2nd p-day in the field!
Okay. Big news. I baptized a kid on Sunday. His name is Warley. He's part of a huge, very poor family that Elder Wilson and his previous companion found. He's quite skilled.
Yesterday morning we had our first district meeting and then did a 24hr split, so I had to go with Elder Berg to his area and work with him yesterday, and Elder Wilson took Berg's companion and worked with him. All in all, it was a good experience; I didn't do much, but I did meet a lot of cool people that I'll probably never see again. I missed my companion and the people we've been teaching. Elder Berg and I (but mostly just Elder Berg) taught this family the first lesson yesterday. Parents and their young daughter. The daughter had already been to church and loved it and the parents didn't really know anything about the church. At first, the father was a jerk, didn't receive anything we were saying and basically cold-shouldered us; he's Catholic and didn't want anything to do with us Mormons; but about halfway through the lesson he lightened up a little bit. Then he lightened up a lot. And by the end of the lesson he loved us. They said they'd read and pray and seemed excited about it. For this reason, I'm not thrilled about the split because I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. I want to see them progress and learn more and be baptized; I'm sure they will, but I won't be there, because it's not my area.
We have a TON of great people in our area that we're teaching though, and they're all on the same street, it's amazing. First there's the family of they boy I baptized on Sunday. They've all been baptized except the parents because they can't because they live together but aren't married and are too poor to pay to get married. It's expensive. This happens A LOT in Brazil. It's probably one of the biggest reasons people don't get baptized. Two of the boys received the priesthood on sunday and one was confirmed. They are SO POOR though, it makes me sad. They didn't have anything to eat on Saturday so they went without, and then they got money on Sunday somehow, before church, and one of the boys went to buy food for the family. What can you say in a situation like that? They didn't have food...it's rough. I love them, but I do not like teaching them in their house. I'm still shocked from all the stuff they taught us in the health meeting in the MTC about diseases we can catch and stuff, and their house is so dirty and gross I don't want to touch anything; I don't even want to move. Something I'm working on getting over. And they have this nasty dog that just had 1900 puppies and it wanders around and wants you to pet it, but it's starving and sad and disgusting and I don't want to get a disease... I don't know if any of that was coherent.
One of my favorite investigators is Dona Zeca; she's this 74 year old woman who smoked for 50 years and drank, basically she was the neighborhood drunk. Just before I got here, she dropped everything, stopped completely and was baptized. She's the reason we're teaching so many people. She's so excited she's telling everyong and bringing everyone to church. I like her a lot.
None of these people are MINE though, they were all found by my comp and his comp before me, EXCEPT one woman named Xisleine who I contacted like, my second day. I invited her to church in a quick street contact and she said okay, so on Sunday morning we knocked on her door an,d of course, she was asleep, so she answers the door groggy and a little out of it and we say, "are you coming to church like you promised?" She's like "yeah, yeah whatever I'll go." So we say great and leave, obviously expecting nothing. We went and rounded up all the other people to come to church with us and we had this group of about 10 people all getting on the bus with us, and when we got on the bus I looked and Xisleine was sitting there waiting for us, all ready to go. It was awesome. Yesterday, Elder Wilson and Elder Dos Santos talked to her (because of splits) and she said she loved church and she's told everyone about it and is inviting people to go next week; she hasn't even had the first lesson yet! So I'm excited, hopefully we'll teach her today a bit. I like her because I FOUND HER, yay, but the only problem is that I can't understand anything she says, ever. But oh well. I'm learning. Just this past week I've noticed a huge difference in comprehension; I'm getting a lot better and can almost have normal human being conversations with crazy native speakers.
One of the things about this area that they told us before we came out here is that it's "rednecks of Brazil." I didn't really know what that meant, and I still don't, but I'm learning that a part of it is speech and slang. Example: "Eu tenho" means I have. "Ele tem" means he has. The following happens a lot: "voce tem interessa em ouvir nossa mensagem em sua casa?" "Sim, eu tem," or "do you have any interest in hearing our message sometime in your home?" "I has interest, yeah..." (its cooler if you say it with a Cletus the slack-jawed yokel accent). Or "nos vai" instead of "nos vamos"... "we is going" ... what? I'm learning to deal with it though, and understand it.
We eat a members house every day, and so far I haven't had a meal I didn't like. I'm loving this food, and the members who feed us are fun too.
Tonight, we teach an English class at the church, something some missionaries before us instigated to get people interested. Brilliant though, isn't it? What Brazilian wouldn't be interested in going to a FREE English class and learning from real bonafide Americans. Yes! It's gonna be fun.
Last night with Elder Berg we got pizza (first good pizza I've had in 2 months...) and went to his apartment and listened to The Great Apostasy talk by Hyrum Smith (not THE Hyrum Smith, but a different guy. I don't really know who he is. Some business guy/mission president or something). If you can find this somewhere I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. It was amazing, and it's good to know the stuff he was talking about since every single person in this country believes in God, but doesn't have the truth. I don't know what the talk is actually called, unfortunately, that's just what all the elders call it. Every elder has it on a cd, most of them can quote a lot of it. It really is awesome.
Our church is the nicest church in the mission. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures developed and send them to you... I don't know how to send pictures at this internet place, but Elder Wilson does, I could get him to show me.
I don't know any more about President Frei today than I did a week ago, but tomorrow I'll see him because we have to go to Belo Horizonte for zone conference (a couple zones combined I think, otherwise we would just stay here...) and I'll see and talk to him, I'm sure. Also, that's why you're getting an email today and not tomorrow. Normally my P-days are on Wednesday, not Tuesday. Just for today.
Thanks for keeping the blog updated, Amy. Also, thanks for sending me your blogs, those are fun.
If you want to look it up, I believe mine is the El Dorado ward... It's on Paulo Frontine Ave. or somethign like that in the center of the city. You could look that up on google earth and see what you can see.
All of my clothes are dirty. In the MTC I could wear a shirt for like, 9 or 10 days without washing it. Here it's one. My pants all have mud and crap on them and my shoes are not black anymore. We don't have a washing machine. I'm not sure what it is. It looks similar, but I think it just fills up with water... and, well, I'm not really sure what it does. I'm going to find out today when I do laundry at our house. It looks like a smaller, plastic washing machine. Then we just hang them up to dry.
The area authority, I think he's a member of the 70, Elder Ellis, is doing a mission tour, and he's seeing us tomorrow and making random stops at some missionaries' apartments. I'm a little concerned he might come to ours and that would be embarassing. For a missionary apartment, ours is actually pretty good (it's actually technically a house, it's just very small, 3 rooms.) It's just that ours is one of the crappiest in the mission. We'll see.
Okay, I can't think of anything else to tell you. Can't wait to hear from all of you again soon, everything here is great so far. Keep the emails coming, also letters.
Okay, love you all,
Elder Sisco
(being Elder Sisco is not easy, let me tell you. I'm going to have to put up with that stupid eye booger joke for another 22 months. Oh my goodness... I also get "Elder Harry Potter" a lot too. That also is old already.)