They all write the exact same thing; spiritual moments, awesome lessons, awesome investigators, awesome meetings, etc, and after about 7 weeks I stop reading them. They never write about what life is like outside of missionary work. So I decided I would. I hoped that if I did that, people wouldn't put my emails in their spam mail. :)

So thanks everyone! Keep remembering all those missionaries who are having these same experiences, but they're just too classy to tell you about them. :) Send them some love, say your prayers, go to church, etc.

Love,
Sister Peart

Wooooo!

Hey Yáll!

So, news on the foot. That stupid doctor put another cast on my foot last week, right? At about 12:30pm. It was very annoying and constructed in a way that I could not move my pinkie toe. I took it off at 9:00pm Tuesday. But it´s ok, I took pictures. :)

So we gave up with the stupid doctor in the stupid hospital and decided we would go to a better hospital. One that´s farther away, but I had already been there, so I knew it was good. A member was going to drive us early this morning, but then she decided it would be a shame to waste our p-day (too true), so she offered to take us Sunday night to a foot hospital instead. After Conference we started off. When we were just about to get there, the car broke down in the middle of the road and after an hour it was clear that it was not going anywhere by itself. So we ended up riding back home in a taxi. No hospital.

But the secretaries made us promise to go to the hospital on Monday. So off Sister Alldredge and I went to the farther away hospital. On p-day. Again. We weren´t sure how to get there, so we asked for directions. When we got there, it looked more like a prison. I didn´t remember that detail. Then we found out that someone had led us to the government hospital. Not what we wanted. So we walked the mile to the other hospital. It was super nice, and super quick. Perfect.

This doctor was approximately five thousand times better than the other one. He looked at my foot, had me do some exercises to see which ones hurt and asked about any other tests I had done. He said he was pretty sure that he figured out what it is, so now we just have to go back tomorrow to do an MRI and make sure. And he didn´t put a cast on. They did give me a shot in my butt, which was a little bit traumatizing. Especially because it wasn´t even in the hospital. We had to walk all over the place to find a random drug store that was willing to carry out this rather specific prescription. And because when I sat down, I gave the lady my arm, and she looked at me like I was an idiot, while informing me the needle was not going into my arm. But what do you do?

Anywho. That´s about all that happened this week. I got to go to all four sessions of Conference, being a cripple and all, so that was pretty sweet. All the members of our ward judged me hard core for taking off my own cast. I was chastised. A lot. But oh well. :)

Also! I got a bunch of cards from the Young Women in the ward! Super awesome! I got to read them all in the break between Conference sessions. The other three Sisters thought they were pretty sweet. So thanks guys!

Have a great week!

Sister Peart

 

Wheeeeeeee!

Piggybacks don´t work on the way to church because you have to wear a skirt. Yay for girls camp and learning the two-man carry!

To church!

Wheelchair at church.

Giraffe, work in progress.

Giraffe, finished product.

At the hospital with cast #2.

Hey yáll!

So I did nothing this week. And by nothing I mean that up until Sunday I only left my bed to use the bathroom. Sunday we found a wheelchair in the chapel and I went to church. Then I decided to go to lunch. Bad choice. I ended up hopping so much that not only was my left foot in a cast, but my right knee hurt so bad that I couldn´t stand on it. I was reduced to trying to decided which was more dignified; letting Sister Nestor carry me to the bathroom, or crawling.

In better news, we went to the doctor again today. They took an ultrasound of my foot, which came back normal. So now we have no idea what it is, it´s not better, and this doctor guy wants us to go to a different hospital this week, take an MRI, and come back next Monday. My faith in the Brazillian medical system is waning. We´re still waiting on Sister Ferrin to see if we´re going to do that or not. BUT, they had to take the cast off to do the ultrasound! Yay! The nurse really liked the giraffe that Sister Alldredge drew on it. Afterwards the doctor had them put another cast back on. Booo! He said it was to keep me from walking on it. I think it´s supposed to keep me from moving my foot a lot, but don´t worry. I wiggled my foot so much last week that by the time we got to the doctor today, the cast was nice and loose. :) That´s probably why they wrapped this one significantly tighter.

So yeah. Other than that, there´s not a whole lot to report. I´ve given up trying to retain any sort of dignity while receiving piggyback rides everywhere, so I just embrace it. Wave, say hi to people, etc. On the way back from the LAN house last week we straight up hitch-hiked half of the way home. Because we live towards the top of a hill/mountain. I figured our lives were safer in the hands of an obviously religious couple than trying to piggyback up said hill/mountain. Good times.

I also almost finished Sister Day´s entire book of crossword puzzles. Success. Read a lot of scriptures. Painted my nails. Good times. Sorry there´s not very much to say.

Hope yáll have a great week!

Sister Peart

The Foot!

Hey Yáll,

So this week has been...interesting. We didn´t do a whole lot. We did go to the hospital twice, but other than that we stayed home...

Sister Ferrin was afraid that I had gotten a stress fracture in my foot. After hospital trip #2 (which took 5 hours of our p-day today) it was diagnosed as tendonitis. They gave me a cast up to my knee. I think that was a little over-dramatic, but they were very insistant that I not move my foot or walk at all for an entire week. So yeah. As soon as we finish emailing, we´re going to go home and stay in bed for another week. Awesome.

