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