Wednesday, September 26, 2007

of 'mortos' and mayonnaise

First, before the funny stuff that happened this week, here is the low down on letters: YES i mailed some, and no i haven’t received any (except one). here is why: ahem... if you guys send the letters to the mission office, i only get them every three or four weeks during zone conf or transfers. i had z. conf. this last week and i only got one from jen that was sent on sept 3. i was a little disappointed until i found out why: correios- the mail system here, was on strike for 2 weeks. so all mail traffic stopped. pouch mail made it in, but out-going and in-going mail hasn’t worked in a while. i am not sure if or when it will come thru, but i will tell you if it does. i am hoping for a pile at transfers! speaking of which, after transfers i will give you my new (possibly old) address and you can send mission-tie letters there until we get close to transfers again. (every 6 weeks)

ANYWAY.... this week i .... gave my first REAL talk in sac. meeting. Sat. we had almoço (lunch) at the branch presidents house and he asked me to talk on charity for 7 to 10 min. since i had almost no time to prepare a good talk, IN PORTUGUESE, i accepted. my companion says it was great, but i have come to learn that most of the members didn’t understand most of what i said. which leads to a funny story: yesterday we were teaching a lesson and afterwards they gave us some food and we were talking. marionici, a recent convert, asked me why i looked sad. i wasn’t sad, but i told her that it might be because the people that we talked to before we came here didn’t understand anything that i said, and that might be why i look sad. she stared at me. then she stared at my companion. then, apparently thinking that because she didn’t understand me, that I wouldn’t understand her, blatantly asked my companion what i said. if i looked sad before, i was sad then. my comp just laughed, ... a lot... then told her what i said. it was a little depressing but that is just the way it is ... another language story- we were at this members house dropping something off, and she brought us out juice. DARK juice. they were talking and i was sipping my juice trying to understand what was going on. she was talking at the speed of light and i was only picking up a few words. she kept saying this word that i didn’t know so i leaned over and whispered to my comp. what does (insert word) mean? his mouth happened to be full of juice when i asked and apparently he thought what i said was funny because he spewed the juice all over me. he laughed and laughed, i went to the bathroom to try and clean up, and when i returned he was still laughing. i still don’t know what that word means, and perhaps never will. ... thank goodness this time it was only grape juice, who knows what it will be next time :) ...

i had a little cold the last couple of days, and as you know, we don’t have TP let alone kleenex. so i have become fairly proficient at the farmer blow (snot rocket, booger bullet; take your pick) but the first couple times were a little hairy. i had snot all over my pant leg one day and on the tie the next. ...

of MORTOs and mayonnaise: i guess it was on monday that this happened. we were on our way to a FHE in the rain at night. as we walked we came upon an ambulance and a small crowed of people. we went to see if we could help. we couldn’t. there was this dead guy laying there, still on his bike. the cops were filling out the report, and judging by the size of the crowd, he hadn’t been there long (crowds form really fast around here for weird things). At first we thought that he had been hit by a car, but thinking back, that doesn’t make any sense because there wasn’t a car around and he was still on his bike on the sidewalk. it was pretty gross and a little disturbing. so we kept walking and got to the FHE appointment, where i gave, what i am sure was, a very good lesson about CHARITY, then they fed us dinner. it was sandwiches. EGG and MAYO sandwiches! they kept making them and putting them on my plate. i mean, there was enough mayo on these to make Betty think it looked gross. but i just kept biting, swallowing and washing it down with COKE-ZERO; i felt like a robot.

so it was raining that day right... and earlier we were walking when the power lines up in front of us apparently got too wet. the lights in all the stores next to us went out and then there was this huge, blinding explosion of white-bluish light on the power lines ahead. it was accompanied by this really weird loud buzzing sound. after, the lights came back on in the store. it was awesome!..

so yesterday, we are walking to an appointment when suddenly someone grabbed me from behind, pokes something into my back and yells something at me. i nearly peed my pants. i looked back, hands in the air, and it was one of our investigators, DAVID, and he was just goofing around with us. he did the same to my comp, just in front of me and scared him too. it was pretty funny i guess. the sad part is that if david doesn’t come to church this sunday, we are going to cut him. he just isn’t progressing.

oh- i saw monkey number 8!

we were knocking/clapping doors and i am sure that this man thinks that we are gay. we were talking with him, and as usual i got behind in the conversation. he asked if i slept well last night. well, i couldn’t answer, i didn’t even know that there was a question directed to me. i was just staring at him, so my comp replied. : he slept well. then the guy asked how HE (my comp) knew that I slept well. he told him that we live together. the man just gave us a funny look and went inside. it was funny.

gotta go, times up!
love elder helland
ps i will try to sent pic next week, sorry!

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