I don't have much to report this week. It flew by so fast, I barely remember what happened.
On Saturday, we moved. Finally. Our new house is amazing. I think I'll have to take pictures of it. I took some pictures of the old house that I'm sending right now. I'm so glad to be out of there.
On Sunday we had a meeting with just us, the bishop and this guy from the stake presidency. He talked about the quality of the sacrament meeting. Because it's bad. Everyone gets up and walks around, leaves, comes back, talks, everything. Last week this girl was sitting in the very back row on top of the pew talking to her friend with her back to the pulpit. Awesome. Our chapel is huge, but our ward is tiny, so everyone sits spread out everywhere. It's no good. Hopefully we'll be able to get our own building soon that will accommodate our ward a little better (I don't actually think we even have enough people to qualify as a ward).
I've gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks, by the way (or 4.5 kilos, if you will). I have a gut. It's disturbing. A woman in our ward, and one of the elders from the CTM both told me that my face looks chubby. I'm working hard every morning now to get rid of the gut. It's because we eat so much. I only want to eat one plate of food... .I always get enough. But then after I eat someone always says "you need to gain wait, eat more" and so I have to eat more. Then there's dessert. Sometimes people are even offended if I try to decline- they think I don't like it. So lately I've been trying to do smaller portions on the first time around to accommodate seconds. The other day, only a few hours after one of these huge lunches, we went to a recent convert's house for a special family dinner. I just got a little bit of the rice, beans and noodles that she made and was fine. Then when I was done, Irma took my plate out of my hands went into the kitchen and PILED the food on! She came back and put the plate in my hands and I almost cried. I was already full! She did the same thing to Elder Wilson. Finishing that plate of food was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. But we thanked her and went on our way. I almost threw up after we left. And that is why I am fat.
We have to go eat lunch at the Bishop's house tomorrow, which I'm not looking forward to. The food is fine, but he has this 2 year old boy that hates clothing. They try and try to get him to put clothes on, but he just runs away and takes them off again... and then comes and wants us to play with him. And it's weird. Amy: Please don't let your baby run around naked when the missionaries are at your house eating lunch. It's awkward for them.
Love,
Elder Sisco
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Ok. I feel like I can finally tell you about this because it's over- or ending. Our house: It's disgusting and terrible. I will take pictures before we leave, but I probably won't send them to you; I don't want you to get frightened. When we leave, we have to close the windows and lock the doors, and since we just passed 3 weeks of straight rain it gets a little humid. 7 of my 20 ties are unwearable because of the massive amounts of mold that is growing on them. I took a shirt out of the closet the other day that I had never even worn before and it had mold all around the collar. It was literally a blue fuzzy collar. 3 pairs of pants were rendered unwearable overnight- I had to wash them twice to get the mold completely off. If I leave my garments too long without washing them, they get moldy. There's probably mold on a lot of other things I wear too, I just cant tell because it blends in, I bet. The walls are covered with mold. It smells like mold. Our house is a rat hole. Speaking of rats, we have them, so we sprinkled rat poison all outside the front steps. I haven't seen one since then, I hope that means its working. When the mission president was here in Sete Lagoas his wife came to look at our house, since we had complained. She walked in the front door, her mouth slightly ajar and she said simply, "this is not good." That was last week. So last night we finally found our apartment, and we're working on closing today. I think we'll be out of there within 3 days. The other reason we're moving is because the ZLs are having some sort of problem and there needs to be an emergency transfer, and another companionship is moving into our area. I'm not sure about the details, since they don't tell us, so I cant really explain them to you. All we know is that last week President Frei was pretty chill about us getting a house and then two nights ago he called and was like "you need to get a house tomorrow." So we spent all day looking and finally found it last night. Our p-day has been spent doing paperwork. All day. I spent all morning in a real estate office. Tomorrow we'll have to go to Belo Horizante to get President Frei's signature on our contract. So this has all impacted the work quite a bit, we haven't been able to teach much, but I'm so glad that we're finally getting out of our crappy house.
We had 2 baptisms on Saturday and will have at least two more this Saturday, if all goes well. I'll send pictures- I wanted to today but its not looking good for time.
I was talking to this guy at church on Sunday and he was telling me a story about this bishop, not in our area but somewhere in the mission, who had this girl in his ward who was really upset about the fact that she couldn't pass the sacrament. She just REALLY wanted to help pass the sacrament, and she made quite a big fuss about it to everyone. So one Sunday the Stake President is visiting and he sees that the girl is passing the sacrament to the ward, and he says "Bishop, what's going on here?" and the Bishop says "Don't worry, President, I gave her the Aaronic priesthood."
