Temple, ice cream and English

Monday, October 14, 2013

This week was amazing.  First a story that happened in the house of the bishop last week.  So like I said, we had that beans and pig parts stew thing,  but for dessert we had ice cream.  In Portuguese the word for ice cream is “sorvete”.  They gave us a strawberry sauce to put on top and so I started to put some on and one of the elders asked if I liked strawberries.  I said "Yes, in fact one of my favorite types of cerveja is strawberry."  The problem with this sentence is that “cerveja” isn´t “sorvete”, it’s beer.  And for some reason the two keep getting mixed up in my head, but everyone thought it was very funny.

Elder Anderson (r) with his companion, Elder Gillespie

This week we started involving the youth, we started a mini ctm.  What this is a mini MTC (missionary training center). We taught them how to invite their friends to church and to bear testimony on facebook and things like this.  We have points for every different thing and after 2 weeks the person with the most points gets a prize.  One of the things is going out with the missionaries for lessons, we already have a couple of the youth that have gone out with us.  

Also this week we started Aula de Inglês, English Class.  It was a lot of fun because of the three Americans that are here now, (one of them got transferred and we got a Brasilian that is really cool),  I am the newest. The other two forgot a lot of English and we all had to think about how to speak, it was funny because we had to try different sentences because English is a little weird now, even now writing this is strange because everything looks wrong and everything is underlined red because they don’t have an option to change the keyboard to English, so if there are mistakes, sorry.  

But this Saturday we ran into two couples from America.  One had served here 17 years ago and was here visiting and the other lives near the mission office.  The couple that live by the office gave us 50 reais for dinner, and we were so excited that we talked about it for at least 20 minutes.  We went to one neighborhood to teach and later that day walked to the other side of the city up the mountain to teach some more.  It was about 8 at night and I asked my companion what we were going to do with the money.  He reached into his pocket and realized he had lost the money.  So we spent the next hour and a half walking our past route looking for the money, but didn´t find it.  So now we pray for the person that found it, that they can use it righteously.

Last night we had a meeting with our new stake pres and President Pinho.  It was so amazing, imagine two men that have the spirit of God and can hear it clearly and that have visions for the area.  It was incredible.  We now have a plan for every companionship to baptize at least 1 man per month and in two years by doing this we could split the stake.  

The temple was amazing!  We rode the bus to it, took about an hour and went to the Walmart that they have across the street.  Our zone leaders bought us all donuts for our hard work the past 2 weeks.  While in Walmart I saw one of my friends from the Provo mtc riding up the moving sidewalk, it’s like an escalator, but flat like those moving sidewalks.  It’s in a three story Walmart, and I was so excited.  At the temple I saw two other friends that got their visas this past week!  Soon everybody from our group will be here!  The temple was awesome though, so nice to be there.  Afterwards we went next door to a Fogo De Chão type place that was amazing, I had to learn all the different types of meats, but it was incredible. Was only 20 reais, $10, and so good!  Can’t wait to go to the temple again :)  Hope all is well at home, love y’all.

Elder Anderson

Conference and stuff

Monday, October 6, 2013

So this week flew by in anticipation for conference.  This week our district set a goal to make 1,500 contacts.  Our area took off and ended up doing over 300 compared to 46 the last week. We had splits with another district and one of my Hispanic friends from the ctm came to our place.  We made a bet that whichever companionship made more contacts wouldn't have to buy pizza that night.  So my comp and I took off running talking to everyone and made 53 contacts, we would have done more, but we had 2 hours where we went to a far away area. We got back that night and 9:30 came and the others hadn't shown up. So we called them and told them that for every minute late they would lose a contact.  Eight minutes later they ran in and they had 60 contacts- minus the 8 and so my comp and I won, but they didn't agree to the rule and so we had to buy the pizza anyway. Our zone ended yesterday with 1,081 contacts, which was the secret goal of the leaders all along.  I don’t know if I have already talked about the pizza here.  They don’t use tomato sauce, but it’s so good.  Our favorite is called “portuguesa” with an accent in there somewhere.  It has cheese, onions and hard boiled pieces of egg on top.  For dessert we order a border filled crust of chocolate.  Oh my goodness!  It is so good.  I know it might sound a little weird, but it is so good.  

I finally started to read the letters that you guys wrote for me before I left.  Sorry.  I haven´t had any time at all, you literally have to schedule in time to use the restroom, that´s how busy we are. 

