22 January 2013

Family Dearest That I Love So Much.......

Why is everyone going on a Cruise without me?! :( I Hope it Rains Hahaha)

So.... I have been transferred to another area, another state honestly, I am now in Sergipe, the state on the bottom half of the mission. I was in Maceio, Alagoas and now I'm in Aracaju, Sergipe. I live with three other Elders (YES!) Elder Mendes, Garroza, our Zone Leaders and my companion Elder Gonzales. He's from Chile. He's still working on his Portuguese, haha. This makes the learning process a little bit more difficult because he speaks Spanish, but we're learning together. He's a great guy I really enjoy being his companion. He has been out on the mission 10 months. We both arrived in our area at the same time, so we have nothing really to work with, no investigators, no converts, we don't know where any of the members live, or the streets. But it makes it kinda fun, ya have to start somewhere, so we've been knocking a lot of doors, making a bunch of contacts inviting everyone to church and trying to teach lessons. EVERYONE'S CATHOLIC, hahaha. So basically I've been able to improve my contact/door-knocking skills a lot just this past week! It's honestly simple, just say something, haha, ANYTHING! about the church, about them, their house, anything! So yeah I'm starting to lose the "fear to talk to strangers"... YES!

So we had quite the welcoming party... When we arrived at the house we got a call from the bishop who informed us that the son of the second counselor was murdered. And he asked us to go to the funeral at the church that night. So we walked from our house to the church, thirty seconds away. That was really strange... Because I didn't know who was who, the family of the boy that died, who was in my ward, who the bishop was, who was a member, anything! So I just stayed quiet. It was a strange night.

So a few days ago there was a festival, or a holiday, (everyday is a holiday in Brazil). This holiday is where Men dress up as Women and dance and drink in the streets. The first time I saw a group of these men? I was knocking doors, and I couldn't help but laugh! I was dying! Cause these men? would dance to music all provocatively wearing high heels, wigs, and Flintstone dresses. So we moved on. Later we ran into them again, but there were a bunch more of them. Two of them came over to us, one of them kissed my hand, once he realized that I was American they called over all of their friends! 30 men? started running after us! We booked it! haha super scary.

Got to go love you so much
Next week I'll tell you about Elder Bednar.

ELDER RALPH