Not sure if this is true, since it seems so ridiculous, but he seemed quite adamant about it even though I doubted it so thouroughly. If anywhere though, that would happen here in Brazil.
Speaking of apostasy, it's everywhere here. I have photographic evidence. Mary worship is a big thing in Brazil. My favorite so far is this poster we saw with a big picture of Mary and at the bottom it says "Tudo por Jesus, Nada sem Maria" or Everything by Jesus, nothing without Mary." Awesome.
There are a lot of poor Brazilians. A lot. The majority. The problem, that I'm seeing is that they don't know what to do with money. They have way crooked priorities. People ask the church for help, and the church gives them food or money for food, but then you go to their house and they have a giant flat screen TV and a nice DVD player middle of their crappy hovel, and all of their kids have cell phones. It's weird. Everyone has a nice TV and a cell phone, no matter how poor you are. Scary, actually.
I have to go, so I can't write more, but I just thought I'd leave that tidbit about the house with you all. Don't worry though, the apartment we found is SUH-WEET. I love it, it's sooo coool. And the guy who's renting it to us is awesome too. I want to baptize him.
Okay, I must go, sorry I spent so much time reading emails I ran out of time to write.
Bye,
Elder Sisco
Note from Amy: You can click on these photos to view them larger.
We had 2 baptisms on Saturday and will have at least two more this Saturday, if all goes well. I'll send pictures- I wanted to today but its not looking good for time.
I was talking to this guy at church on Sunday and he was telling me a story about this bishop, not in our area but somewhere in the mission, who had this girl in his ward who was really upset about the fact that she couldn't pass the sacrament. She just REALLY wanted to help pass the sacrament, and she made quite a big fuss about it to everyone. So one Sunday the Stake President is visiting and he sees that the girl is passing the sacrament to the ward, and he says "Bishop, what's going on here?" and the Bishop says "Don't worry, President, I gave her the Aaronic priesthood."
Not sure if this is true, since it seems so ridiculous, but he seemed quite adamant about it even though I doubted it so thouroughly. If anywhere though, that would happen here in Brazil.
Speaking of apostasy, it's everywhere here. I have photographic evidence. Mary worship is a big thing in Brazil. My favorite so far is this poster we saw with a big picture of Mary and at the bottom it says "Tudo por Jesus, Nada sem Maria" or Everything by Jesus, nothing without Mary." Awesome.
There are a lot of poor Brazilians. A lot. The majority. The problem, that I'm seeing is that they don't know what to do with money. They have way crooked priorities. People ask the church for help, and the church gives them food or money for food, but then you go to their house and they have a giant flat screen TV and a nice DVD player middle of their crappy hovel, and all of their kids have cell phones. It's weird. Everyone has a nice TV and a cell phone, no matter how poor you are. Scary, actually.
I have to go, so I can't write more, but I just thought I'd leave that tidbit about the house with you all. Don't worry though, the apartment we found is SUH-WEET. I love it, it's sooo coool. And the guy who's renting it to us is awesome too. I want to baptize him.
Okay, I must go, sorry I spent so much time reading emails I ran out of time to write.
Bye,
Elder Sisco
Note from Amy: You can click on these photos to view them larger.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
It took a long time for us to get to the internet place; we had a zone p-day today that lasted 'til 3 and then we had to bring one of our investigators to the church for a baptismal interview during our p-day time, so I'm actually over time right now since it's past 6 but apparently it's okay because we used p-day time to do work. The guy we picked up and brought to the church for the interview is Alexandre. He's 20 years old, has approximately 8 earrings/1 eyebrow piercing, multiple tattoos and a light Clayton-esque beard. Everyone who sees him assumes he's either a pothead, womanizer or alcoholic, etc. But he's actually this way shy guy who doesn't like any of that stuff. Carnaval was this past week and we were pretty nervous about it, but he barely left his house. When we picked him up, he had shaved his beard (we didn't say anything about it) and when he came out of the interview with our Zone Leader all the piercings were gone (we hadn't mentioned them yet either). Incredible. He's getting baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. Yes! I don't think I'll be the one to baptize him, but we'll see.
Speaking of Carnaval, it actually wasn't bad here in Sete Lagoas. We're far enough inland and our apartment is kind of out of the way of the main drag that we didn't have any problem, really. I contacted a lot more drunk people this past week, but that was the only real difference. That and every morning after was absolutely dead. No one in the streets, everything closed. I've heard that missionaries serving in Rio and places closer to the ocean like that have to stay in their apartments for the whole week of Carnaval because it gets so crazy there- glad that's not me. I ran into one guy the other night who was so shocked and horrified that we didn't engage in promiscuous acts of random sexuality before marriage that he got up in my face and was grabbing my arm and telling me to "leave this life" or, in other words, "join the dark side," if you will. Also he so cleverly insisted that you have to "know the other side before you can shun it." We said the same applies to him. Then he invited us to his house later to "have some fun." Really sweet guy. I don't think he's interested in the church, though.