Conference was so amazing!  First one that I stayed awake for the whole time!  We had investigators show up. Our sessions are at 1 and at 5 with priesthood at 9.  The four English speakers watched conference in the relief society room on a tv.  I loved all the talks about missionary work, especially Elder Nielson and Elder Ballard. Did y’all hear the shout outs to the Santos mission next door (during conference)? And the elder that gave the last prayer (in General Conference) was in our ward last week and is our area authority.  We had to wake up before 5 to get to the rebroadcast at 6 in the morning.  Then we went to the bishop´s house to have lunch at 11, which was "feijoada", again with an accent somewhere in there probably, and if y’all don’t already know about it I will describe it.  First, you have black beans, which by themselves are great, add in some sausage, even better, and then just dump in the rest of the pig while you're at it.  I still don’t know exactly what I ate.  My comp is convinced that ear was in there, and I think I saw an eye.  There is a lot more in it, but I couldn't identify it.  It was the first time here that I only managed one plate.

Everything is holding up great.  We have enough food,  don’t  worry, we just work a lot.  The ward I am in is called Embu das Artes and is also the name of the stake. Our building is the stake center.  We also had transfers yesterday.  The comp of the other zone leader in our house got transferred and so we will have a new missionary in our house on Tuesday.  I didn't get transferred this time, but I will next time because with the zone leaders they are always training and you don’t usually stay with your trainer anyway.

A weird thing about Brazilians-   a lot of them have problems with their hands and fingers because of work.  Almost every third person that you see either has a piece of finger missing, or a broken arm.  I met one man a couple weeks ago that owns a tire shop, he is missing the tip of his right middle finger and you can see the bone.  It doesn’t bother him at all though. He uses that hand to move tires and acts as if nothing is wrong.  One other quick thing about  Brasil is that “Anderson” here is a first name, already met two people with that name.  It’s pretty cool. Sometimes people just assume I am Brazilian because of it!

The mission is small when compared to the others in Brazil, but to get to the mission home is still 2+hours and we are pretty close, mainly because of traffic and things.  Language is great, understanding and speaking more every day. It’s getting a little hard to write and speak English, I still think majority in English, but when I am typing my fingers move to the Portuguese words. Sometimes I dream in Portuguese.  I dream I am teaching lessons.  Trying to switch over all thoughts to Portuguese too, but when I speak I don’t have to translate in my mind I can just speak it now.  Still need to learn a lot but I can testify that the gift of tongues is real.  I know that it would have been impossible to be as good as I am now without the help of God. It’s incredible to see it work in your own life and in the lives of other missionários.  

We drink a lot of guaraná because the water here is sometimes not good to drink so we usually have guaraná or another type of soda for lunch.  We didn't have another baptism last night, but we will have a couple this coming week, so excited.  I don’t think that I need anything, will think about it and let you know this coming week though.  Thanks for sending the package, will tell you when I get it.  I get to go to the temple this week!  Will send pics.  Good luck with everything this week!

Love you lots,

-Elder Anderson

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

"Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized?"

Monday, Sept. 23, 2013

It's so incredible to be out and working with real people.  In the CTM (Brazil MTC) it feels weird to practice and to speak the language, but once you are actually out it's so nice and a lot easier actually. The language just comes, it's incredible how fast you learn and how quickly you understand.   I remember the first day in the CTM and trying to apply my Spanish and now I don't really remember Spanish and the little bit that I do remember sounds weird because Portuguese is just that little bit different to make Spanish sound incorrect.  The work is going so fast.  This week we will baptize a family of four.  Here it's the first lesson that you commit to baptism.  The other day we got a referral and saw the person on the street.  We walked up to them and I was smiling the kind of smile you get when you know something is about to happen and you just can't stop smiling.  We stopped them and less than five min later they were committed to baptism.  A few seconds ago they were a different person and now they have a date.  It's just weird and cool to be standing in front of someone saying "Will you follow the example of Jesus and be baptized on this date three weeks from now?"  because as a missionary you know exactly what they will have to do and the changes they have to make and it's a great feeling to have them say yes and you walk away and mark them in your planner as a new investigator. 

