July 17th, 2008

My first two weeks as District Leader have gone pretty well so far. I haven't had to do anything really leader-ey; I haven't even had to give a training yet. But tomorrow I believe that it begins. I not only have my first baptismal interview, but also my second and third. I'll let you know how that goes.
President Frei asked that every companionship in the mission do something special for their bishop to show that we love and appreciate them. This Monday we're having a special FHE at our bishop's house, with our Ward Mission Leader, his wife, and the couple missionaries in our ward. The sisters planned out everything, since they're amazing at that sort of thing, and we're sort of socially retarded when it comes to planning out special appreciation parties. They even made three special gift baskets of chocolates and things- one for every couple.
The two guys we baptized a few weeks ago, Claudio and Cesar, are doing really well. They've improved dramatically; they have friends in the ward and they come every week to church and to all the activities. I'm very proud. They went to the movie theater for the first time this past week. The girls that brought them told us that the theater was so packed they had to sit in the second row, and that Claudio and Cesar were sick by the time the movie ended because they were sitting so close to the screen it looked like things were going to pop out on top of them.
Elder Allen and I are doing well. He's from Sandy, and he used to be an artist for a video game company near Salt Lake, and I'm pretty sure he's gonna keep doing that after the mission.
The gang wars in the area have died down a bit, but we always see people smoking weed in the middle of the street in broad daylight, which is strange to me. They don't even try to hide it. I was talking to one of the sisters the other day, and she was like, "on my mission I learned to distinguish the smell of weed. I also learned what cocaine looks like and how people act when they are on it."
I tried to make brownies last night by substituting chocolate milk powder for brownie mix. It turned out like more of a soft chocolate bread/cake deal, but everyone seemed to like it anyway.
So things are pretty hectic these days. The church headquarters in São Paulo is threatening to shut down the referrals system in this mission if we don't start contacting ours. Our mission is ranked last in percentage of referrals contacted. The problem is actually just that the missionaries are lazy about relating them on the site. They're probably all contacted, just that no one bothers to tell the people in São Paulo. So we've been running all over the place trying to get all of our references contacted as fast as we can. The whole mission is.
That's all I've got for this week.
'Til wednesday,
Elder Sisco