11-07-07

Hi!

 

Guess what!  Uncle Bobby knows my mission president.  He sent me a picture of President Teixeira´s family when President was a stake president there.  I’m going to show President the picture because we have interviews tomorrow morning.

 

We had zone conference on Thursday.  It was pretty amazing.  President Teixeira changed how they do zone conferences here.  It’s actually called "conference of the zones" now.  The mission is split into 3 groups of zones.  Our zone is part of the ABC region.  So our zone[s] conference was a pretty big meeting.  Sister Teixeira gave us all an excellent exercise program.  Some of the stretches and exercises are quite funny.  We practiced each one at the conference so Sister Teixeira could make sure we were all doing them right.  My companion and I think we could put together a movie with synchronized exercises.  It would be even cooler with a fake moving background when we jog.  One of the missionary trainings that the assistants gave at the zone conference was to always wear "family goggles" so we can focus on finding families that are ready to be taught the gospel.

 

Church on Sunday was good.  We had 4 investigators there.  Did I tell you guys that I’m the official piano player for our ward?  There isn’t an organ, and most of the keys stick on the piano.  So every time I make a mistake (about 6 times a measure) I can blame it on the keys.  A lot of the ward here has to sing a capella.  Ha! That reminds me of something funny my companion and I were talking about the other day.  The word for chapel in Portuguese is capela.  And it’s feminine, so "the chapel" is "a capela" and "to the chapel" is "à capela"  So we could sing a capella à capela. :) Tito is decreasing the amount he smokes everyday, but he’s not on track for his baptism date, so we’ll have to move it again.  It’s hard to tell someone they can’t be baptized when they really want to.  The only reason he smokes is because he has nothing else to do.  We’re trying to find something to keep him busy, but nothing works.

Sidi is all on track to be baptized this Saturday.  The only problem is that her family (her father and sons) are all staunch Catholics.  She hasn’t even told them that she’s getting baptized.  She says she knows she needs to get baptized because she feels it’s the right thing to do.  She just doesn’t have to courage to invite her family to her baptism.

Chris is awesome.  He’s getting ready for his baptism a week from Saturday.  We’re running out of things to teach him.  He’s read almost half the Book of Mormon already.  :)  That reminds me - a lot of our English students always pronounce my name Elder Already.  Other people usually say Elder Awhedge or Elder Todo Vermelho.

Dayana won’t be able to get baptizes on her baptism date.  She told us that she and her husband weren’t ever married.  We’ve moved her date to the last Saturday before Christmas.  Hopefully things work out by then.  She said that her husband doesn’t want to get married now.  They were planning on marrying maybe in 5-10 years.  That really doesn’t make sense to me because they have a 9 year old son and have been together over 10 years anyway.  Marriage just adds blessings to their family.

 

We had a division on Monday.  I went with Elder Neves for 24 hours to his area.  Elder Neves and I were both in the CTM together.  He left 6 weeks earlier than I did because he’s Brazilian.  They didn’t have a lot of appointments scheduled, and they don´t have very many investigators so we spent most of the day finding people to teach.  Here in Brazil you can’t go house to house because they are all locked up and gated.  Hardly anyone has a doorbell, and the only way to get the attention of the people inside is to clap your hands really loud, which doesn’t work very well unless they are expecting your visit.   Especially because the houses are all close together and they wouldn’t know which house you’re clapping at.  Most of the contacts we usually do here are with people on the street.  But it’s a busy place and they usually only let you talk long enough to give them a pass-along card.  They’re too busy to let you mark a day or give you their address or their phone number.  But Elder Neves and I "discovered" a secret.  We look for people that are arriving home and start talking to them just as they are going into their gate.  This way we don’t have to ask them their address - we just write is down after we’re done talking with them.  Another benefit was that they usually have longer to talk because they already arrived at the place where they were going.

I slept the night in Elder Neves and Elder Borges apartment because divisions are 24 hours.  I don’t know how they sleep over there.  About 4:00 in the morning someone’s rooster started crowing and wouldn’t stop for the next 2 hours, after which the dogs started a chorus.  Elder Neves slept through the whole thing.  Then he slept through the alarm.  I nudged him to wake him up, but he stayed in bed.  He ended up not getting up until 7:15 during which time I has already exercised, showered and gotten almost all ready.  Brazilian Elders are weird when it comes to sleep.  They either insist on waking up really early or really late.  Our roommate in the CTM woke up at 5:00 every morning.

 

Well P-day today was Cleaning-day.  Some time last week my companion pulled some pants off of a hanger that he hadn’t worn in a couple weeks and they had mold all over them.  So we spent all day cleaning.  We found out that most of the small black dots on the walls in the kitchen were actually small bugs.  Oh yeah!  I forgot to tell you guys.  Last Sunday morning I woke up, said my prayers and went into the bathroom.  On the sink was a 7-inch-long slug.  I’ll send some pictures of it some time.  I didn’t see it until after I was finished washing my hands because I was still in the process of waking up. We took it outside, but we didn’t really have anywhere to put it.  Everything is concrete out here.  We had it in a container but it escaped.  It’s probably hiding and waiting until it can sneak back into the bathroom.  We think it was eating the mold on the sink, but it will sure be disappointed because we cleaned it all off today!

 

Yesterday it rained really hard.  And neither of us had brought an umbrella because the sun was shining that morning.  We ran from shop to shop along the street until we got to the church where we taught our English class.  On the way we say that it was raining so much that the sewers backed up.  We thought it expedient that we avoid those areas of the streets.

 

 

My address:

Elder Jason Allred

Brazil São Paulo South Mission

Rua Dr Luiz da Rocha Miranda, 159

8 Andar, Parque Jabaquara

04344-010 - São Paulo - SP

Brazil

 

Love Elder Allred