What A Week!

So, most of my week was spent going to and from hospitals this past week. I've been having back pains recently, so I went to the hospital to get it checked out. They gave me a prescription but they also wanted an x-ray to be done. Except, they don't accept the mission's insurance to do x-rays, so I had to go to another hospital, but it turns out that they don't accept it either. So they gave me the business card of a third place. It had two addresses on it, so I went to the one that I thought I could find. That one doesn't do x-rays, so we had to go to the other one, but it was closed. So we had to go back the next day to finally get the x-rays done. And I have to go back today to get the results. It's an arbitrary mess. All the time we didn't spend at hospitals or on buses, we spent trying to find new people to teach. Also, this past Saturday, we passed out flyers for this huge activity that we're going to have this coming Saturday. It's going to provide a bunch of free public services, so I think it'll be pretty cool. I'm looking forward to it. A shirt I saw this week that I thought was funny: "I kiss better than I cook." Classic brazilian mentality. Well, that's really about all that happened this week.

Until next week,

-Elder Michael Carlson

PIZUKIS!

90432 steps 54.25 km. The definite highlight of the week was making pizukis (not really sure on the spelling). I made a pan of cookies, smeared ice cream on top and us four Elders just dug in. It was quite delicious. We had this huge missionary meeting with all the missionaries in João Pessoa. It was pretty cool. I got to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time. I got to see Elder Wilke, my companion in the Brasil MTC. One day this past week, we were planning our next actions on a park bench, when this group of kids walked up to us and just stood there and looked at us. After about 5 minutes of staring, one of them finally asked us, "Are you two Germans?" Joking, we said yes. Then we returned to our planning but they just stood there watching us. It was really awkward. Finally, we just got up and walked away. Another day, as we were walking, we looked behind us to find one of the many stray dogs following us. We were doing contacts at that time, so it just kept following us. It followed us for probably about an hour and a half but then it ran off. But it travelled at least 3 km away from where we found it. It was a pretty good week, full of fun things that happened.

Love you all! Until next week.

-Elder Michael Carlson

Kids Can Just Be The Devil

108469 steps, 65.08 KM. So this past week was pretty crazy. The highlight of the week: Mateus' baptism. It was nuts. So, we had started the font filling and then we left to go do some other work. We came back to actually have the baptism and some kids had put gum in the lock to the outside gate. So we couldn't get in... And, I had made cookies that morning. So there we were. Sitting outside the gate, everyone was there and we couldn't even get in the church. Finally somebody came back with cooking oil and somehow got the lock to open after much trials and tribulations. The baptism itself was very good. Also, Neide, one of our investigators, I honestly believe would be baptized were it not for Samuel. It's a kid that she takes care of, because his mom doesn't want to. He's the excuse that she gives whenever she doesn't want to go to church. And, whenever we're having a great lesson, he shows up and is very distracting and the Spirit's gone. It can be really frustrating. We did find two new, solid people this past week. One's name is Natã (the Brazilian version of Nathan) and the other is Hilkeis. Natã we just contacted and he said that he'd go (he didn't). And Hilkeis stopped us as we were walking and asked when we have church. The only problem is that his mom really doesn't want him going to our church. So... he'll have to sneak out to go to church. But he really wants to know what it's like. So that's pretty cool. Other than that, not much really happened this week. The picture is of when we were waiting outside the church for an hour and I looked like a hobo. I've got cookies on my side and I have cookie dough in my hands. I was pretty sad when we found that it was broken...

-Elder Michael Carlson

Halloween!!!!?

81510 steps, 48.90 KM. So the anti-highlight of the week was Halloween. I was expecting at least a little but there was absolutely nothing. Not a hint of chocolate, nor of any costumes. It was pretty weird. And, there was no sign of pumpkins, which made me sad. I wanted to carve a pumpkin but they don't have the big orange ones that we're used to here. One good thing that I forgot to mention in my last letter is that Leandro, our recent convert actually gave a talk last Sunday, which was really cool. He talked about repentance and he did a very good job. He even memorized his talk. We've been working with Matues a bit more. He came to church yesterday in a white shirt and tie and he already looked like a member. It confused me for a bit. It was a pretty boring half week really. That is all.

Love you bunches, happy Halloween! (belated)

-Elder Michael Carlson

[Michael answered a few questions we thought might be good to include]

[Do Brazilians do anything to celebrate Halloween or All Saints Day on November 1st?]

Brazil as a whole, yes. In the richer areas they have Halloween parties and such but it's not nearly as big as in the US. But here, nothing happened. It was really weird.

[How are your investigators doing, especially Mateus?]

Really the only two solid investigators we have right now are Neide and Mateus. Neide is continuing in the way that she is. Mateus is having a hard time right now, but he recognizes the blessings that come from baptism and wants to be baptized as soon as he can. Unfortunately, he's not sure his mom will let him (she's a strong member in another church).

[What is your ward mission leader like? Do you work with your ward council?]

The WML is pretty cool, his wife just had a baby, so he's been kind of busy with that, but he's always willing to help if he's able. We personally don't work with the ward council. We give our reports to the WML and he talks to the council about the people.

[How is your Portuguese? Do you still do daily language study?]

It's going well. I feel like I'm close-ish to fluent. When people mumble, I can't understand them, but I can't even understand mumbled English. And when I'm trying to say very complicated things, I miss a word or two, but I can usually get my message across.

[What do Brazilians think of the recent re-election of President Dilma Rousseff? Our news said it was a narrow win.]

Not sure. We rarely talk about politics with people. The one brazilian in our house didn't vote. But he did have to say why not, because here, it's actually the law, you have to vote.