Sun

Man, it was a hot week. It was funny because my companion hasn´t really ever felt temperature below 70 degrees before, so he is always complaining about the cold. But even he was struggling with the heat this week. I attached a picture of the result of these last 5 months on my arm. it´s skinny, and has a perma-watch on it now. And yes, I´m using sunscreen.

So I´ll kick out a couple funny stories and then we´ll get to the answers to everyone´s questions. 1st funny story of the week. My companion absolutely destroyed the bathroom at church. The issue with this was that our chapel for now is a rented out house because they are rebuilding our chapel to accomodate more people. so it has like a covered outside stairway that has a few doors, and the door on top is the sacrament room, and the others are little rooms for classes. halfway down the stair case, there is a window. This window is the bishop office´s bathroom window. The very bathroom where the destruction took place. So it happened right before church started, and we have classes first and sacrament last. So as people passed the window everyone was making comments about the horrible smell and joking about how we are all going to die. So during all of church, my companion who´s only been a member for 2 years, was worrying that at the end in sacrament the bishop would get up and ask the congregation ``who did this to our church building? STAND UP NOW.´´ and he was sweating the whole day and really worried. I laughed so hard when I found out it was him. Ohh man.

But in other news, I remembered that Açaí is super gross in the states and no one has ever heard of it. At the gym we had that ``magic super fruit drink´´ that was Açaí. Here it´s so good. I ate a big bowl of it the other day. They love to freeze the berries and then put them in a blender and then eat it with banana slices and sweetened condensed milk and granola on top. Kind of like sorbet, but super good. better than normal good. And everyone from the north claims it´s better there because you can pick it naturally and eat it. Oh, and in a moderately related note, I still need a recipe for Jelly or Jam or Preserves or whatever so I can make sandwiches. Honey is super expensive, so I am avoiding that. Oh and I got a package! woo. peanut butter and syrup. Shfanks mommy.

Speaking of that package, it came on a perfect day, and we ate all the nutter butters at the district meeting I had that day and then gave away most the stuff to the other pairs of missionaries. It was perfect to get 4 things of peanut butter because including me we have 4 pairs of missionaries in our district and everyone was super happy. But one pair wasn´t there so they missed out. So I gave that one to my companion and he ate it in 2 days and then asked me if I had more. I just stared at him and told him no, but that maybe I´ll succeed in making some...? But I took the maple things out of the box and threw away the boxes without writing down the syrup recipe, so I need someone to email me a recipe of syrup that includes corn syrup and brown sugar. haha... I am retarded still. Big suprise.

But yeah, here we work a lot with inactive members and investigators. It´s great because we have a ton of both. I´ve been here for almost 4 months now and It´s been enough time to get some good lasting results with the help of the ward and having a temple so close. We are sending 4 families to the temple in december, so that will be a good feeling when they get there. One was a family that had been inactive for 8 years. They have an 8 year old, an 11 year old, and 17 year old, and parents. They had a whole gaggle of problems and the dad used to just hate me, but now it´s super cool to go visit them, and they are gonna hit up the temple in december with the rest of that crew. It´s nice to know that the members of the family we baptised will have full support in their lives from their family and the blessings that are available to them. It´s calming to see things like that when the whole rest of the world seems to be falling down around you sometimes.

To be honest, that is my favorite part, is to keep working with them after to get them headed the right way. Teaching people how to tie ties, buying them scriptures for the first time, getting them callings, cool little things like that. And they end up loving you for the difference they feel. People are already planning to have a pizza party the P-day before I leave and send me out right. It´s always good to have friends. But yeah, so it goes out here in the trees. just working and sweating and smiling.

I love you all, have a good week...

and laugh when someone farts for me.