Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Oatmeal and Milk

so i said, why not respond in like fashion? [alyce titled her last letter to Adam, "Bagels and Cream Cheese"] my diet lately has improved to that of oatmeal for breakfast. i love it. i eat it most every day (i bought a bag of sugar because we had none, and you know how i like sugar. ). so i sent some pics of us and our house and a short video clip from like a month ago, but it is never too late, right? there were some more "culture shock" stories this week, you know, things that i think are funny:

last week was this day that is like halloween (i forgot the name) , and all the kids got candy and stuff. we were walking to an appointment and we stopped and talked to this group of girls and they found out, as everybody does, that i am american. then they started the “test” that usually comes along with that - a thousand questions about american pop culture. one of the girls was way into avril laveen and spoke some english. it was a funny conversation that we had. in the end, the girl took a picture with us on her cell phone.

SAME DAY... something really sad happened. we were teaching in a padaria (bakery) and a little girl ran out into the street to get candy and got hit by a car and died. i didn’t see it happen. i saw her a minute or so before i heard the screams from the people. she only ran about 100 ft down the street when she was hit. we heard the screams and looked out down the street. i was pretty much sad the rest of the day.

on monday we had splits and i was in a different area with our district leader (elder meireles, who is awesome) and we had a very interesting experience. we taught these two kids -wallace and brenda. they were pretty deep in the favela, and we found them at night. they were NOT ready to hear our message. they started laughing during the opening prayer. wallace is 16 and VERY gay. he was making vulgar signs and really weirding me out. Brenda was 14, and kept asking if missionaries could date and kiss and do other bad things. i was appalled at the things that she said, SHE IS 14! SO... elder meireles was smart and immediately after the opening prayer we gave them pass-along cards and said a closing prayer. then brenda started like flirting with me and playing with my tie. i was so scared i just stood up and we left and told them to call when they were REALLY interested in hearing our MESSAGE. it was a bad lesson, but at the same time, as we reflected on it later that night, we learned a lot from the experience.

love you guys
elder helland

PS i will send more pis next week, it is time consuming so i need to find a happy medium between typing and attaching…
My comp - Elder Rodrigues and Me
My comp :-)
Our Apartment
My Superman Sheets
More of our apartment
Our Kitchen
My Favorite Appliance!
Super Elder?
pic of a cockroach- there was a good story about this one that i will surmise in one sentence: my comp screamed like a little girl, we spent 45 min to bring this picture about, and made a complete mess of our house. it was worth it. (ok, 2 sentences)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness! People there really DO die right and left! - The third one already and he has only been out HOW long?! I would be SO frieked out to even leave the appartment for fear of dying. Well, I guess you just have to stay away from all the busy streets :) Anyway, I sounds like the mission is going great! And Alyce, you simply have just GOT to stop with the "Bagels and Cream Cheese" thing. One would think there is something wrong with you :)