BUT! Cristina got baptized this weekend! She got baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday, which isn´t the norm around here. She just really wanted to get confirmed as soon as possible. It was great. She´s amazing. Very very smart. I ´m not sure if I already explained about her, but we´ve been working with her for a while. She lived in the US for 20 years or something, so she knows English really well. She´s very very smart. 

Well. Sorry this is like the lamest email ever. Concentrating is hard. I sent lots of pictures instead.

Have a good week! Take pity on me and write me letters! I´ll probably write some this week too since I won´t be doing much else.... :)

Sister Peart

Me and Sister Alldredge with my undiagnosed foot issues and after she blew out her knee and collapsed in the middle of the street. Good times.

Cristina's baptism

Me and Sister Day

Me and Sister Alldredge

Sister Alldredge wrapping the foot in plastic. Just in case it started raining during my piggy-back to the Lan house (where I can email).

 

Popular!

Hey yáll!

I got so many emails today! I feel so popular, thanks!

I made a list this week of all the things to write, so it should be easier. :)

The first few experiences were some lovely instances of culture shock for my new companion. Poor thing. I´ve decided that training is actually pretty great, because there is never a dull moment.

First things first. We saw a girl who got hit by a car. We didn´t see her actually get hit, but we got there right afterwards. She was yelling a lot about a broken foot. But considering how far she flew, she probably broke some other things as well. We didn´t know what to do, but we decided that it would be rather insensitive to do contacts with the crowd that had gathered. As we left, she started yelling about how she had just gotten robbed on Saturday. It was only Tuesday. Poor lady.

That same day we went and visited a couple who were interested in learning English. We told them that we couldn´t just teach them English, we had to teach them the gospel too. They agreed, but they are already very active in a different church. I forgot to warn my companion that a lot of other churchs here pray differently than we do. I think she was a little disconcerted at first, but she took it pretty well. They just use veils when they pray and anyone can say anything during the prayer if they ´feel the spirit´.

There was a giant spider crawling on my arm during a lesson this week. Gross.

Speaking of nasty bugs, we were going to lunch one day when we got attacked by this gross bug. We all walked out of the apartment complex and this bug landed on Sister Alldredge. I, being the super helpful person that I am, screamed, "Ohmygosh there is weird Brazillian bug on your arm!!" She started flailing around, trying to see it/ get it off when it flew off and landed on the side of my companion´s head! She didn´t see it, so Sister Alldredge, also a very helpful person, screamed, "Ohmygosh it´s on your face!" Obviously perturbed, Sister Day called for assistence, and as we were trying to help, the bug flew again at Sister Alldredge. It then proceded to chase her as she ran, screaming, down the hill. Then it flew away. Brazillian bugs are brats.

Best of all, we got to teach an English class this week! For one person. Because he was the only one that showed up. But it was still great. We were trying to teach about the past tense, and we unfortunately picked the verb ´to sleep´. Sister Day wrote it on the board and pronounced it. "Sleeped. Sleeeeeeped." We all stared at it for a second. Sister Alldredge finally said, "I´m pretty sure it´s actually sleeped. Like Sleh-pehd." More staring. Sister Nestor finally resonded, "Actually guys, I´m pretty sure it´s slept." Obviously, being American does not qualify one to be an English teacher.

Anyway, time has been cut short by my popularity today.

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

My companion, Sister Day

Sister Day took a secret picture. I would have tried to walk more attractively had I known...I was on the phone, that´s why I didn't notice.

My new area

 

Transfers!

Hey yáll!

Sister Peart, Bruna, Sister Andrus

Sister Andrus, Cristina, Sister Peart

 

So, transfers happened and now I´m training a new American, Sister Day. She was the only American Sister that got there that day, and she´s mine! Muahahahaha. :) By some miracle she got her visa before her report date, so she spent all 6 weeks in the Brasil MTC. She´s pretty cool, she´s from Kentucky, she´s 19. She thinks I´m funny, so we get along great. :)

I didn´t keep track of all the funny things that happened this week. Sorry. :/ New planner and everything. Next week I´ll do better. 

So Sister Day came to Brasil in January. Therefore she is super white and we draw a lot of attention. It´s also been raining every day, so she hasn´t had an opportunity to tan. On Saturday night we were finishing up the day and I was figuring out which route to take home. I explained to her my thought process; "Well, right now we are looking super American. And the people seem especially drunk this evening, so I´m making an executive decision. We are not taking the quick way home, as it involves cutting across several unlit, rather sketchy, drug filled back allyways. Which means we´ll have to walk in a big cirlce, alright?" I thought she might be sad about that, since we had walked a lot that day. Her response: "That´s alright, I need to walk off that chocolate bar we ate today so we can eat those cupcakes when we get home." That´s my filha. I am teaching her well.