About my talk this week: I didn't really have time to prepare one so I was working on it at random times and we had to get up at 5:30 yesterday for ward counsel.  So tired yesterday, but we got to sacrament and learned that we only had 5-7 minutes instead of 10 each.  So the other elder and I cut some parts, and then he got up and talked for 20 minutes and they moved my talk to the next week! So everything went great!  Here they do have Halloween, it's called Dia das Bruxas, it means day of the witches.  It's not as big a deal here as it is in the US.  This week we have our baptism of the family of four and its likely that I will do at least one of them! Last p-day after lunch we decided to go to cidade das abelhas, but it was closed, it's a 45 minute bus ride there and we had planned on being there for a while so we decided to hike through the jungle for 12 km to a waterfall and then we hiked out and went and taught a lesson with the bishop.  It was a long day, but fun.

Dad-I wish now that I had asked you more about your mission (Gary served in Las Vegas). Whenever it's hot here, I always think it was probably hotter there. Remember those belts that we bought thinking that they might not be big enough?  Now it may not be small enough, I am on the last belt hole :) The BYU game is sad (reference to BYU's loss to University of Utah), especially since they beat UT (University of Texas).  Happy birthday Meg!!  Have a great week!

Elder Anderson

Mata

Monday, September 16, 2013

Hey,

So this week was our turn out of the two sets in our area to travel.  I was in another area this entire week and did my first 24 hr exchange.  We went to the furthest part of the mission called Juquitiba.  Part of it is mata, jungle. We walked for thirty min to get to a family and encountered a bull and a couple of horses.

Mata (jungle) in Juquitiba

Will send pics.  Also had chá, tea, not actual tea though. Here only black tea is not allowed.  It was kind of minty and lemony, but it wasn’t tea like we think, so don’t worry. This week we had stake conference and got a new stake president.  We also finally had our two baptisms!  They

finally made it to church.  Last week the car was being used by the father for work.  But they came and were baptized.  We have some investigators that are amazing and are preparing for baptism in October I think.  The language is coming great.  I can understand the majority of what people say depending of the person.  Everyone says that my language is really good for the amount of time I have been here. 

As to your question about what is above our house,  it’s three other houses. We are at the bottom of a hill and there are three other houses above us. Ours is the very bottom.  A couple cool/strange things here.  For candy they like to eat Halls cough drops.  For some reason they really like these and sell them at candy stands.  Members will come up and say "you want a Halls?"  It’s actually good after you try a couple.  Another cool thing: here instead of using the nos, (we), form of the verbs, a lot of the time they will use "a gente", (the people).  So the first time I heard it was from my companion and he was doing a street contact and said "Você já conheci missionarios como a gente?" which means literally: do you already know missionaries like the people?  I was really confused and couldn´t figure out what he had said so I asked and he said that it means us.  So what he really said was "do you already know missionaries like us?"  It’s nice because everyone uses it and it means one less conjugation to worry about.

Also if you get the chance look up "The Character of Christ". It is a talk by Elder Bednar at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) and it is amazing.  Watch it for family night or something, will change your life.  Thanks for the letters and the pictures.  Happy birthday Meg, have fun at the dance.  Have a good week of school. It was great to hear from ya’ll, have a great week.  Pray that my talk on preaching the gospel will go good!

da mata do brasil (from the jungle of Brazil)

Elder Anderson

Milagres sao real

Monday, September 9, 2013

Milagre desta semana (miracle of this week)

This week the Bishop told us of a family whose father had been in the hospital and he had visited.  They lived out in the jungle pretty much.  To get there is a 20-30 min. bus ride on dirt roads passing ranches and people riding horse drawn carriages, really cool.  But we got there and were thinking that there is no way that this family will come to church because of how far it is.  So we find the house, everyone was home, all 6 of them.  We brought them all into the living room, if you can call it that, and taught the restoration.  It went so well, best lesson here yet. Everyone was feeling the spirit and my companion and I were working so great together.  After the lesson we committed them to go to church and to get baptized.  All said yes to baptism, 2 sons have work on Sunday which is really common here.  So we were really happy, but still worried that the family wouldn't show up to church because the mother is a nurse and works the night shift and wouldn't get done until 9 in the morning and church starts at 8:30 in the morning. So we went back to our house and the next day got to church and were waiting for them, luckily Sacrament is last.  And they all showed up!  They really had a good time, and the father said that he had read the chapter we had left with him and that when he prayed about it he felt really good.  They are so excited.