We only have 1 investigator that I personally contacted and invited to church and everything- Xisleine. Also, I still can't understand a word she says. We're trying to get her to stop smoking, and she's very receptive when we're actually there but we hear from inside sources that she lied to us and is really barely making an effort. Sad. We'll talk to her tomorrow I hope.
I've been doing a ton of divisions lately, and with Brazilians which is awesome because I learn so much more Portuguese that way. I went out with our Zone Leader last week Elder Vitório and it was amazing. He only has a month left, I can only hope to be as good as he is when I reach that point. There was a point where we were just walking around doing contacts until an appointment we had, and he did a contact with this girl who wasn't interested, asked for a referral, got nothing but "yeah, Maria, down the street" (everyone in Brazil is named Maria, by the way) and 20 minutes later we had met Maria, taught her some of the first lesson and she had accepted a baptismal date. Unfortunately, it wasn't my area so I don't get to see the progression of things. Only glimpses.
At our zone p-day today we got to watch Charly (in English) and then Narnia (in Portuguese). I had never seen Charly before- and I don't plan on ever seeing it again. Narnia, though, was amazing, as always. Love it. And being on a mission and watching it was also a neat experience- my understanding of the symbolism is deeper.
On Sundy I had fechuada for the first time in the field. For those of you unfamiliar with fechuada, it's beans and rice, of course, but with the beans is mixed in... basically whatever is handy. Just, anything. This one happened to be pig meat. But they waste no part. Some of the pieces that I got still had stubbly pig hairs on them. I'm told that this was mild; tolerable even, and that it gets pretty bad in some places. Another characteristic of fechuada is that it literally smells like poop. This one not so much, but it didn't smell great.
As far as the laundry situation goes, for one thing it's so humid here (did I mention that since I got here we haven't passed one day without rain?) that clothing hung out to dry literally never dries. I've been ironing things and/or hanging them behind the refrigerator the night before. Every night when I climb into bed, my sheets feel damp. It's gross and uncomfortable. Anyway, we have this machine that does basically what a washer does- you put your clothes in, it fills up with water (or rather, you fill it up with water from the hose connected to the sink), you dump some laundry soap in and it just starts chugging and gurgling. Then you just pull the stopper out, it drains, and you hang up your clothes. And then you put on your clothes and they smell worse then they did when you put them in. I haven't figured that one out yet, but we're buying different soap today to see if that helps.
On Monday I did a division with Elder dos Santos, an elder in our district, and he came to my area and my trainer went with his companion. This was my first time being alone. We had one appointment, and I thought I knew where it was. What I actually knew was what it looks like when you get there, not how to get there. We spent about an hour and a half walking around, asking directions, and doing contacts with the people we were asking directions from which isn't so bad except that the whole time we were looking for this womans house it was raining harder than I've ever seen, and it seemed endless. You couldn't see the streets because they were no longer streets, but rivers. I was walking on sidewalks through water that was halfway up to my knees. (My $35 Maine Sport umbrella broke, the fabric tore off of one of the spokes or whatever they're called. It's still functioning but that was just an unfortunate side-affect of the rain). We finally made it to the woman's house after traversing many waters, and she hadn't read or done anything that Elder Wilson and I talked to her about the day before. Awesome. So we read what we had asked her to read with her and then talked about prophets, Joseph Smith, the restoration, etc. and so that was nice...
That's all.
I love you all, thanks for your letters/emails I enjoyed them all! Thank you.
Love,
Elder Sisco
PS Note to the Hutchins from Amy: Dan said thanks a bunch for the email and just wanted to let you know that he can only email family, thus the reason he hasn't written back yet. But he can receive emails from anyone, so just use the email address on the right and send him a note!
Speaking of Carnaval, it actually wasn't bad here in Sete Lagoas. We're far enough inland and our apartment is kind of out of the way of the main drag that we didn't have any problem, really. I contacted a lot more drunk people this past week, but that was the only real difference. That and every morning after was absolutely dead. No one in the streets, everything closed. I've heard that missionaries serving in Rio and places closer to the ocean like that have to stay in their apartments for the whole week of Carnaval because it gets so crazy there- glad that's not me. I ran into one guy the other night who was so shocked and horrified that we didn't engage in promiscuous acts of random sexuality before marriage that he got up in my face and was grabbing my arm and telling me to "leave this life" or, in other words, "join the dark side," if you will. Also he so cleverly insisted that you have to "know the other side before you can shun it." We said the same applies to him. Then he invited us to his house later to "have some fun." Really sweet guy. I don't think he's interested in the church, though.
