10-31-07

Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:49 AM
To: Allred, Kevin
Subject: Did you know that "typewriter" is the longest word you can type by using only the top row of letters on the keyboard?

 

Hi everybody!  I think it’s Halloween.  I’m not sure because they don’t celebrate it here.  Anyway, Happy Halloween.  I have the perfect idea for carving my pumpkin in two years.  But it’s a secret until then.

 

We went to the temple this morning!  I think we go once every transfer.  We had to wake up at 5:00am to get there.  You’d think that earlier in the morning the trains would be less crowded.  Nope!  The train pulls up, and there’s almost a bajillion people in there.  I was thinking, ´There’s no way we can fit on that train.´ But I didn’t really have a choice.  Apparently all the people behind me thought it had plenty of room, so I got squished in.  We’ve decided that people here are too busy to go to a theme park for a vacation or something, so the bus and train drivers are considerate to let everyone have the thrill of a roller coaster ride on the way to work every day.  They even throw in an extra bonus thrill of possible death at every turn.

 

So, my first week was pretty amazing.

First of all we have Tito, we marked a new baptism date with him.  His main obstacle is smoking.  I made him a baptism calendar.  Every day he has to tally each cigarette he smokes before he smokes it.  Hopefully this helps him take time to think about each cigarette and see progress from day to day.

Then we have Chris.  That not his real name, but that’s close enough and he let’s us call him that.  Chris is pretty much awesome.  He works for the Brazilian CIA.  We can’t teach him at his house because he has secret documents there.  Portuguese is his second language.  He’s lived in several countries including Cuba and Columbia.  He willing accepts every commitment and we committed him to baptism last Wednesday - I think.  His only real problem is cigars.  He smokes the really expensive kind that he says don’t have nicotine.  It’s an appearance thing.  Before he met the missionaries, he always carried a cigar with him, but he doesn’t anymore.  He’s almost quit.  He’s awesome.  Only 25 years old, and always doing things to help us out.  Last night we had a Halloween Party in our English class.  We taught him at the church before the class.  He’s not even part of the class and after the lesson, he stayed and helped us frost sugar cookies and then when we had to go to class, he stayed in the kitchen and washed all the dishes before he left.  I think he would be a great benefit to the ward.  It the CTM we saw a couple video clips of President Hinckley encouraging us to teach people who would benefit the church, especially in areas where the church is small or young.  That’s our ward.  Less than a third of one percent of the people in our city are members.  Our bishop (very awesome man) is about 27.  He works nights until very early in the morning, sleeps a few hours before noon, and goes school sometime in the afternoon until about the time he has to go back to work.  On top of that he has a young family with at least 2 kids.  One is a newborn.  Plus, he’s bishop.  He talked to us about the importance of finding and teaching prospective priesthood leaders, because there is a big lack of them here.  The last missionary that left the ward came home about 6 years ago, and no one has gone since.

Next is Sidi.  She started investigating the church a couple weeks before I got here as a result of our English class.  She saw conference.  On Thursday or Friday, we committed her to baptism and she accepted.  This Sunday was here first church meeting and she loved it.  Then she and Chris stayed after to watch a baptism from the other ward.  Her son cut our hair.  At first he was very cold with us, but he seems to be friendlier.

On Monday we taught a lady named Dayana part of the first lesson.  And like Preach My Gospel says, don’t hesitate on the first lesson, so we committed her to be baptized and she accepted.  Her mother is an inactive member of the church.  We’re thinking that Dayana´s son will get baptized too, and hopefully her husband, but we haven’t taught either of them yet.

Those are the investigators we’re really working with.  There are about a ton of soft investigators in our area that for some reason or another aren’t progressing, or never let us teach them.

We did 94 street contacts on Sunday.  We have about 4 or 5 new people that said we could come by this next week to teach them in their homes.

 

I think this letter has sort of become a journal entry because we’re always so busy that my journal entries keep getting shorter and shorter.  Maybe at the end of my mission I’ll print all these out and get them bound like a journal.

 

The language is coming, but I can hardly ever follow conversations.  I’ll be catching a ton of words and thinking, ´hey, I know what that word means, and that one, and that one.´  But there’ll be so many words in between and they talk so fast that I can’t ever seem to put the words together and figure out what they’re even talking about.  Every once in a while they’ll stop and ask me if I understood, and I’ll pretty much always say no.  Then they’ll try to explain it again, but by that time my brain is fried and it all sounds like gibberish.  I think that’s something about this language.  The more you listen to it, the more your brain gets worn out.  You can only understand if you’re not tired, which is never the case on a mission.  We walk pretty much everywhere.  At the temple I saw two elders from my district in the CTM.  One was Elder Arslanian, my old companion.  He’s got blisters all over his feet.  Then there was Elder Christiansen who said he can’t even feel his legs.

I haven’t had a problem yet.  I think it’s my shoes.

 

Well, I get to go do some major laundry - and ironing.  Apparently wrinkle free shirts are only wrinkle free if you have a dryer.

 

Love Elder Allred.