She clearly has a very positive outlook on life. She showed that on her first full day in the field. Right when we went out to work, it started raining. A lot. A lot a lot. As we were heading to our area, we came to the first river. Usually it´s just a road, but that day the situation was a little wetter than normal. There was no way around it, so we just had to wade through it. This happened three times, just to get to our area. Obviously, no one wanted to talk to us, or let us in, so we walked around in the pouring rain for about 4 hours. After the first couple hours, she turns to me and is exclaims, "This is so awesome!!" With a carefully blank face I asked her to please explain, while searching for signs of sarcasm. She said, "Now I can say that I´ve been stuck in a tropical storm in Brasill!" That´s very true. She definitely earned the right to make that claim. Awesome indeed. :)

I also realized that my self-confidence is going to take a nose dive when I get back. Sister Day was like "Sister Peart, I saw three different guys check you out today." My first thought was, "Only three"? Then I saw the problem. Here I walk around in whatever clothes happen to be cleanest, whether or not they match. I don´t do my hair, my makeup ran out a long time ago, and my face appears to be allergic to São Paulo. And people still tell me I´m pretty. I´m going to return to the United States one day, start wearing matching clothes, start wearing makeup, start trying to control my skin condition, and yet I´m still going to be a "sweet spirit". If I´m lucky. Otherwise I´ll go back to being a "rather-sassy-and-way-too-sarcastic spirit". Oh well. What can you do?

In other news, the time has come to start getting rid of the foot tan line. I want to be able to wear normal shoes when I get home, so I figure it doesn´t hurt to start now. Even though it´s still another 8 months. Summer is on the downhill now, so I have to take advantage of what´s left. Today I will purchase some sandals. This is a momental occasion on so many levels. Because I never wear sandals, even at home. So yáll can be proud of me. And feel free to send me a letter expressing just how proud you are of me. :)

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

Oosh!

Oi gente!

This was a long, funny week. I already told yáll about the conference we had on Monday. It was good. We have another one this Thursday. We are popular with the General Authorities. :)

First of all, big thanks to the cub scouts in my home ward! I got a Christmas package at the conference, and I was super confused as to who it was from. I pulled out a bunch of homemade Christmas cards from various children I didn´t know. Then I pulled out the card explaining that the cubscouts sent me cards! Cute! I liked them a lot. :)

Most of the hilarious stories this week have to do with the Portuguese/English language barrier. (Is that how you spell barrier? Sister Andrus and I put our heads together for a few minutes and we still can´t tell.)

First incident: The other night I was walking along with a severe case of the hiccups. This guy walked by, staring, and after we passed him he yelled back down the hill at us; "Saúde! Bebe água!" Which technically means "Health! Drink water!" I yelled a thank you back at him and we kept walking. After a few minutes Sister Andrus remarked, "That´s strange. I´ve never heard anyone say 'I like your hiccups.'" He didn´t say that. It was a lot funnier at the time...

Second incident: We were on the way back from a meeting Tuesday morning and the Ónibus was pretty full. A seat opened up, and the new Sister tried to offer it to the woman standing next to her. She meant to say "Se você quiser, pode sentar." Which is "If you would like, you can sit." But what came out was "Se você quer, você pode.......sentir." Which means, "If you want, you can......feel." The woman gave her a wonderfully confused look and declined the invitation. Hilarious.

Third incident. This is by far the best one. We were lost one night, trying to find a street. We asked a lady who was sitting on the side of the road, and she told us where it was. Only she lied. When we came back she said, "Oh sorry, it´s actually this street!" After talking to her for a whlie we realized that her aunt is a member of our Church and lives in our ward. She said she went to church once and liked it, but she has her own church. She said she can´t go to ours because it´s so early, and she works at night. We asked her what she did. She said she did floor treatments. Not sure what that is. I asked her if she liked it and she said she´s been doing it for three years now so she´s used to it. Sister Andrus got all excited and exclaimed "Wow! We´ve always wanted to learn how to do that!" The woman and I looked at her with surprise. The lady was like "....really." And Sister Andrus replied, "Yeah, we think it´s super cool!" Then the lady said she had to go. As we were walking away I was asked, "We´ve always wanted to learn how to do floor treatments, huh?" And Sister Andrus was like, "I thought she said that three years ago she did sewing. Oops. She probably thinks we are the biggest suckups ever." Yep.

We also had a miracle this week. Sister Alldredge left her wallet on an Ónibus heading off into the middle of nowhere. Her wallet that had her mission debit card, her personal debit card, her preaching license, her federal papers, and pretty much everything. She was a little stressed. BUT, two days later Sister Andrus and I walked into our apartment complex and the doorman handed us Sister Alldredge´s wallet. Apparently an unidentified person found it and magically figured out that he should put it in the mailbox of our chapel. We can´t figure out how it happened. Miracle.

I´ve decided that my mission should be a TV show. They have the two seasons of The District that they use to help teach missionaries how to be missionaries. The show where they follow around one district for one transfer. Its main function is to give new missionaries entirely unrealistic expectations of what the mission will be like. I think they should do a season of The District: São Paulo. I decided that if it wasn´t 100% certain that I would be robbed, I would film what it´s like to walk through the streets of our area. The best part was this weekend...the start of Carnival. We were walking down a street that had a house blasting funk. For those of you who don´t know what funk is, it´s like this: imagine the most profane music they have in the United States, bring it down through a couple more levels of the inferno and then translate it into Portuguese. This is funk. So there was a house blasting funk. Then the church across the street started blasting intense gospel music, And they began this music war. 15 minutes later we walked by again and a couple more funk-blasting cars had joined the fight, and the church was losing miserably. That is what it´s like in our area. :)

Anywho. My computer has decided that it hates me and wants to keep randomly turning off. So I´m just going to send this while I have the chance.

