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