We only have 1 investigator that I personally contacted and invited to church and everything- Xisleine. Also, I still can't understand a word she says. We're trying to get her to stop smoking, and she's very receptive when we're actually there but we hear from inside sources that she lied to us and is really barely making an effort. Sad. We'll talk to her tomorrow I hope.
I've been doing a ton of divisions lately, and with Brazilians which is awesome because I learn so much more Portuguese that way. I went out with our Zone Leader last week Elder Vitório and it was amazing. He only has a month left, I can only hope to be as good as he is when I reach that point. There was a point where we were just walking around doing contacts until an appointment we had, and he did a contact with this girl who wasn't interested, asked for a referral, got nothing but "yeah, Maria, down the street" (everyone in Brazil is named Maria, by the way) and 20 minutes later we had met Maria, taught her some of the first lesson and she had accepted a baptismal date. Unfortunately, it wasn't my area so I don't get to see the progression of things. Only glimpses.
At our zone p-day today we got to watch Charly (in English) and then Narnia (in Portuguese). I had never seen Charly before- and I don't plan on ever seeing it again. Narnia, though, was amazing, as always. Love it. And being on a mission and watching it was also a neat experience- my understanding of the symbolism is deeper.
On Sundy I had fechuada for the first time in the field. For those of you unfamiliar with fechuada, it's beans and rice, of course, but with the beans is mixed in... basically whatever is handy. Just, anything. This one happened to be pig meat. But they waste no part. Some of the pieces that I got still had stubbly pig hairs on them. I'm told that this was mild; tolerable even, and that it gets pretty bad in some places. Another characteristic of fechuada is that it literally smells like poop. This one not so much, but it didn't smell great.
As far as the laundry situation goes, for one thing it's so humid here (did I mention that since I got here we haven't passed one day without rain?) that clothing hung out to dry literally never dries. I've been ironing things and/or hanging them behind the refrigerator the night before. Every night when I climb into bed, my sheets feel damp. It's gross and uncomfortable. Anyway, we have this machine that does basically what a washer does- you put your clothes in, it fills up with water (or rather, you fill it up with water from the hose connected to the sink), you dump some laundry soap in and it just starts chugging and gurgling. Then you just pull the stopper out, it drains, and you hang up your clothes. And then you put on your clothes and they smell worse then they did when you put them in. I haven't figured that one out yet, but we're buying different soap today to see if that helps.
On Monday I did a division with Elder dos Santos, an elder in our district, and he came to my area and my trainer went with his companion. This was my first time being alone. We had one appointment, and I thought I knew where it was. What I actually knew was what it looks like when you get there, not how to get there. We spent about an hour and a half walking around, asking directions, and doing contacts with the people we were asking directions from which isn't so bad except that the whole time we were looking for this womans house it was raining harder than I've ever seen, and it seemed endless. You couldn't see the streets because they were no longer streets, but rivers. I was walking on sidewalks through water that was halfway up to my knees. (My $35 Maine Sport umbrella broke, the fabric tore off of one of the spokes or whatever they're called. It's still functioning but that was just an unfortunate side-affect of the rain). We finally made it to the woman's house after traversing many waters, and she hadn't read or done anything that Elder Wilson and I talked to her about the day before. Awesome. So we read what we had asked her to read with her and then talked about prophets, Joseph Smith, the restoration, etc. and so that was nice...
That's all.
I love you all, thanks for your letters/emails I enjoyed them all! Thank you.
Love,
Elder Sisco
PS Note to the Hutchins from Amy: Dan said thanks a bunch for the email and just wanted to let you know that he can only email family, thus the reason he hasn't written back yet. But he can receive emails from anyone, so just use the email address on the right and send him a note!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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.)
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.)
Tuesday January 22nd
I just sent a HUGE email that I spent the last 40 minutes writing... but when I say "sent" I mean "tried to send" because it logged me out and I couldn't get back in and now it's gone. Fantastic. So now you're going to have to settle for the cliffs notes, because I'm out of time:
- I'm in my new area; I've been here for about an hour
- It's called Sete Lagoas (seven lakes) and my area specifically is El Dorado
- My new companion is Elder Wilson, he's awesome, been out 1 yr 7 mos.