Love yáll!

Sister Peart

 

Elder Evans?

Flooding down the hill from our apartment

Oi Gente!

We had a mission conference today with Elder Evans. Apparently he is one of the 70 and has spoken at Conference before. I did not know that. It was really good. :)

We had a super hilarious lunch this week. It was at Raquel´s house, and Neia (another Irmã in the ward) was there too. Neia always makes fun of me because I don´t show up in photos a lot of the time because I am so white. She was making fun of me and Raquel was like "Don´t you even worry about it Sister Peart! You don´t show up in pictures during the day, but I don´t show up in photos at night!" Then the rest of the lunch everyone made fun of me for being white, and her for being black. It was actually pretty hilarious, I don´t know why. Maybe we´re all just really tired. :)

We talked to another crazy man this week. This one would NOT stop talking about the end of the world. I tried to end the conversation several times in about 15 minutes, but it was useless. So we just turned around and walked off while he continued to explain the signs of the end of the world to our retreating backs.

We watched a bunch of ants in our apartment. We don´t have TV. But these aren´t just normal ants. They are crazy Brazllian ants. Sister Alldredge killed a bee, and we watched these ants get the bee out of the trash can, carry it across the apartment, out the back door, and off the balcony. They are little troopers, I can tell you that.

We´ve also taken the next step in random sicknesses. Not only have I experienced sudden, explosive diarrhea in the middle of the street, but this week I experienced sudden, explosive diarrhea in the middle of the street, immediately followed by an impressive amount of projectile vomiting. Right in someone´s driveway. In front of a bar. It was a little bit embarrassing. When I was finished, the drunk men at the bar asked me if I was German. Maybe Germans are more prone to vomitting? Who knows. Needless to say, I´m beginning to count down the months until I can take a little break from Brazillian food. We were about an hour-long walk from home, so we called some people from the ward to come give us a ride home. When they got there, I asked what I should do about the huge pile of puke on these poor people´s doorstep. Because nobody answered when I rang the bell. They informed me that it´s totally normal, and I should just leave it. I left it, but I am a little skeptically about it being totally normal. 

Anywho. It was a pretty quick week, and not a whole lot happened. At least, that I´m remembering right now. Next p-day will be transfers. Lready. We´ll see what happens! Have a good week!

Sister Peart

9 months

Hey Yáll!

This week I made my halfway mark! Isn´t that weird? I could have a baby now. It´s been an interesting 9 months, but I feel like this next 9 months is going to fly by. We shall see.

So last p-day we had our zone activity. I tried to play frisbee. But I stopped when more people showed up because it was turning into a severe decapitation hazard.

On Tuesday we got money for lunch. We went to McDonalds, of course, and brought it back to our apartment where we had two 2L bottles of Guaraná waiting to be chugged. Sister Andrus had said the other day that she loved Guaraná so much that she thought she could drink the whole bottle in one sitting. We put it to the test. She and Sister Alldredge had a contest. I recorded some of it, but it´s not that interesting to watch because they sat there and drank it classily out of glasses. The stark contrast between a chugging contest with Elders and Sisters. Not the same thing. In the end, Sister Alldredge won, but they both went and laid down for 40 minutes afterward.

This week I made a whole new record for being super creepy. In this heat, I love to eat ice cream cones. Which in Portuguese is "casquinha". I feel like that is reasonable. One day, as we were walking down a hill, I saw this girl walking up the hill with a chocolate ice cream cone. As she walked past us I followed the ice cream cone with my eyes and thought "Casssquiiiiinhaaaaa...." Her sudden look of alarm, combined with Sister Andrus´s sudden fit of laughter, told me that my thought had accidentally been verbalized in a way that made me sound very much like Gollum. Sister Andrus had to stop walking because she was laughing so hard. Oops. Good impressions being made every day.

We accepted candy from a random mailman. It was delicious.

I also smashed my face on a trash holder. Cut my forehead open and everything. I think I´ve already explained about these devil things, but I´ll explain again. They put these little metal shelf-like-thingies on their gates to put their trash in on trash day. That´s all fine and dandy except that they jut out into the walkway, so it´s a bit dangerous if you´re walking close to the wall. That morning I was concentrating very hard on walking super close to the wall to take advantage of the small strip of shade. Bad idea. I hit my head super hard. It was pretty embarrassing because it was right outside of a mechanic shop. It also hurt.

We spent the entire day on Wednesday in the stake center waiting to be interviewed by President. Literally all day. We got there at 11:40am, and we didn´t leave until 8pm. That´s a lot of sitting. I utilized all of the blank space in Sister Alldredge´s spiritual journal to illustrate Bible stories. Every page had a different theme. In the end, the themes were: Swords, Assassinations, Animals, and Evil Spirits. It was a good time. My personal favorite was the story of the she-bears. Once upon a time a prophet, whose name I forgot, was leaving a city. A big group of children followed him out, making fun of him for being bald. He turned around and cursed them. Then two she-bears came out of the wood and tore apart 42 of them. It seems to be a bit of an overreaction, but it makes an interesting story to illustrate using stick figures.

