November 16, 2015 - Ipatinga

It´s kind of a Belo Horizonte?

 

Well, if you know the news about Minas Gerais you´ll know that it´s not good right now. So, a dam that was holding back a bunch of mercury contaminated water has burst, killing quite a few people and contaminating the entire water supply of a city bigger than the one I am in and my city has about 270,000 people. Since the mercury turned the water red people are comparing it to the plagues of Egypt and a couple of our investigators were talking about how Brasil is not being righteous and it will get worse. There is actually a possibility, sadly. There is another dam with 3 times the mercury and they say it already has a crack in it.

Want to hear something happier? We made pastels last p-day. they are kind of like fried hot pockets filled with meat and cheese. I really like them and like every Brazilian meal we had them with ketchup and coke... You thought I was going to say rice and beans, right? Well, generally it is one of the two sets. 

You win some and you lose some. We lost some of our investigators this week due to them not wanting, not caring, or not being willing to act. The great thing is that We also gained some new investigators that have the desire, care about it, and want to change their lives. One of our investigators is really interesting and always has another random scripture in the bible that he wants us to try to explain. The problem is they are often taken out of context. It´s really hard to try to explain a random verse in revelation without sighting nearly every chapter before it.

 

So, we had our first real lightning storm and they were awesome. The lightning was giant and ran across the entire sky. One of the thunders was so big it sounded like a gun shot. The coolest part is that I even saw purple lighting. Is that normal? Half way thru I remembered that I left the window above my bed open. Luckily the rain was coming down in the other direction and didn´t come in through the window.

 

Randoms:

* A lot of people yell, "seguidores de Joseph Smith" at us

* Someone caught me off guard when they yelled, African!

Elder Quain

making pastels

 

 Elders Barbosa, Campelo, & Agiar

 

November 9, 2015 - Ipatinga

 I see a Belo Horizonte

 

We had one day this week were a recent convert actually went out and taught lessons with us. He´s a younger guy and actually wants to serve a mission. We had a few good lessons with him and one that ended in an interesting way. We were teaching one of our best families when suddenly the lights all went out. We looked outside and noticed it was the whole street. We ended up teaching the rest of the lesson by flashlight. It was our last one for the day and we started heading back to the apartment in almost pitch blackness. The entire area had lost power. Our entire proselyting area had lost power. All the hills around us normally have little dots of light, but they were all out. We had to take care on our walk back because the sidewalks are not even here and we were trying not to fall. When we got back to the apartment I remembered that no power equals no fan and that day was up at 37 degrees Celsius. Luckily the power came back on and we were not totally miserable that night with my two fans on full blast.

 

So, we finally had some investigators come to church. It was the family that we were teaching when the power went out. They are doing great and are super receptive. They read the book of Mormon, pray and come to church and we´ve only been teaching them for a week. 

After Church we had lunch at a members house that lived really far. We were able to get a ride there, which was great, but we had to walk back. To understand the rest of the story you need to know that we are trying to function without a map right now as is got put through the wash. Well, we got lost (it turns out that neither of us are emperors and born with an innate sense of direction)and in trying to find out where we were we asked for direction which I actually understood and called another set of missionaries. We found out that we had somehow ended up in the sister´s area and had a long walk ahead of us. 

 

Things I´ve learned to do on my mission so far:

* Iron my clothes

* Keep track of how much clean clothes I have left

* Make my bed without being told

* Try to keep a house clean 

* ...and a little bit of Portuguese
 

Elder Quain

November 3, 2015 - Ipatinga

I see a Belo Horizonte.

Well, this week it rained. We have divisoes with the zone leaders this week and I was paired up with Elder Nunes. He´s Honduran and is really nice. As we were walking to to the area to switch companions it was raining lightly and I was doing just fine in my rain jacket. After we switched off the rain really started to pour and we hid under an overhang for about 15 minutes when I broke down and bought an umbrella. When we got to the apartment to begin studies Elder Nunes and I were completely soaked. Luckily the rain let up and We were able to have a normal day the rest of that day.
 

We were in my area for the split and it really helped me learn a lot. I have really let Elder Barbosa take the lead in planning and directions, while I was focusing on the language and how to be a missionary. I had to do the planning and most of the directions as Elder Nunes did not know the area. It was a good growing experience.
 

Just so you don´t get bored reading my letters I have another interesting story. Well, Like what happens every once and awhile on a mission our lessons fell through and we had to decide what to do next. We were both really tired and decided to sit down and look at the map. As we were looking at the map I guess somebody was spraying off their yard and pushed the water under the gate. Upon standing I found the backside of my pants very wet. It was very noticeable too because I was wearing my light brown pants. Luckily, it is hot in Brasil and it dried out rather quickly.

 

Randoms:

* I had my first fresh coconut this week and a member gave us some mangos

* There is a woman in the ward that tells me I´m too skinny about every time she sees me and another guy overheard it, now he does it also as a joke. 

 

Elder Quain

Me and my coconut

 

Me - Elder Nunes - Elder Marcedo - Elder Barbosa

 

 

Proving to Mom that I have washed my sheets, though rarely make my bed

 

 

October 26, 2015 - Ipatinga

I can see a belo Horizonte

So this week flew by for me. It was almost a normal week; no splits and no travel.