The bad thing about this week was that we had two baptisms scheduled.  The same ones that didn't make it to church last week.  This week the parents said that they would have a car and that they would be able to make it to church.  Sunday come around and we´re waiting for them and they aren't showing up.  So we try to call them, cell phone's not working, they only have one cell phone and no house phone which is common of the really small flavellas.  So we were really worried and were waiting and waiting, but they never showed up.  We hope that it is just a problem with a car.  Haven´t been able to go over there yet, on the plans for today.  

Went on splits for the first time this week.  Was with a Brasileiro from Rio who has only been here 6 more weeks than me and has only been in the church for almost 2 years.  He is really cool and we had a great time.  We found 3 new families that said we could come and teach them.  Saw a "gypsy" the other day too.  She was dressed in really colorful clothes and had only gold teeth and gold jewelery, and a high school musical backpack.

Went to the federal police on Thursday to get registered.  Was a lot of fun because we were sitting waiting for them to call us to get registered and up the stairs walks a group from the CTM, all people that we know.  They were pretty excited to see us.  They kept asking us questions and were so excited because they leave this week.  They all said we looked so much older after just almost two weeks in the field.  Also got to see some friends from the CTM that are in São Paulo Sul missão.  One of them was in the same stake as my companion and was super excited when he found out who my companion was.

Everything is going great here.  Sounds like a crazy week with cross-country and the sealing and trips and everything.  OH! Another thing-Dave I got your letter finally!!!!! And I got the letter that the young women sent.  Tell Sister Leavitt thanks for the talk.  Speaking of talks, this week my comp. gave a talk.  Afterwards the bishop asked me and the other new elder to give talks the week after next, because it's stake conference next Sunday.  So I have two weeks to find time to get a talk together.  Should be fun.  Would love to see pictures of the first day.  If you already sent them I didn't get them, got the email about them though.  

Love y´all,

Elder Anderson 

First week

Monday, September 2, 2013

Hey everybody!!

This week has been so much fun.  I am in an area called Embu das Artes.  It means Mountain of the Artes, or mountain art, or art mountain, most probably the first. But it lives up to it's name. So many hills and stairs and always going up.

Embu das Artes

 It's not too cold at night and the house has blankets for everybody so I don't need to buy one.  This week we had two meetings at the stake center which is in the suburbs but compared to here it is the city.  We took a bus for an hour and a train for 15-20.  Then we walked another 15.  Our area is the second largest in the mission.  In order to get to another neighborhood we take the bus.  The food here is amazing.  The first meal I had was spaghetti, rice, beans, salad, meat and soda.  Then last night we walked for 40 min to the bishop's house to eat my first Brazilian bbq.  Was amazing.  The bishop cooked three steaks per person, also there was rice, salad, chocolate cake, sausages, coke.  And yes, I ate all three steaks.  So amazing.  We also had a baptism yesterday!  We were going to have two, but they weren't able to get to the chapel because we only have one chapel here. It's two stories with the chapel upstairs, and they have to take the bus because they live in the other neighborhood.  But they don't have a lot of money so its really hard for them to come so we didn't have 3, just 1. But this last week we contacted a husband and wife and came back three days later and they told us that they already stopped drinking.  Then they came to church and asked if they could come back again this next week. We already have a baptism date of the 28th for them, they have to get married first though.  A lot of people don't get married here because you have to give money, dowry, or something like that so a lot of people have to get married first.  Got my haircut today, and it was really scary because I already have no idea what they are saying because I only know gospel words. The guy comes in with a glass of something alcoholic and I thought he was a manager or something, then they motion for me to go over to a chair and he walks up and cuts my hair.  He did a good job though.  They use actual razors for part of it so I was a bit nervous during that.  A dog bit my pants, so now I need to go sew that up, didn't bit me though so don't worry.  We have washing machines, but not dryers so we hang everything up.  It's very rural here.  Will send some pics maybe next week of a house with a farm and huge pigs.  So fun though.  The flavelas have some great people.  Attaching some photos of the house and the outside view from the door.

First mission apartment

 The area that I am in is one of the more touristy areas. Yesterday they had a big market where people brought items to sell.  Apparently it happens every week. Wish it happened on p-day. They have people that dress up like statues and they look so realistic, like made of wood or something.  Then when you put some coins in a cup they move, it's so cool.  The language is coming along great.  I am beginning to understand people really well and am starting to speak better.  So cool here.  Wish y'all were here to see it.  Hope all is well.

-Elder Anderson