WEEK 35: 8 Months Babay

TUESDAY

There's a funny lil thing my comp and I do as we walk the streets at night.

At night all the men of the family come out and sit on their front porch with their shirts flipped up over their bellies drinking beer on their lawn chairs with their other man friends. We found out that if you say hi to them ("opa" or "oop" in portuguese) they respond in the exact same way. For example, you can make any weird sound like "iiioooop" and they'll go "iiiiooooop" back. Sometimes you can just grunt and they'll grunt back. It's absolutely hilarious. So my comp and I have competitions on who can get them to repeat the weirdest sounds. Once I said "euyooooop" to a whole group of drunk dads and they all, in unison, went "EUYOOOOOP".  

Elder Franca had a volley of "oopa's" with a man on the street today. They went back and forth like four times haha.

WEDNESDAY

Today we were walking through a park and saw a FAT iguana just chillin on the sidewalk. I nearly stepped on it. I don't usually walk with my camera here because people say this city's dangerous so I didn't get a picture of it. But it was huuuuge and bright blue and green, really pretty.

Later we were tracting (knocking on doors) and this one older lady came out, paused, and was like "gimme a minute" and went back inside the house. We were confused until we looked down and saw a MASSIVE spider on her driveway. It looked like some sort of tarantula. She came back with a broom and just whacked it into the yard.

THURSDAY

Today we had an hour to kill so we were just walking; trying to explore the area and I stopped randomly at a door and knocked kind of before I even knew what I was doing. An old voice on the other side asked who it was in some weird italian accent. When he opened the door he recognized us as english speakers and started talking to us in nearly perfect english. Haha I was really taken aback and tried to do a contact in English but literally couldn't find the english words. So I reverted back to portuguese and explained the Book of Mormon. He said he was busy for the next two weeks and didn't accept it but said to come back in two weeks and we'll meet with him. He's a really interesting dude. For over an hour we talked on his doorstep about his life in California in the 70's and things he's learned about people in Brazil and the States. It seems like he's had kind of a Forrest Gumpy life, he's witnessed and been a part of a lot of things haha. I like his personality and perspective on the world so I'm excited to come back in two weeks.

FRIDAY

Today we had a lot of lessons. The ward missionary leader spent the afternoon proselyting with us. He's really helpful.

I've been reading my grandpa's mission letters from his mission in the 60's in Scotland. He had some incredible experiences for sure. I wish I had been able to meet him. Thanks to Aunt Christy for compiling his letters back in 2012.

SATURDAY

General Conference today :D

For those of you who don't know, for missionaries, General Conference is as exciting as the Super Bowl. It's a semi-annual conference held in the United States where leaders of the church give a few talks and divine guidance for all those who participate. It's an opportunity to hear from an ordained prophet of The Lord, in the same order as Moses or Jeremiah of old. Take a look at comeuntochrist.org to find out more. It's seriously such an amazing conference.

Elder Horlacher and I set up a computer in another room playing english so we could understand it perfectly. I bought a bag full of candy so we just sat back and overdosed on sugar for the Saturday conference.

SUNDAY

Part 2 of conference. I really loved Elder Peter Johnson's talk & Elder Ballard's. Super sincere.

Today marks 8 months on the mish. 1/3 done already. Yowza

People are made a lot smaller here. I've hit my head FOUR times this week on doorways. Not fun at all.

PICS:

1) We've got four missionaries in our house so we made a rule wall to keep things in check.

2) View from the house

3) Elder Franca gets out of bed at 6:30 and sleeps on the ground to follow the rule "out of bed by 6:30" haha

4) Elder Apaza found a nice lil surprise in his shoe this morning

5) The church building in Araguaína

6) We were on the bus for lunch and these shoolkids kept taking pics of us and staring so I decided to take a selfie with them and they all ducked away

7) Found a lil ant hill

8) Found a DIFFERENT iguana at Parque Cimba. Not quite as cool as the first one I couldn't get a picture of

9 - 13) Parque Cimba

14 & 15) Our Conference setup

16) A bigole SAPO in front of our house

17) PDay grub