Well, last p-day we were invited to do churrasco at the zone leaders apartment. it was pretty fun. The zone leaders are Elder Marcedo and Nunes. They also invited Elder Nelson and Wies. Not surprisingly Elder Nelson and I spent most of the time talking to each other in English and trying to regain some sanity. Elder Barbosa and I were a little late and the others tried to drop water balloons on us from the 4th floor. Luckily we noticed at the last second and escaped most of the water.

 

I ended up doing a lot of studying yesterday, because Barbosa wasn´t feeling good. We were able to go out for a little time and decided to try and visit one of our investigators. They weren´t home, but their family was, so we taught them the first lesson and got two new investigators.

 

The rest of the days kind of meshed together, but we had a lot of good lessons and the work is progressing. The mosquito population has at least doubled this week. I am always using bug spray and am hiding beneath 2 fans and a sheet at night. There was one night when the wind was really strong and it was blowing a bunch of dirt into my face. I was getting annoyed, but then thought to myself to look on the bright side of life, it blew a lot of the mosquitos away.

 

Randoms:

* We were given some jabuticaba fruit and tried to make some juice out of it. It tasted really bad.

* The next day we had some really good juice and we asked what kind it was. It was jabuticaba. We did something wrong.

 

Elder Quain

Elders: Barbosa, Quain, Nunes, Wies

A jabuticaba tree

October 19, 2015 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte

...but I feel a heavy sun.

 

It has gotten even hotter here as it is approaching summer, It´s not there yet though. I had a pretty good week, but my mom has been asking for an outline of my normal day, so I´ll start with that:

 

1. 6:30am = wake up, pray, do really wimpy exercises, shower, shave, iron my shirt for the day and eat a grilled ham and cheese sandwich

 

2. 8:00am =  pray, personal study for 1 hour, pray, companion study for 1 hour, training for one hour, pray, language study for one hour, put on my white shirt

 

3. 12:00pm = pray, walk to lunch, sweat, eat, get told to eat more, go out and teach lessons and try to find people

 

4. sometime we have a noite familiar with a member and their friend, or noite de integração

 

5. 9-9:30pm = arrive at home, pray, plan(if Barbosa has to do some District Leader stuff we do it in the morning), pray, change clothes, eat a grilled ham and cheese, read some of a book in English(I just finished Jesus the Christ and started The History of Hakan Anderson)

 

6. 10:30pm = pray, go to sleep

Well, that´s a normal day for me right now. As you can see, I´m living on a prayer and some grilled ham & cheese. This week I didn´t really have many normal days though.

 

Last p-day we had Elders Cunha and Campelo over and our laundry room was filled with smoke. We made some churrasco bar-b-que. It was good, I really liked the linguisa sausage, but the other meat was too salty for me. Of course, since we are in Brasil we had some rice with it.

 

The next day was zone meeting. It's very similar to zone conference, only without the mission President and AP´s. It went well and I understood almost all of it. Elder Barbosa and I were asked to do the first lesson in 4 minutes. We got close, but they cut us off before we were able to finish. Because of the meeting we had two other missionaries from the U.S. staying with us, that made a total of 6 elders.

 

 

This week we had splits with the zone leaders that went well and gave me a funny story to tell. There was a guy on the side walk that stopped us, said something unintelligible to us and held out a cup. I was drinking a sprite at the time so I acted on impulse and poured some in. We walked away. I think he was a little stunned and only later did I realize he was asking for money.

Randoms:

* We lost a promising looking family, but gained another. One door opens when another another door closes.

* We got pizza one night which was a nice change from sandwiches.

* Transfers came in and Elder Barbosa and I are with each other for 6 more weeks.

*I like caldo de cana; juiced sugar cane

 

 Elder Quain                                                     

Pizza & a new couch with Elder Barbosa

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

October 5, 2015 - Ipatinga

There´s a Belo Horizonte

 

Well, lets start out with the biggest news. I had a baptism, it was the first time have baptized someone and it was really cool. I really enjoyed seeing the mix of excited and a little nervous in the little girl I baptized. I ended up having to do it twice because she didn´t go under all the way. I was surprised because I thought I would have to do it twice because I would say it wrong.

 

This week was one of conferences. Early in the week we had zone conference with the mission president. It was really good and I understood a lot of it. The funny part is I understood nearly all of it until they started giving instructions for an activity. I seem to do that a lot. I´ll be understanding someone just fine, until they ask me a question, then I can´t identify what words they are saying. For this conference we had 8 elders in our house one night and it was right after we had cleaned. It got dirty pretty fast.

 

Then we had general conference. Barbosa said in his other area they had a room that broadcast in English, we weren´t so lucky here. I understood next to nothing, except for the songs. We were able to watch 4 sessions, all of them except priesthood. I guess I´ll just have to wait for the liahona to be released.

 

We had a fun little event this week. We had not had a good day and our last appointment had fallen though. We didn´t have much time left so Elder Barbosa decided that he wanted ice cream. We got some and it´s really cheap here. It was only 3 reais for 2 scoops a cone and topping, a little less than 1 dollar.As we were walking out a man stopped us and asked us if we were Mormons. We told him yes and he said (obviously this is a translation) I have been to your church a few times, I like it and want to learn more. Needless to say we wrote down his name and address.

 

Randoms:

* We see that neon covered bus a bunch

* It is really hard to teach a lesson when their next door neighbor is blasting funky

* I heard a funky song in English and am glad I don´t understand the other ones yet

* Did I mention that in Portuguese Quain is the sound a duck makes?

 

Élder Quain 

 Zone Conference

                  with Nunes family                                                                          Baptism!

 

with Elder Barbosa & Brother Marzinho