- He and his last companion (who he was training) baptized 8 people in the last 2 weeks
- 2 more scheduled for this weekend; I will be baptizing one of them
- I love my mission president
- We have family home evening with a member family tonight
- Sorry, that's all
Bye,
Elder Sisco
- I'm in my new area; I've been here for about an hour
- It's called Sete Lagoas (seven lakes) and my area specifically is El Dorado
- My new companion is Elder Wilson, he's awesome, been out 1 yr 7 mos.
- He and his last companion (who he was training) baptized 8 people in the last 2 weeks
- 2 more scheduled for this weekend; I will be baptizing one of them
- I love my mission president
- We have family home evening with a member family tonight
- Sorry, that's all
Bye,
Elder Sisco
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Well, everything here is good. I know I always say that but for some reason it's not as difficult for me as it seems to be for other people. By "it" I mean living away from home in a different country with little communication and sitting in the same room all day just studying and being bored. I attribute this to living in Paraguay for six months and then going to college in Idaho for 9. How lucky I am.
My Portuguese is coming along quite well. Spanish helps sooo much. Yesterday we taught the second lesson in Portuguese and when I was trying to explain the Atonement I'm quite certain that I had a little help. Looking back, I'm not sure I could have explained it that well in English. At the end of the lesson, we asked him if he would pray and he said he didn't know how so we were like, "We'll teach you," and so we knelt down and explained the steps of prayer, and when we started, he threw his arms towards the heavens and began to pray. Apparently this actually happens. Frequently. If/when it happens to me, I'm going to have a hard time controlling myself. Anyway, it's hard here a lot sometimes, but not as bad as it could be. The worst part for me is the food. It's the same. And it's bad. So it's bad... all the time. Today though our whole district took one of our instructors out to lunch at a churrascaria (it's basically the same as Rodigio's in Utah...) which is just a buffet of vegetables and fruits and appetizers type stuff and then people just keep coming to your table with huge skewers of meat, and they cut off a piece if you request it. Delicious meat. Best meal I've had yet.
I finished the Book of Mormon on Sunday. That was exciting... Now I'm just studying Jesus the Christ and some of my favorite BoM chapters over again and I've been studying the New Testament a lot in our MDST (Missionary Directed Study Time) which, depending on the day can be between 2.5-4 hours long in the afternoon of just... nothing. Just studying whatever I want to study. It's great.
This one elder that we really like in another district has only gotten a few letters this whole time that we've been here (he came on the plane with us, but is in 47B. Mine is 47A. Also, he's going to Bel) so the other night our whole district wrote a letter to him from a fictionalized girl and put them in envelopes and addressed them and put actual stamps from letters that we've received on each letter. We put them in his box today... It should be 11 letters. I'm excited to see what happens...
We went to the São Paulo temple today, which was nice especially since we hadn't gone in 3 weeks because of Christmas and New Years.
I leave for the field in 2 weeks!
One of our district goals for the week is to sit with Brazilians at least 2 meals a day. Already it has helped a ton. Also, in our night class, the teacher got in trouble because we weren't speaking enough Portuguese so now we speak only Portuguese at night in that class (about 3-4 hours a day) and that also has blessed our whole district. We're doing very well, I do believe.
Sunday was a great day. Every Sunday is a great day actually, but this one especially because it was fast Sunday, and I bore my testimony and that was nice, and then I spent the whole afternoon reading the Book of Mormon, and then we had a devotional, a district meeting and then Jazz Night! We instituted Jazz Night a few weeks ago when this kid and I were talking and he mentioned that he enjoyed jazz and I said I had brought a few cds. And it was a Sunday. Since then, every Sunday night after our district meeting we have about an hour of jazz. Unfortunately, I only have 3 or 4 CDs so we've heard them all at least twice. But regardless, it's the best hour of the week. This time, one kid gathered up a ton of transluscent blue and black binders and taped them over the lights in our room. The ambiance was amazing. And it was the best turnout we've had yet. I think there were like 15 kids in our little room at one point. Everyone just enjoying the jazz... It's so good.
We are now the oldest district in our branch, which means that we're supposed to know something. The oldest district just left last week, so now it falls on us.
Today Elder Markowski and I walked around trying to find watches. The only place we could find that had watches carried only what were undoubtedly stolen watches and other merchandise. So I'm still looking.
We also went to a tailor to get his pants taken out (have the cuff taken out to make them longer) and I got the word for "wide" and "long" mixed up, so the lady kept telling me, "I can make them longer but I can't make them any wider" using hand motions, and I kept saying "I know, it's not a problem he just needs them to be wider!" We're all very knowledgeable and capable of having great conversations about gospel related things, but when it comes to living in the real world, we're all pretty lost. For example, I can say "Christ atoned for our sins in the garden of Gethsemane and died on the cross so that we can be cleansed of sin and be worthy to return to live with our Heavenly Father again if we repent of and forsake our sins," but I can't say "he needs his pants to be longer."
