Hello, I'm thrilled that everything is well. It was fun to see the pictures that Amy sent of... Samuel? From what I understand, this is pretty much final? Samuel Henry? If you really loved him, you'd name him Sten, but I guess it's too late for that. Sam is good too.
I might turn senior here this next transfer. If not the next one, the one after that. There are a ton of elders leaving and very few greenies coming in the next 2 transfers so there are going to be a lot of changes in leadership and a lot of people are going to be bumped up a lot earlier than they expected. I'm a little concerned about that.
Unfortunately, I don't walk with my camera anymore because I don't want to get robbed. In sete Lagoas I didn't really worry about it, but here it's a bit of a different story. It's a real, live city, with real, live ghettos and criminals. So yeah, you understand. But next week I'll try to remember to send pictures. Speaking of "home" I live in the best apartment in the mission. We live on the 18th floor of this sweet apartment building (so that means no cockroaches and no mice or rats). Also, it's the only house in the mission that has a real washing machine instead of the box thing that just churns water. Laundry here is so easy... Food in the city is a little bit more expensive; actually, everything is more expensive. Buses are R$2.10 instead of R$1.60 which stinks. But it's cool to be here; I've never lived in a real city-city before, so I'm enjoying it for now. I imagine it will get old soon.Yesterday we ate at Subway in the food court of this mall in the middle of the city. I walked into the mall after 5 months (by the way, I turned 5 months in the mission yesterday) of being cast out of civilization- it was like the twighlight zone. And then Subway! I can't believe it exists here. It was soooo gooood. President and Sister Frei also happened to be eating lunch there.The new area is interesting. When I was in Sete Lagoas everyone told me how blessed I was to have started my mission there because of how flat it is. I wasn't too phased. Then I got to Belo Horizonte. It's unbelievable. I'm so tired. There is no flat part in any part of this city; you're either going up or down. Some of these hills are just... sinister. I'm surprised that cars are able to make it up them. I can literally be walking and reach out my hand to touch the ground without bending over.When we leave the house, we walk 5 minutes to the bus stop, and then wait for the bus, and then it's about a 20 minute bus ride to get to our area, and then we walk to wherever our first appointment is from there. The neighborhood where we're working right now is mostly ghetto. It's called "Hill of the Rocks" in Portuguese. Fun place.The other night we were walking to the bus stop and I saw these two girls just beating each other, and there was a crowd of people standing around just watching them. We didn't stick around to see who won. We have some prospective baptisms though; the work is going well, especially since we're just opening up this area. I'm afraid that when Elder Alfaro leaves, I'm gonna be way lost. Since he's going home at the end of this transfer, there's a pretty good chance that I'll stay. It's not 100% sure that our area is going to stay open for more than this transfer. We'll see how it goes. The Center of the city is easy to navigate because it's just a big grid, but when you get out of the center and into places where people just started building houses on top of houses without thinking and just putting roads wherever, the map looks like a plate of spaghetti. There's not even room to put the names of the streets. Yep, so I'm loving it.
Much Love,
Elder Sisco