In the end, I used my time very well. Gotta know the Bible as a missionary, right?

We also had a little celebration for my 9-months mark. Tradition says that I should burn a skirt. But I just bought them, and they have pockets, so no way was THAT happening. They also say you can take a pregnant picture, because it´s been 9 months. But that seemed like a lot of work. In the end, I came home to find a little chocolate cake in the fridge that the other Sisters got me. We ate it, after trying to light 9 matches since we didn´t have any candles. Burned a thumb and got a little bit of ash in the frosting, but it worked out well. :)

Hope yáll have a good week!

Sister Peart

Woah!

Oi gente,

I only have one thing to say about this week. Holy hot. So hot. They are starting to ration water by cutting of the water in different neighborhoods on different days. I realize that yáll are all dying of freezing weather up there, but we are literally dying down here. I say literally because there actually was a little boy in our area that died because it was so hot. He was just sitting in front of the elementary school, waiting to go in for class. And it was just too hot. Poor thing. It is officially the hottest summer in about 70 years. Of course it would be this summer that I chose to go on a mission. Anyways. That is all.

I made a drunk man very angry this week. Last Sunday we were waiting for our Ward Mission Leader to meet us for a visit. As we were waiting, this very drunk man came up to us and started getting upset that we never visited him. He apparently talked to some Sisters before I got here, and they said they would visit. I am not responsible for other missionaries poor decisions. He was talking to Sister Andrus, because she is much nicer. I guess the I-will-punch-you-in-the-face-if-you-try-anything face is a univeral thing, no matter the language. Anyways. She got his address and said we would visit next Sunday. By that time our leader had shown up, and with his help we were able to leave. At that point I made an executive decision as senior companion that we were absolutely not going there.

Anyways. Here´s the part where he got upset. It was Friday night. We were walking down the street with one of our less-active recent-converts, going to a ward activity. Mr. Drunk Man sees us pass by and yells after us. I told Sister Andrus to ignore him and just keep walking, but then the yelling got too intense. So we stop and turn around. He bypasses Sister Andrus and storms right up to me. As effectively as a severely drunk man can storm. He points at me and starts the most irritating conversation ever, way too close to my face:

 "You did NOT come by my house on Sunday. I sat there WAITING!" 

"What are you talking about?" (Always start out playing ignorant with drunk people. See where they´re coming from.)

"I KNOW it was you! I recognize you because of your glasses!"

"Look here, Mr. Drunk Man. We talked to you on Sunday, right?" 

"Right." 

"And we said we would pass by the next Sunday, right?" 

"Right."

"That Sunday hasn´t happened yet. It´s only Friday."

"......I sat there WAITING!"

"Right, well we´ll pass by next Sunday." (That was a lie. We are not going there.)

After a few more cycles of this irritating conversation, we were able to leave, with him shouting after us. I asked Rafael (our recent-convert) about the man. Apparently that´s as sober as he gets. Lovely.

Funny Portuguese incident. A while ago, we were at lunch and the lady said to the nearest Sister: Eat more! You barely ate anything! The Sister, who had only been in Brazil for about a week, responded with "Sai fora!"

For those of you who are unaware, "Sai fora" is a moderately rude phrase that is completely inappropriate to use in response to pushy hospitality. It pretty much means "Get the heck out of here, you idiot." It was kind of hilarious. Her trainer had the lovely experience of practicing some intense smooth talking. I was dying, but trying to do so quietly.

Last thing. I discovered, the interesting way, that our apartment doesn´t seem to have a smoke detector. Because I woke up Sunday morning to our entire apartment full of smoke. I remember smelling it in my sleep and thinking, "Dang it, that stupid man is smoking outside our window again." Wasn´t him. The air was FULL of smoke for a good mile as we went out to bring our investigators to church. I asked our investigator what it was and she informed us that the people here in Itaquá just have a bad habit of burning things. She was like "They just like to set things on fire." Oh, right. I also enjoy setting things on fire in the middle of a drought. Brilliant.

Anyways. That is all. There are like 20 missionaries that just came in to use the Internet here. We had a zone activity, and we left first to get the computers. Hehehehe. But the eye-daggers are starting to sting. So yeah.

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

Problems

Hey yáll,

Unfortunately, I do not have much to report for this week. After I got off the computer last p-day I began to be very not well. It was the beginning of a (so far) week-long case of unpredictably explosive diarrhea. I´m sure not all of you wanted to know that, but for this reason I spent a lot of time in our apartment. Within 5 feet of the toilet. But hey, we´re in Brazil, it happens.

Yesterday was the first day that nothing disastrous occured, so hopefully we´re looking at a quick improvement. If not, hopefully the President´s wife will let me go to the doctor, because I probably have some sort of parasite. None of the medications we have have worked. But we shall see.

That being said, we still saw a good amount of success this week. We found a bunch of new investigators and we marked someone for baptism! His name is Fernando. Hopefully everything goes well and he´ll get baptized at the end of February.

This week the Lord blessed us a lot through the other Sisters. We split the area, and this week they found some really awesome potentials....that live in our area. So they passed them to us. I´m sure that was very annoying and frustrating, but I am quite happy about it. 

