Week Fifteen.

Hello family!

This week has had a few crazy things happen. But most importantly we had a baptism this week, it was my first. Sister Leite has been working with him for awhile, we committed him to baptism my second week here, but things kept coming up and he didn’t get baptized on the other dates, but finally this week he did.

He’s 13 years old and has a great spirit about him, we had a few near misses this week with the baptism, such as we couldn’t find him in his house to teach him the last lesson before getting baptized, and his older brother (who was also scheduled to be baptized) telling us he didn’t want to any more. And about an hour before the baptism he called us crying saying that his mom wasn’t going to come because they got in a fight over shoes ( I didn’t quite understand the whole problem)...but never the less we, well Sister Leite, fixed everything and made everything right, and the baptism went perfect! Some of the people we teach I don’t quite understand the stories they tell us, so I always have to recheck what I understand after our visits with my companion. It depends on the people, on who I can understand.  The members and all the Brazilian missionaries I can understand, but some of the people that we teach who are older or have less of an education, I can’t understand very well.

The funny thing is that the people here do have a different accent than what my companion is used to. So the old people with really heavy accents, who I can’t really understand anything they say, well... neither can my Brazilian companion, haha. Sometimes I feel like she has to be a counselor for the people here. Some of our investigators have a lot of health or family problems, and they always ask us what they should do.

I feel completely comfortable speaking with my companion and the other missionaries, all the youth around here (for some reason they think my accent is cool), and most of the members. But some of the older people here don’t understand me when I speak. Everyday I feel a bit more comfortable, but I still have a lot to learn. I understand most of what everyone is saying, there are always words that I don’t know here and there, but for the most part I understand. Speaking though is a different thing, but that is always my goal during the week -  to be more comfortable.

This week was pretty hot, hotter then normal, and some days it was so hard to work, because our heads hurt and we were hot and tired, but we still tried our best. I had my first transfer cycle yesterday, but we stayed the same.  We already knew that, because the training program that we are doing is 12 weeks, 2 transfers, long. The sisters that we live with also stayed the same. So nothing really changed for us this transfer.

Oh Brazil... well a small town in Brazil. We almost got ran over by a heard of cows! Sister Leite and I were walking and this old lady stopped us and wanted us to look over at some of these horses that were stuck in some mud.  This little boy got them out (I don’t know how), and then we heard a cow bell behind us and these cows are right behind us, so we quickly moved out of the way. Afterwards we couldn’t stop laughing, because my companion is from São Paulo, and also used to a big city. It was funny.

There are always a lot of animals everywhere here. Mainly dogs, tons of them and they are all really dirty and just stray dogs. There are cats, and chickens (and a roster that wakes us up almost every morning at 5:30am), and sometimes we see goats and pigs in the street too. The horses, I feel so bad for the horses here because a lot of the time they have super bad skin and scabs on them, and are super skinny and you can see their bones, not like the horses in America.

Oh they have a fruit market here! I love it. All the fruit is super cheap too. The first time I just asked my companion which fruits were good and bought them. I didn’t really know what fruits I was buying. Mainly because I didn’t know the names of them, like a papaya. You can always buy bananas, pineapple, and mangos for really cheap here too.

So we have this investigator that we started teaching the lessons to this week, and we asked him to be baptized the second time we met with him, or the first time we actually taught him a lesson. Sister Leite was too scared, so she said, well now Sister Nelson has something to ask you, right after I was done speaking, ha-ha. We know he is ready, he is only 17, but he is great, he didn’t agree to be baptized yet, but will soon. We know it. Well this was my week in Brazil. I am still learning so much and am grateful for all the things I have and have been blessed with.

Love,
Sister Nelson