First of all, I think the most important thing that needs to be said is that today, not only did I beat my personal bet, but I also beat the Brazil Belo Horizonte Mission bowling score in the 2 1/2 years that President Frei has presided over this mission. 191 (One hundred and ninety one)!!!! Shattering the old score of 165 that one of the first assistants got at the beginng of President Frei's mission, and absolutely destroying my old person best of 144. I got four strikes in a row! (six in total)
It needs to be understood that in the picture "MC" is me. It stands for McArthur. "SIS" is Elder McArthur because he skipped me in the first frame and bowled in my place. So we had to switch names. "DAN" is President Frei. I know this seems fishy, but it's true. I seem to have undergone some intense transformation since my days of InterMural bowling in the BYU-Idaho leauges.
Sister Frei asked me "did you used to be on a bowling team or something?" and I was like "well, to be honest, yes, but we lost every game we played in."
Last thursday we went to play soccer with the assistants and their recent converts and a couple of ours too. It was way fun, but by the end everyone was dying. We played for 2 1/2 hours, and my entire body hurt for the next four days. And I wasn't the only one. Everyone in the house went to bed at 9 that night.
The other day I was walking in our area with Elder Rodrigo and I had a bottle of yogurt in my left hand. He asked me what time it was and I turned my hand to look at my watch and dumped half a liter of strawberry yogurt all over the front of my pants. I felt intelligent.
Last night we were teaching a new investigator and his wife, who doesn't want anything to do with the church, but she listens because she probably doesn't have anything better to do. The only problem is that she talks a lot, and seems to have some kind of personal grudge with the Jehova's Witnesses. Her daughter is one, and everything that came out of her mouth seemed to be some sort of negative comment targeted at the JWs. At one point, as we were introducing the Book of Mormon to them, Elder Rodrigo said (trying to demonstrate that God speaks to all of His children), "Let's imagine that you have two daughters. One of them lives in Europe, and the other one lives in the United States. When Christmas comes, which one of them are you going to call?" and she says, "well, I'm not going to call Amanda because she's a Jehova's Witness and she doesn't celebrate Christmas."
I laughed out loud, but I don't think she recognized that I was laughing directly at her, which is probably good.
This is the week of transfers, which means it's the week in which we least have time to spend in our area. It's been pretty rough so far this week with all the stuff we have to get ready for next wednesday.
And on tuesday we had computer problems and had this guy from the ward come and help us out, and he stayed working on the computers until 9:00pm so we couldn't even leave to go to our area. But we're working hard, and doing our best to accompany our investigators. Tonight we have an FHE at the church that we invited a ton of people to, and also a bunch of members. I'm excited, it's going to help our investigators get to know the members a little bit better.
Anyway, that's all I've got to report for this week. Hope you guys are happy and safe and warm, too.
Love,
Elder Sisco

Good morning!
It's almost noon, and we just got here to do email. I just finished reading all of your emails. Thanks a bunch!
We've been having a pretty good week here. Transfers are coming up at the end of this month (28th) and we had like a mini-meeting with President yesterday. It looks like Elder Rodrigo is going to train his replacement this transfer and then I'll train mine in the next (in the middle of march). I'm kind of excited about this, and then again I'm kind of not excited about it. There are a lot of perks to being in the office that I'm sure I'll miss once I've left them. I'm sure there's tons of stuff that I probably am not even recognizing that I take for granted that I'll notice once I leave. But I've still got quite a bit of time left. It looks like I'll be leaving the office in the middle of April. Nothing is for sure yet, but that seems to be what President's leaning towards at the moment.
Last night I asked Elder Kent to cut my hair, because he said that he used to cut his brother's hair and that he was pretty good at it. Turns out, he's not. He was really nice and wanted to be helpful, so now I feel bad about paying to have someone fix the unfortunate job that he did. His companion Elder McArthur said he'd fix it for me. I'm just not sure who to trust anymore.
From what I can tell, the only cure now is time.
I got letters from both Mom and Amy this week, so thank you guys a bunch! I loved the Dave Barry cut out. I was laughing out loud in my office and Rodrigo thought I was weird.
Last night I did a division with Elder McArthur so that I could go interview his investigator to be baptized. He ended up not being home, and so I didn't interview anyone, but the division was still lots of fun. And while I was in his area working, Elder Rodrigo and Elder Kent found an amazing family in our area that all have dates for the first of February. We're going back to see them tonight. I'm excited to meet them.
This week I finally finished off all the food and goodies that I got from Christmas. I actually still have one box of Annie's left, but I'm saving it for a special occassion (namely, starvation).
Today we're going to play soccer with a bunch of our recent converts (Bahia's two sons, and Vinicius, the son of Andreia, if you guys remember the pictures of their baptisms that i sent) and the Assistents and some of their recent converts and some members. I'm stoked, I think it'll be lots of fun.
I just asked Rodrigo if anything interesting happened this week that I should tell my family, and he looked at me, looked at my hair, laughed and said "if you haven't told them about that yet, I think they should know."
Anyway, I can't really think of anything else that's very interesting that has happened. I'm sending pictures of us with the other missionaries in our ward and our old ward mission leader who just got back from his mission last year, and the other one is with him and his family that loves the missionaries.
Love,
Elder Sisco