On saturday, we did TRC which well, I'm not sure what it stands for actually, but it's when members from the local ward(s) come and we teach them a simulated first lesson (but as real as it can be in the MTC), complete with door knocking and everything and they record it and we have to watch ourselves afterwords and critique. As far as speaking and teaching and getting our message across we did great. The lady we taught actually said "these boys speak with the gift of God" or something like that, meaning basically that we spoke really well for having been here 6 weeks. I guess the gift only applies to speaking though, because we didn't know she had said that until our teacher who was watching in another room told us afterwards. That's all I can think of for now. I look forward to hearing from you guys. I pray for all of you every day.
Love you all,
-Elder Sisco
My Portuguese is coming along quite well. Spanish helps sooo much. Yesterday we taught the second lesson in Portuguese and when I was trying to explain the Atonement I'm quite certain that I had a little help. Looking back, I'm not sure I could have explained it that well in English. At the end of the lesson, we asked him if he would pray and he said he didn't know how so we were like, "We'll teach you," and so we knelt down and explained the steps of prayer, and when we started, he threw his arms towards the heavens and began to pray. Apparently this actually happens. Frequently. If/when it happens to me, I'm going to have a hard time controlling myself. Anyway, it's hard here a lot sometimes, but not as bad as it could be. The worst part for me is the food. It's the same. And it's bad. So it's bad... all the time. Today though our whole district took one of our instructors out to lunch at a churrascaria (it's basically the same as Rodigio's in Utah...) which is just a buffet of vegetables and fruits and appetizers type stuff and then people just keep coming to your table with huge skewers of meat, and they cut off a piece if you request it. Delicious meat. Best meal I've had yet.
I finished the Book of Mormon on Sunday. That was exciting... Now I'm just studying Jesus the Christ and some of my favorite BoM chapters over again and I've been studying the New Testament a lot in our MDST (Missionary Directed Study Time) which, depending on the day can be between 2.5-4 hours long in the afternoon of just... nothing. Just studying whatever I want to study. It's great.
This one elder that we really like in another district has only gotten a few letters this whole time that we've been here (he came on the plane with us, but is in 47B. Mine is 47A. Also, he's going to Bel) so the other night our whole district wrote a letter to him from a fictionalized girl and put them in envelopes and addressed them and put actual stamps from letters that we've received on each letter. We put them in his box today... It should be 11 letters. I'm excited to see what happens...
We went to the São Paulo temple today, which was nice especially since we hadn't gone in 3 weeks because of Christmas and New Years.
I leave for the field in 2 weeks!
One of our district goals for the week is to sit with Brazilians at least 2 meals a day. Already it has helped a ton. Also, in our night class, the teacher got in trouble because we weren't speaking enough Portuguese so now we speak only Portuguese at night in that class (about 3-4 hours a day) and that also has blessed our whole district. We're doing very well, I do believe.
Sunday was a great day. Every Sunday is a great day actually, but this one especially because it was fast Sunday, and I bore my testimony and that was nice, and then I spent the whole afternoon reading the Book of Mormon, and then we had a devotional, a district meeting and then Jazz Night! We instituted Jazz Night a few weeks ago when this kid and I were talking and he mentioned that he enjoyed jazz and I said I had brought a few cds. And it was a Sunday. Since then, every Sunday night after our district meeting we have about an hour of jazz. Unfortunately, I only have 3 or 4 CDs so we've heard them all at least twice. But regardless, it's the best hour of the week. This time, one kid gathered up a ton of transluscent blue and black binders and taped them over the lights in our room. The ambiance was amazing. And it was the best turnout we've had yet. I think there were like 15 kids in our little room at one point. Everyone just enjoying the jazz... It's so good.
We are now the oldest district in our branch, which means that we're supposed to know something. The oldest district just left last week, so now it falls on us.
Today Elder Markowski and I walked around trying to find watches. The only place we could find that had watches carried only what were undoubtedly stolen watches and other merchandise. So I'm still looking.
We also went to a tailor to get his pants taken out (have the cuff taken out to make them longer) and I got the word for "wide" and "long" mixed up, so the lady kept telling me, "I can make them longer but I can't make them any wider" using hand motions, and I kept saying "I know, it's not a problem he just needs them to be wider!" We're all very knowledgeable and capable of having great conversations about gospel related things, but when it comes to living in the real world, we're all pretty lost. For example, I can say "Christ atoned for our sins in the garden of Gethsemane and died on the cross so that we can be cleansed of sin and be worthy to return to live with our Heavenly Father again if we repent of and forsake our sins," but I can't say "he needs his pants to be longer."
