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.

Transfers Once Again!

This past week, it was 109717 steps or 65.83 KM. I finally recovered from my sickness and am back to full health. This past week was just kind of chugging along. We did find a young man named Mateus this past week who went to church. He has a good friend in the church and we're going to go teach him later today. He seems very intelligent and willing to learn about the church. Also, we talked with Neide, the mother of some recent members. She just has some odd ideas about the church which we can't seem to resolve, no matter how many times or ways we try to explain. We had a 2-hour lesson to tell her that Jesus Christ did, in fact, preach to the spirits in prison for 3 days while he was in the tomb. And I'm pretty sure next time we go there she'll ask us again... It was also transfers yesterday. It was a pretty low stress one since everyone in the house is staying, so no one had to pack and madly scramble to not forget anything. It was nice. Also, one night, Elder Iuri found a cat (picture below). We fed him a hot dog and played with him a bit but then he ran away. All good things must end...

-Elder Michael Carlson

[Michael also gave us just a bit more information about his experience in the hospital last week]

With the hospital thing, my companion was in the waiting room and I was through a set of double doors while I was being nebulized. I think the woman was singing about how she wanted God's love, but I'm not entirely sure.

[It looks like Michael's hair has lightened up some with him being out in the sun so much]

Once Again Unto the Breach!

Let's see... I walked 81289 steps or 48.77 km. Once again, Mom and Dad, my sitting quietly practice came in quite handy. For those who don't know, SQP was my punishment when I was rowdy when a child. I would have to sit on the couch for about 15-20 minutes and be quiet [Parental Note: SQP was only when he was really rowdy at church]. I hated it at the time but it has turned into an invaluable skill. So, I have still been dealing with my bronchitis even after taking the drugs that the previous doctor gave me. So, I went back to the hospital. After waiting a while, I went in to see the doctor. He checked me out and told me that I have the beginnings of a chest infection. So he wrote some stuff on a paper and told me to go somewhere else and give the paper to someone. So I kind of wandered around a bit, then some guy (a doctor) took my paper and told me to sit down a bit. I thought he was going to get me some pills for free and I would just take them home and take them there. But, when he returned, he had a tray full of tubes and he led me to a room with a bunch of those racks for he IV drips. I got pretty scared that I was going to be pricked. But it turned out that there was also an air valve on the wall and I was supposed to take one of those nebulizer things. There was a little mask with smoke coming out of it that I was supposed to breath into for 40 minutes. There were only 2 other people in the room during the entire thing: A crazy old woman and what I can only assume was her husband. The woman had one of those canelli things (the tube that sticks into your nose) And she let the entire world know. She was just complaining the entire time. Telling her husband to get the doctors to take this "contraption of the devil" out of her nose. She was not quiet the entire time. It taxed my patience quite a bit. When my stuff ran out, I got myself out of there. I was so happy to not be with that woman anymore. I had to talk to the doctor again and he told me I had to do the nebulizer for another 40 minutes... So I went back to that room and the woman had started pacing around the room saying catholic prayers and singing "I want, I want, I want, I want, I want LOOOOOOVE" really horribly. I just sat there quietly and waited out my 40 minutes. After that, it felt soooo good to not be in that room. Other than that, the week was pretty normal. Just doing a bunch of contacts to try to find someone that will go to church. We haven't had any success so far. It was an alright, albeit, hot week.

Love you all!

-Elder Michael Carlson

Mosquitoes Are Quite Annoying

I took 79846 steps this last week or 47.90 Km. I'm still taking it slow because I'm still sick, which stinks. Also, it's been kinda rainy here, which makes the mosquitoes go crazy. I've been bit so many times that I've started looking for constellations. I've already found the Big Dipper and Orion's Belt but I'm looking for more. Also, the rain's made it super humid all the time, so I haven't stopped sweating. It's kind of gross. But we had a good week. We found a couple of new people but the clincher is getting them to go to church. People will invite you into their homes and feed you but they don't actually want to hear about the church, so we can find a lot of new people in a week, but they become investigators if they go to church. In other news, Leandro was confirmed yesterday, which was a great experience. And I got a package from my parents, which was quite fun. Pretty boring down here in JP...

Until next week! Love you all!

-Elder Michael Carlson

[we received a bit more information from Michael this week in a separate email]

Yesterday, we had a pretty cool experience. I was feeling really poorly. I took my inhaler early that morning, so it wore off during church and I was having a really hard time breathing. I was out of breath just sitting down. And I was having a lot of chest pain. Then a member asked us to go to a house for him and give a blessing. I was less than enthusiastic about going, I just wanted to stay inside, but we went anyway. And we had a great lesson with a non-member mom, then a friend came over who was having a hard time and we offered to help by teaching her about Jesus Christ and how he can help and she accepted, then we had another great lesson with her. And we got some lemon mousse as an added bonus. Another funny story: Here, they don't have dryers, you just dry everything on a line. So our line here is outside. I'll wait to do my laundry on a very sunny day, so I put it out on the line and we go out to work. And every single time, it rains. So my clothes get soaked again. This has happened every single time, with no exceptions. It's getting to be pretty funny. If I want it to rain, I'll just do my laundry.

One More Week Down

Last week was 105845 steps or 63.50 KM. We worked really hard this past week because we had to make up for last week where we didn't work too much on account of me being sick. So we did lots of work and found lots of new people. However, it was election day yesterday here so almost no one went to go see General Conference. So that was sad. I'll give an investigator update next week when things settle down. General Conference was really good, even though this was the first time I've watched it completely in a different language. I thought it was really cool that they let people talk in their native languages. I had an exchange with the zone leaders this past week. They wanted to see why our numbers were so low. We explained that I was sick and then they saw our numbers for this week and I think it's all worked out now. Also, now that I have a nice computer, I can send some pictures. Woo hoo!! The first is my previous companion. The second is my current companion.

-Elder Michael Carlson