October 12, 2015 - Ipatinga

I can see a belo horizonte.

Well this week was a lot different than what I´ve had so far. It started out normal enough. We had district meeting and Elder Cunha and Campelo stayed in our apartment. They ended up going out to a lunch appointment with us. It was with one of my favorite families in the ward. A funny thing that happened though was that I apparently was zoned out for a second looking at the salt shaker. The mom of the house asked me if I wanted some. I told her no.  She then asked me if I knew what salt was and if we had it in the U.S. I told here that I knew what it was and yes, we do have it in the U.S. The other elders then returned to their area and we had a normal day for what remained.

The next day we had a divisão, splits. It was in João Monlavade which is about 2 and a half hours away. We tried to catch a train, but that didn´t work and we had to wait for a bus. While waiting we ended up playing some dama, or lady. It is basically the Brasilian version of checkers. We utilized that for proselyting and talked with the people about the church as we played. When we caught the bus it took us to another bus. Unfortunately, we had just missed it, but so had another lady and we all got into a taxi car and he drove us to the next stop for the bus. We got to João Monlavade and were able to take another bus to the elders. We did a short split that night and I visited some people with Elder Campelo.

 

The next day I was with Elder Cunha and we visited quite a few people. The most interesting one was a recent convert that didn't´t have any electricity and we had the lesson with him after the sun was down,  so we ended up teaching him by candle light.

 

The day after that we were supposed to go back to our area. That didn´t quite work out as planned. They don´t let you reserve spots on the long distance busses here and we were not able to get on a bus all day, so we ended up staying another night with the other elders. This is probably a good thing because I was the only non-brasilato and I think it helped quite a bit with my language.

We were finally able to catch a bus the next day. It was an old bus, that didn´t give me enough room and didn´t have any air condioning, but it got us back to Ipatinga where we were finally able to meet with our investigators again.

 

Sunday was different. I'll start of with the best thing, I was able to participate in my first confirmation. It´s never dull at church here though. One of the kids was being brought back to his seat be his mom and was holding high a large, plastic sword.
 

Randoms:

* Trying to catch a bus can be really annoying.

* I really like diamonte negro and this thing called goibinha. It´s king of really thick fruit leather of  guava

* A random woman came up to me and asked me were I was from, she then tried to hug me which I was really awkward about. (That gave me companion a good laugh)
 

Élder Quain

 Elder Campelo & Elder Quain

 

Elder Cunha & Elder Barbosa