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July 21, 2014

This week I passed my one year mark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That was cool, to celebrate we went to the temple and had churrasco.  The rest of the week has been good.  Last week was the last time that we had to stay home because of the world cup so everyone was way excited to be out and we managed to baptize 5 people in the zone, we have been really focusing on keeping a solid number of baptisms every week and we think that things will really start picking up now.  We went out to Juquitiba this week which was a fun- 4 hours trying to sleep in a bouncy hot crowded bus, but it was cool to see it again.  Had interviews with President D this week which was really cool.  His daughter finally arrived, and his wife got robbed.  So it was a pretty interesting week for them.   We met a member from Idaho that was at the temple. He is the uncle of one of the sisters that I used to be the DL of.  Saw the missionaries from São Paulo oeste (West?) the other day, they were in our area.  We also started teaching our new pizza place, they made a free pizza for us one day, that was nice. So blessings.  Had follow up with the assistants and then we had a surprise meeting with president on Friday.  Our baptism this week is a wife of a menos activo that we are helping come back.  His brother is in the bishopric of JD Angela that I passed in a couple months ago.  The brother in law baptized her so I got to see them which was cool.  Then we had a possessed guy enter the church and start yelling during the other ward´s sacrament, so we had to help remove him.  I found out that in my previous ward the guy we baptized blessed the sacrament, had completed My Family, and was ready to go to the temple!  That was pretty cool to find out,  it’s always so cool to see your recent converts doing things in the church.  Transfers are tomorrow and I got transferred.  President is moving a lot of people around and making a lot of the old leaders trainers, he is taking one of the assistants and having him train too.  So I might get called as a trainer, which wouldn’t be that bad.  That is basically what happened this week.  Each week seems to go faster.  In president’s office there is a card with everyone´s picture and information, and they had the enter and leave dates-which they didn’t used to have, and I was looking at my zone and accidently saw my leave date, so that freaked me out, but I will let it be a surprise for ya’ll.  Hope all goes well with the move, have a great week!

Elder Anderson

More pizza

Monday, July 14, 2014

Wow! I can’t believe that this week marks one whole year!  This week was crazy because we had to stay inside three days because of the games, which was not fun.  Got a minor form of pink eye on Saturday, but I got healed.  My companion had his birthday on the 19th and a couple of members made cakes for him, which was great.  We have been trying a couple of new things on our food lately.  I have always liked a thing called farofa and farinha on my beans, but this transfer I have started putting pepper on my food too.  This week got to extremes when we took the actual peppers out and put them on our food, that was painful, but funny.  This week we got a reference of a family that has a pizza shop and we heard that they were really good. So that very night we followed up about the restoration pamphlet and ordered a pizza!!!!  Found a couple of people legally married, which doesn’t happen here, so that was sweet.  Rained for the first time in a month and that was cold, but got a good umbrella and jacket here so I stayed dry.  I finally finished my blue journal that I have had since 2006 and started the red one.  I am down to one pair of shoes now.  The first ones got so bad that I had to get rid of them.  It looked like I was wearing a green house because of the mold that was on them because it’s so wet this time of year, but the new shoes are great.  Baptized a young man in a family yesterday was pretty funny, got to go, more next week!

Time flies

Monday, July 07, 2014

Meeting President D was amazing, it just happened to be on the day that we were supposed to go to the temple so I have to wait two more weeks to go, but that’s fine.  President is so cool.  We were all waiting in the gym waiting for him to arrive for our counsel and he gets there and he had to duck to get into the door.  Then he comes around giving everyone hugs and smiling and laughing and making jokes.  He is awesome, everyone loves him.  I come up to his armpit.  He has already moved they way we work in a very little but important way.  The church has recently changed the way that the missionaries teach, now we teach all 5 lessons before and after baptism, because the members just aren't doing their part.  We are also focusing a lot on the temple and family history work.  

The Brasil and Columbia game was crazy 2-0!  Everyone went crazy with fireworks and with horns and stuff.  They were lighting a couple on our street and I was filming because it’s so crazy! I got some pretty crazy stuff from our street, will try to send it when I get a good computer here that actually sends stuff.  It was great because it was the fourth of July and they had fireworks!  We sang some American songs and my companion has root beer concentrate so we put that in a blender with ice cream and made root beer floats.  Closest thing to it in a year. We have to stay inside tomorrow and if they lose Saturday and if they win Sunday.  Tomorrow is p-day.  

Found a guy with one leg this week who is really cool, he’s so getting baptized.  We have been really tired lately because this zone has a couple of little problems so my companion and I have been really tired trying to get everything fixed, but this week we are focusing on getting a really big teaching group. It’s been pretty hot this week.  But today looks like it will change and start acting like winter.  

That’s great about the Johnston’s, love the new name.  Don’t need a new usb, just need to clean the conference talks off it.   Got 10 days to make a year! Our stake pres said something great yesterday.  He said that "If you don’t take church seriously God won’t take you seriously and you will have serious problems". Hope ya’ll have a great week!

Elder Anderson

Same work, different face

Monday, June 30, 2014

So my area is called Itapcerica da Serra.  Brazil played Chile on Saturday and that was a close one, we kept asking people on the street what the score was and they kept saying that Brazil was losing.  The time of the game passed, but we didn't know that they had gone into overtime and then like 45 minutes later the city just blows up and they went crazy because Brazil won and they didn't stop the party until the next day.  So they will play again on Friday against Columbia.  Other thing that happened this week was our change of President.  On Friday President D arrived and President P left.  I am so excited to meet the new President.  We got a call last night from our assistant and he told us that our zone would be able to go to the temple tomorrow which is great because I haven’t gone in at least 6 months. We also had our last leadership meeting with President P on Wednesday, which was way cool.  He taught us a lot of cool stuff. We got a new district leader, Elder H from Boston, I was his dl in Jd. ângela a couple months ago.  Now we have 4 Americans at home.  My companion will have his birthday on the 9th and his parents sent him a package and they sent him mini ping-pong so we put it up on our desks and had a ping-pong competition while we were stuck at home.  Anyway the time is flying here, can’t believe that tomorrow is July, in 2 and a half weeks I will have a year on the mission! Sorry I haven’t been sending pics, the computer here doesn’t open my pin drive, btw it’s almost all full.  Hope everything goes well this week. Love ya.

Elder Anderson