Ben In Brazil

Looots of pics yall. If a picture´s worth a thousand words this is my longest email yet TUESDAY We went to a family`s house we`ve been teaching for a while now and the mom said she talked with the dad and said they`ve decided to get married in their own church and ultimately stop investigating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I said that`s all fine and dandy or whatever but I went ahead and gave them a lesson to clarify baptism and authority, making it clear that a baptism unlike how Christ was baptized isn`t what He mandated. We retaught the Restoration again and tried to be as simple and clear as possible and it seems like they understand now. It got really powerful toward the end and I really poured my heart out. We planned to come back for another visit on Thursday and they`re excited about church this Sunday.  WEDNESDAY Today Elder Franca and I saw a little crash happen right outside president Viana`s house. Two motorbikes hit each other. As far ...

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 pa...

MONDAY OOF what a night. Soooo an American themed restaurant close to where we live has a cheeseburger challenge (kind of like the one at The Wall at BYU).  The challenge is six cheeseburgers and two hotdogs stacked into one giant megaburger. If you eat the whole thing AND a liter of Coke (or juice) within 40 minutes it's free. Otherwise it's 66 Reais (Brazilian currency) I took em on. I managed to get it all down and felt soooo full after. Lots of people there were so amazed and scared to see a 6'5" American scarf down a stack of burgers. They got pictures with me and THE OWNER of the restaurant straightup gave me 100 Reais! as a prize (which is almost 30 bucks) and said he'd frame my picture. The owner's a total homie. Naturally França and I went and got Acai after to celebrate. Then we walked to two appointments and I felt like a pregnant human bowling ball. TUESDAY Today we came home to find about 100 cockroaches chillin at our ho...