Hey honey! Do you want some molasses?

Monday, September 30, 2013

P-day já?

Wow.  This week went so fast.  I had new missionary training on Tuesday and it went really well, I realized how great my trainer is.  All the new missionaries in the field come to the chapel by the office and they have this pop quiz that asks about all the lessons and the topics and the commitments.  I finished with ten minutes to go and spent the rest of the time helping the other missionaries.  Then we played a game with the topics and my team almost won,  but they had a caixa (box) of bonus questions that were supposed to be really hard, like what are the chapters of PMG (Preach my Gospel), what are the fundamental principles, teach the first lesson with all topics in order in two minutes, and others.  Everyone should know these. One of the questions that my group got was the questions for the baptismal interview, which new missionaries don't need because they don't do the interviews,  but we got it and luckily my companion is zone leader so I already knew all of them and everyone was really impressed.  Because my companion is the zone leader it means I get to be senior companion. So I get to carry the phone around.

Here we walk if we can, but if it takes more than 30 min walking we take the bus.  Spring started last week and today it's raining and the power went out here.  We baptized a family this week!  And I got to baptize one of them!  Here some people stay active and others don't, but the retention rate is horrible.  Almost everyone that you see here is a first or second generation member.  Our bishop is a convert of maybe 10 years, I think a bit less, but he is awesome! General Conference is this week and we are really excited. They will be showing it in the stake center, which is our building, and during the breaks we will go out with the members because we will have 20 missionaries and contact less active members.  Because the priesthood session is so late we have to watch it at 6 in the morning on Sunday.  My talk went good this past week, felt like 5 min or less, but the others said it was close to 10.

Transfers are this coming week, but new missionaries have a program called the first 12 weeks that you are trained with.  So generally a missionary stays in an area for at least 12 weeks if they are new.  So I won't be leaving this time. Since we will be having so many new missionaries coming they need almost everyone training.  This past month our mission baptized 155 people, this month we plan to baptize 500!  

Funny story:  the other week I was looking for honey and I found the cheapest kind and bought it. It totally looked like honey, the color, consistency and the bottle.  Of course I had no idea what the bottle said, I thought it said honey from Cainan, kind of like a fancy name thing.  So I tried it and it was terrible.  I only got down about half the sandwich before I had to throw it away.  So I put it on a shelf and left it for anyone.  Today I found out that it's really molasses.  Now I don't know what to do with it.  Can't really make sandwiches with it, maybe syrup, we'll see!  Hope everyone has a great week!  I think Meg owes me 500 :) Good luck in school and work and life. 

até próxima semana! chão.

-Elder Anderson