One of them is super cool. His name is Jack and his mother´s name is Cristina. Jack was born in America while his mother was working there, and they came back to Brazil when he was 12. He is now 25. His Portuguese is just as bad as ours, if not worse. So he prefers that we teach in English. That was kind of exciting, but it turned out to be interesting. All four of us went, since he knew the other Sisters and they were passing him to us. So we did this hand-off lesson. It turns out that I am incapable of teaching in English. It just came out mixed. At best. I was trying to bear my testimony about Joseph Smith and I couldn´t figure out how to say "I know this because I prayed and God answered my prayer". (I know it now because I practiced). It was awkward. All four of us are American, so it was funny. The other senior companion and I would bring the conversation back to Portuguese, and the two junior companions would switch it back to English. It was weird, but it worked. They came to church on Sunday and we´re going back on Wednesday.

We went to Brás today to get some clothes. Brás is this giant market square where everyone just brings a bunch of stuff to sell. It´s usually pretty cheap, but you have to hunt around for things that aren´t completely spandex or lace. The new Sister just came from New York, so she is lacking in clothing that is appropriate for the hottest time of the year in South America. We found a lady that had skirts that were long enough with POCKETS. I bought four. All of the ones she had that didn´t have patterns ressembling a fruit salad. Didn´t even bother to barter with her. Success. 

I think that´s pretty much it for this week. Oh yeah. One morning this week the phone started to ring, and when I looked it said "Pres Ferrin". I was a little concerned. When I answered he was like "Am I talking to Sister Peart?" I informed him that he was. He then proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions unrelated to missionary work. Like "If I were to throw a piece of steel into the ocean, would it rust?" This went on for about 15 minutes. Afterwards, he thanked me for the information and hung up. Apparently he was preparing a special training and needed to know these chemistry questions. I don´t know why he called me, but it was interesting.

Sorry I haven´t written anyone in a while. The problem is not the writing, it´s the sending. To send letters is pretty much an all-day event. I haven´t gotten up the courage to do that yet so....yeah. But feel free to write me anyway! ;)

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

Transfers!

Hey Yáll!

This week was transfers. I got transferred to Vila Virginia 2 in the Itaquaquecetuba Stake. I took over the training of Sister Andrus. Poor thing. Hopefully she´ll come out of it alright. She´s pretty much already trained, so that´s good.

Sorry about not writing last week. I´ll give you a story from my last week there in Vila Esperança: Sister Bruno and I were so desperate for something to do that we decided to knock on doors one day. It was terrible. We knocked on doors for two hours and not one single person let us in. Or was even interested. Sucky. BUT, after two hours of rejection, we decided to sit down on a bench for five minutes and rest. As we were sitting there I noticed that every single pigeon in São Paulo had decided to come to the same little park at that exact moment. I was a little confused as to the purpose of this gathering, but then I saw this old lady walking toward the park with two big bags. I got really excited. I pointed it out to Sister Bruno and promised her that we were about to have a Mary Poppins experience. I´ve always wanted to see a crazy old lady feed the birds. Lifelong dream accomplished. It´s a lot cuter in the movie. In real life it´s actually just pretty gross. But after dumping two big bags of scraps into the mass of pigeons, she sat down on the picnic table and began to break up some loaves of bread. The funniest part was that there was a little girl and her mother that also paused to share this moment. The little girl (probably about 4 years old) got really excited and began to talk loudly to her mother about the "doves". Her mother informed her that they were pigeons, not doves. Undeterred, the child informed her mother that yes, they were doves. Her mother began to talk about how they are the rats of the air, and dirty, and gross. Her daughter looked unimpressed. Finally the mom told her that if she got too close she would get a bug that would eat her blood. That made her quiet for a couple moments. Taking advantage of the silence, her mom grabbed her and put her in the car and drove off. Lifelong dream accomplished and a little girl´s childhood destroyed. Good day.

But moving on to new stories in the new area. One of my first days I revealed to my companion that I´m crazy. We ran into this guy and started talking to him and I noticed that he had a UT longhorns shirt on. I got excited and I tried to tell him that I live in Austin, but in my excitement I lost the ability to speak both Portuguese and English. So I ended up just doing this weird jabbering noise and pointing very forcefully at his shirt. Both he and my companion looked at me with a considerable amount of concern. I tried again. "I live there. I´m from Texas." Pointing again at his shirt. He still looked concerned, so evetually we left. I was a little embarrassed.

It rains a lot here. A lot. There are four sisters in this area, so we divide it in half. My companion and I are in the hilly parts (lots of exercise), and the other Sisters get everything at the bottom of the hill. Considering the amount of rain we´ve been getting, that becomes a bit of a problem for them. I will steal their photos someday and send them to yáll, but suffice it to say that there has been a lot of flooding. They had to take refuge in a bakery for two hours one day because the road became a river and was taking everything away. And then once, when we asked them how their day went, they were like "Well...we tried to visit this person...but they had water in their house up to neck-level. So we´ll go back in a few days when the water goes down a little bit." Poor Sisters.