On saturday, we did TRC which well, I'm not sure what it stands for actually, but it's when members from the local ward(s) come and we teach them a simulated first lesson (but as real as it can be in the MTC), complete with door knocking and everything and they record it and we have to watch ourselves afterwords and critique. As far as speaking and teaching and getting our message across we did great. The lady we taught actually said "these boys speak with the gift of God" or something like that, meaning basically that we spoke really well for having been here 6 weeks. I guess the gift only applies to speaking though, because we didn't know she had said that until our teacher who was watching in another room told us afterwards. That's all I can think of for now. I look forward to hearing from you guys. I pray for all of you every day.
Love you all,
-Elder Sisco
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Hello All!
Greetings from across the street from the CTM!
It is the new year! I'm fairly certain that no one in the CTM slept well last night due to the overabundance of fireworks. I got up to pee and when I was walking back to my room the entire floor shook under my feet as fireworks exploded everywhere outside. As I continued to trudge sleepily down the hall someone poked their head out of their room and yelled "Happy New Year!" This is the extent of my New Year's celebration.
Speaking of New Years, this past friday my district once again went out proselyting. This time we went to MASP (I think that's the acronym) which is basically the Times Square of São Paulo/Brazil. It was huge and awesome. They were setting up everything for the New Year's celebration. When they do that thing on NBC or whatever leading up to the dropping of the ball in Times Square where they show New Years in different countries/time zones, I'm fairly certain we were where they would broadcast in South America. Anyway, because of this and the normal flow/nature of this area it was very difficult to find people to talk to who weren't in a hurry or uninterested to hear what we had to say. We had a couple good experiences though. I actually walked by a guy sitting at a bus stop 3 times before I realized that I needed to talk to him. So I went and started talking to him and ended up sitting down for a spell, sharing a few scriptures with him and then giving him the Book of Mormon. My companion was talking to the woman sitting next to him, but he did not have as much success as I did at this particular contact. This is because the lady he was talking to was crazy. Her eyes were... crazy. She was talking and talking and I stood next to him and neither of us understood anything she was saying. I'm not sure that even if we spoke good Portuguese we would understand much. Because the guy sitting next to her was reading the Book of Mormon, we didn't want to appear rude by blowing this lady off, but she wouldn't stop to take a breath. I estimate that we spent about 8 minutes standing there, trying to find a way out. Finally I said "I'm sorry, we're in a hurry," and tried to leave. But, she kept talking. I said "really, we have to go," and we started to walk off. She didn't stop talking. I'm fairly certain that she was still talking after we had left.
Another time we contacted this lady, and she said she had heard of the church, and then she said "Are you guys lost?" which I interpreted differently and said "No, we believe in the bible! We also have the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ and was translated by a modern day prophet, Joseph Smith..." etc. What she actually meant was, are you trying to get directions from me. But she took the misunderstanding well, accepted a card and we carried on.
We actually met two people who had already received a Book of Mormon in the past and had stopped reading for whatever reason. Neither of them had prayed about it though, I told them that they should keep reading and that it was very important to pray about it. I think some good might come of that.
We also met a guy who appeared completely sane. Very down to earth/normal, listened to what we said and then told us about how Jesus appeared to him in August of 2003. We weren't sure what to say to that so we both just pretended not to understand and then wished him good luck and left.
I love proselyting! I wish we got to do it more than 3 times while we're here. It's so much fun, even though we don't understand much.
Last night, for whatever reason, our night teacher didn't show up and because everyone in our district was suffering from a pretty bad case of cabin fever, and sometimes tensions get a little high, my companion and I decided we needed to do something to relieve the stress. We played sardines through the entire CTM. It was amazing.
We have 3 weeks left here. Our time is rapidly approaching. It seems like yesterday that we got here though... it's weird.
It's great to get pictures from you guys. I have a few that I'll try and put up when I'm done typing this. It sounds like Christmas there was pretty fun. I definitely missed the eggs benedict. I think I had granola and yogurt for breakfast. In fact, I'm quite sure, since that's what I have for breakfast every day. I haven't gotten any of the handwritten letters yet, but it's good to know that there's something to look forward to.
Other than proselyting on friday, I'm afraid I don't have much more of interest to share. My volleyball skillz have improved dramatically as well as my basketball skillz. Mostly what I do is read the scriptures, read Jesus the Christ and study Portuguese. It's actually... good. I enjoy it, for the most part.
