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