Yesterday I talked with way more drunk people than I ever want to see again. We were talking to this girl outside of a bar and this super drunk guy kept asking us if we wanted some ice cream. In that creepy way that weird guys ask small children if they want candy. We kept saying no. Then he got confused about where to buy ice cream. We kept talking to this girl, and by the time we were finishing up, he came out of the bar with a liter of ice cream. We told him no thank you. The girl looked up at us and was like "It´s for yáll!" and we were just like "Nope, it´s for you. We´ll come buy on Tuesday!". Then we walked off while she glared at the betrayal. She wasn´t actually mad though. When he saw we were leaving he was like "Wait! Where are you going? I bought you ice cream!" Drunk people.

We also did a contact with a man yesterday, and I was having the HARDEST time understanding him. It was ridiculous. Then, by the end of the contact, he informed me that he doesn´t speak Portuguese, and asked me if I speak Spanish. Everything made sense then. We had been speaking two different languages. But we still understood each other more or less. Portuguese is better than Spanish. Just so you know.

Another funny thing about languages. When I got here, Sister Andrus told me that she really wanted to work on her Portuguese this transfer, and she wanted my help. (Apparently when they got the transfer call, her companion got excited for her and told her that I speak REALLY well. Lies. Unacheivable expectations. Awesome.) Anyways. Last night she admitted something that she hadn´t wanted to tell me because she thought I might think she´s dumb. She was like "The other day, you told a story and I got SO excited because I understood the whole thing! And then I realized that you were speaking in English." I found that hilarious.

Last story. We did a contact with someone that appears to be a ghost. We talked to this guy, Jefferson, that was sitting in a garage full of half-finished mannequins. When I asked, he informed me that he makes them as his profession. Cool. We talked for a while with him and he was really cool. I asked him if he would go to church and he said that he would. I asked him about 50 more times if he really would go. He insisted that he would. Then I was like "Well, can we pass by tomorrow and confirm?" He was like "Girl! You will see my little black face there!" Ok. Point taken. We went back the next day anyways, because he gave in and said that we could. When we got there, the garage was locked and the lady who lives there informed us that Jefferson moved to Rio two years ago. After insisting that I had talked to him on Friday, and looking completely insane, I accepted the fact that apparently Jefferson moved to Rio two years ago. Then I tried to remember if we shook his hand. Sister Andrus says we did. He didn´t come to church. I was so sad. And confused. About Ghost Jefferson. But last night we realized that he gave us his phone number, so we´re going to call him this week. We´ll see how it goes....

OH I ALMOST FORGOT! Everyone says that you know you´re fluent in a language when you dream in it, right? Well, I never remember what my dreams are about, let alone what language they´re in. But a couple days ago I woke myself up because I was talking in my sleep. In Portuguese! Another lifelong dream accomplished. Yesssssss!

All in all, I really like this area. I love Vila Esperança, but this area appears to be super cool as well. We´ll see how it goes!

Have a good week!

Sister Peart

Lots of pictures this week!

Christmas 2013

Christmas decorations 2013

Christmas gifts with Gabriel

Rainstorms that happen almost every day

Sunburn

Sis Bruno's candy corn sunburn

The view from a 17th story apartment

Some lady's laundry

Sometimes the jungle starts taking over again

Sis Bruno, Sis Peart, Gabriel, Janai, and AnaLaura

Rain

Hey Yáll!

This week was pretty...interesting. I left my mission a few times, got soaking wet a few times and realized that I hate personal trainers.

Tuesday we went to the temple in São Paulo, which was pretty sweet. It made me appreciate the talent of the photographer that took the picture for the little poster of the temple. Because it looks very nice and serene and in the middle of nowhere in the standard temple picture, but it actually is in the middle of a nasty city. Talent. There is also a Walmart near the temple, so we took a visit for a little view of America. It was kind of disappointing. They sell pretty much all the same stuff as the other stores here. They also seem to have missed the memo that walmart is supposed to have lots of blue and smiley faces. But whatever. I went to the back corner of the store and found the jackpot. Goldfish and Reeses. Those were purchased in a heartbeat. The Reeses were promptly consumed right there in the store, before the Brazillian sun made them into soup. Best thing ever. But I don´t mean to talk about the miraculous appearance of rare American junk food more than the temple. The temple was also lovely, and spiritual, and wonderful.

Wednesday we went to visit this family we have started teaching. We had explained the Restoration the first time, but clearly they hadn´t understood, so we decided to show the Restoration video and explain it again. We watched the film and then started talking; focusing a lot on the two little boys. Sister Bruno asked this 12 year old boy: "What do you think is going to happen after you die? What do you want to happen?" His response: "Well, I hope I will come back to Earth in a new life and be a woman." Symphony of awkward crickets. I´m not sure who was more surprised by that response, us or his father. His father sure seemed a lot more concerned. Because if that´s a little strange for a boy to say in the US, it´s SUPER strange for a boy to say here in Brasil. We weren´t sure how to tie that back in to Joseph Smith, so it was just tactfully ignored.

Thursday we went to the bishop´s storehouse with some of our investigators because their order was so big that they needed extra help to carry it. The storehouse is in the São Paulo, Interlagos mission, so I couldn´t even tell you were the heck we were. But it was far. It took over an hour and a half to get there. When we got there, they got all their stuff, we helped out with some service, took a look at the clothes they had there, and then got ready to go. When I walked out and saw their order I got a little apprehensive. It was a lot of food. Let me tell you, rice, beans, and flour are all very heavy things. Somehow, I got the sack with the rice, beans, and flour. 44 pounds to be exact. So we got to carry that for about 6 blocks, cross an 8-lane highway, catch an Ónibus (an experience that´s hard to survive WITHOUT carrying 44 pounds of food), ride the metro, catch another Ónibus and then walk about another 6 blocks. It was a lovely experience. Especially with my investigator walking behind me telling me that I was weak. As she carried the sack that had the toilet paper, sanitary pads, and 5 pounds of laundry detergent. But service brings blessings, so all is well.