Lately it's been unseemingly hot. Our room last night was approaching 90 degrees. With bad humidity. It's actually reminiscent of some of the hottest nights in Maine... only... constantly. Every night. We only have heat like this for a few nights in the summer back home.
Alright, I love you all and thanks for writing and for the pictures. I'm looking forward to receiving your letters. Can't wait!
Until next week-
-Elder Sisco
It is the new year! I'm fairly certain that no one in the CTM slept well last night due to the overabundance of fireworks. I got up to pee and when I was walking back to my room the entire floor shook under my feet as fireworks exploded everywhere outside. As I continued to trudge sleepily down the hall someone poked their head out of their room and yelled "Happy New Year!" This is the extent of my New Year's celebration.
Speaking of New Years, this past friday my district once again went out proselyting. This time we went to MASP (I think that's the acronym) which is basically the Times Square of São Paulo/Brazil. It was huge and awesome. They were setting up everything for the New Year's celebration. When they do that thing on NBC or whatever leading up to the dropping of the ball in Times Square where they show New Years in different countries/time zones, I'm fairly certain we were where they would broadcast in South America. Anyway, because of this and the normal flow/nature of this area it was very difficult to find people to talk to who weren't in a hurry or uninterested to hear what we had to say. We had a couple good experiences though. I actually walked by a guy sitting at a bus stop 3 times before I realized that I needed to talk to him. So I went and started talking to him and ended up sitting down for a spell, sharing a few scriptures with him and then giving him the Book of Mormon. My companion was talking to the woman sitting next to him, but he did not have as much success as I did at this particular contact. This is because the lady he was talking to was crazy. Her eyes were... crazy. She was talking and talking and I stood next to him and neither of us understood anything she was saying. I'm not sure that even if we spoke good Portuguese we would understand much. Because the guy sitting next to her was reading the Book of Mormon, we didn't want to appear rude by blowing this lady off, but she wouldn't stop to take a breath. I estimate that we spent about 8 minutes standing there, trying to find a way out. Finally I said "I'm sorry, we're in a hurry," and tried to leave. But, she kept talking. I said "really, we have to go," and we started to walk off. She didn't stop talking. I'm fairly certain that she was still talking after we had left.
Another time we contacted this lady, and she said she had heard of the church, and then she said "Are you guys lost?" which I interpreted differently and said "No, we believe in the bible! We also have the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ and was translated by a modern day prophet, Joseph Smith..." etc. What she actually meant was, are you trying to get directions from me. But she took the misunderstanding well, accepted a card and we carried on.
We actually met two people who had already received a Book of Mormon in the past and had stopped reading for whatever reason. Neither of them had prayed about it though, I told them that they should keep reading and that it was very important to pray about it. I think some good might come of that.
We also met a guy who appeared completely sane. Very down to earth/normal, listened to what we said and then told us about how Jesus appeared to him in August of 2003. We weren't sure what to say to that so we both just pretended not to understand and then wished him good luck and left.
I love proselyting! I wish we got to do it more than 3 times while we're here. It's so much fun, even though we don't understand much.
Last night, for whatever reason, our night teacher didn't show up and because everyone in our district was suffering from a pretty bad case of cabin fever, and sometimes tensions get a little high, my companion and I decided we needed to do something to relieve the stress. We played sardines through the entire CTM. It was amazing.
We have 3 weeks left here. Our time is rapidly approaching. It seems like yesterday that we got here though... it's weird.
It's great to get pictures from you guys. I have a few that I'll try and put up when I'm done typing this. It sounds like Christmas there was pretty fun. I definitely missed the eggs benedict. I think I had granola and yogurt for breakfast. In fact, I'm quite sure, since that's what I have for breakfast every day. I haven't gotten any of the handwritten letters yet, but it's good to know that there's something to look forward to.
Other than proselyting on friday, I'm afraid I don't have much more of interest to share. My volleyball skillz have improved dramatically as well as my basketball skillz. Mostly what I do is read the scriptures, read Jesus the Christ and study Portuguese. It's actually... good. I enjoy it, for the most part.
Lately it's been unseemingly hot. Our room last night was approaching 90 degrees. With bad humidity. It's actually reminiscent of some of the hottest nights in Maine... only... constantly. Every night. We only have heat like this for a few nights in the summer back home.
Alright, I love you all and thanks for writing and for the pictures. I'm looking forward to receiving your letters. Can't wait!
Until next week-
Christmas Pictures
Here are some pictures for ya´ll...
Our stockings hung by the fire with care, all our district loot, my district, and Elder Carpenter in the hammock we built out of 3 sheets and hung between two beds.
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