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