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