Friday Sister Bruno got to go to the Leadership Council, because she´s the new Sister Training Leader and therefore get´s to go to the fancy, secret meetings. So I stayed with a Sister from Ecuador that has been on the mission for 4 and a half weeks. I learned that Spanish and Portuguese are not as similar as I had thought. That night, when we met up again at the metro to switch companions, it started to rain. This was interesting since I had a pretty good sunburn from it being so hot and sunny that day. Sister Bruno and I crammed into the metro car (it being during the "Breaking the Law of Chastity Because the Metro Is SO Packed" hour) and as we rode along it began to rain with a frightening intensity. Then it began to hail. When we got off we found the entrance of the metro packed with people who were unfortunate enough to have forgotten umbrellas. That included us. The drunk man that we always buy chips from was raking in the money though. He stood there at the entrance with a cart full of umbrellas for sale. Smart man. After waiting for a little while it became clear that the rain was going nowhere. So when the torrent turned into just rain, and no hail, we decided to just run for it. At the bottom of the ramp we gave up running, since we were already soaking wet. We started the journey home, stopping occasionally to wipe our burning eyes. (You don´t know acid rain till you experience rain here in São Paulo). On the way home there is a point where the sidewalk is about a foot wide and you have to walk in single file or someone has to risk the road. Generally we walk in single file because it also happens to be on a blind corner and drivers here are insane. As we were at this point a car comes flying by, completely undeterred by the flooding, and sends a wave of water our way. Poor Sister Bruno is shorter than me, so it enveloped her completely. We just stopped in shock and stared back at the car. It hesitated for a second, and then kept going. As we finally got to our street, the exact same car pulled up and a man/woman shouted "Sisters! Do you want a ride home?" Since we were like 5 houses away from home, and we had no idea who this person was, we declined. But at least they felt bad enough to come back.

Saturday we started off the day by going to a ward activity. Our ward doesn´t do many activities and the bishop always asks us to go and show the ward that we support them. When we showed up there were two people, plus the bishop, there. Since it was a physical fitness activity we changed, and joined the "group". I guess the bishop somehow knows this personal trainer guy, and he got him to sign on to teach our ward about physical fitness for four Saturdays. It was terrible. I despise exercising. And this man was very obnoxious. He was like, "Do more, do more, I know you can do more!" Yes, Mr. Annoying Shouting Man, I CAN do more, but unlike you I have to walk for 8 more hours today! And tomorrow, and everyday after that for 10 more months! But I sucked it up and did it anyways. One of the two people there was the old lady that we had lunch with, so when it was over we just hobbled with her to her house. She let us use her shower while she made lunch. Then we walked around on our new jelly legs for the rest of the day.

Sunday. Pain. So much pain. It-took-me-10-minutes-to-get-out-of-my-bed-and-into-the-shower pain. I don´t know if I´ve mentioned it before, but we live on the 3rd floor. Took forever to make it down all the stairs. Got to church and shared knowing glances with the other two people who were walking around like they were 200 years old. Best part is that we were speaking in Sacrament meeting and I was not super capable of getting out of my chair without a boost. Luckily I made it to the pulpit without collapsing, so everything worked out ok.

Today I am still in pain, but my knees have stopped giving out, so that is progress.

Yesterday I also ate my weirdest lunch. Pig knees. She put the dish on the table and said "I hope it´s good, it´s my first time making it." I asked her what it was and she yelled from the kitchen, "Pig knees". I looked at my companion and was like......"Did she just say pig knees?" Sister Bruno wasn´t sure, so she asked again, and got the same response. The lady walked out of the kitchen just in time to see our twin looks of alarm and started backpedaling. She was like "It´s actually just the lower part of the pig leg, but they call it 'pig knees.'" False. Definitely pig knees. I got a B+ in Anatomy, and that was most definitely a knee bone sitting on my plate. It wasn´t too bad, but I did not take seconds.

Today I made Brazillian juice for the first time. Passionfruit. Turned out alright, but it was a really small passionfruit that someone had given us. My advice: always eat passionfruit in juice or something. It´s not super delicious plain. Also they say it makes you sleepy. I figure it makes you about as sleepy as turkey does, but the way our recent convert was talking about it, you´d think it was a medically proven sedative. Whatever. It´s better in juice anyway. 

Not sure what else to report, other than this morning I got bit by a mosquito right in the middle of my forehead. This wouldn´t be a problem if I didn´t seem to have some sort of allergy to the mosquitos here. All my bites swell up to at least the size of a quarter and turn bright red. At the moment, this bite is dime-size and pink, so we´ll see how it goes. Hopefully it will stop there.

Anways. I hope yáll have a lovely week! If you have a moment, feel free to write a letter! And send it. That´s a very important part of the process.

Até mais!

Sister Peart