On Saturday I did a division with Elder McArthur, one of the assistants from Rexburg, ID. That was a blast, and he had already passed in our area at the beginning of his mission so he knew where stuff was better than I did.
We found a family to teach, and they were very receptive. The lady even said that she had been looking for a church for them to go to. And they live right by the church, so it's perfect. They went with us to church on Sunday, and they both loved it. Even their four year old son loved primary. I went back with Elder Rodrigo on Sunday night with one of the members of the ward and we taught them an awesome first lesson, and invited them to be baptized on the 18th and they were really excited about it. Then we ended and prayed and as we were leaving Elder Rodrigo asked her, "by the way, how long have you guys been married?" And she was like, "we're not married, we're just 'together.'"
So that was unfortunate. We talked to the Bishop and he said that maybe we could work something out, but in Brazil the process of marrying someone is very drawn out. They make it very difficult for some reason. That's one of the reasons why a lot of people aren't married legally.
Last night we went to a family home evening at the Bishop's house. We were supposed to bring investigators but none of ours could go. The other two missionaries in our ward were also supposed to bring investigators but none of theirs could go either. So it ended up being just the Bishop's family and the missionaries playing games at his house. It was really fun, but not very productive as far as missionary work goes. At least we got to know the Bishop a little bit better.
-Elder Sisco

It is a new year!
Last night the fireworks at midnight woke us all up, so we gathered at the giant window at the front of our apartment to watch them all go off. It was cool because since we live so high up we could see the fireworks going off all over the city. Some so far away that they were just little silent explosions in the distance. Very cool.
We passed by President's house last night for cake, because it was Elder Kent's (the new assistant) birthday. We stayed and talked to his two sons and one of their wives for a bit, which was fun.
Our golden investigator and her mom are no longer golden. They stopped keeping the committments, and never even went to church. Tomorrow we're going to go there to get the Book of Mormon and other stuff that we loaned to them back. I'm a little sad, but have some other really good prospects.
The other day we were at a lady's house in the middle of a lesson when the doorbell rang. She went to see who it was, and when she opened it it was this homeless guy, and he said "Pedro died." And she said, "excuse me?" and he repeated, "Pedro died. Is Junior here?" (Junior is her husband) She said he was sleeping and that he couldn't attend the homeless man.
We decided we'd better find out what happened to Pedro, so we went out and walked down the steps of her apartment to the street with her and her son and the homeless guy, and sure enough, there lying on the sidewalk was Pedro, with three other homeless guys just sitting there next to his body looking around. Elder Rodrigo went over to see if he had a pulse, and he didn't. Then he called 192 (9-1-1) and within minutes an ambulance showed up.
A bunch of EMTs jumped out and started trying things to revive him, but the guys who were sitting down on the sidewalk said he had been dead for more than half an hour, so they didn't make much progress. Apparently Pedro drank so much that day that he just laid down and died afterwards. It was sad.
The other day we went over to a member's house and painted her living room. The walls were all peeling paint and stuff, so we were like "this needs to be scraped and sanded and stuff" but she just wanted us to slap the paint over it. So that's what we did. It didn't turn out that bad, but I imagine she'll be needing us to do it again pretty soon.
'Til next week,
Elder Sisco