Verao no Brasil (Summer in Brazil)



Terceira Ponte Bridge



Oi, tudo bem! (Hi, all is well)

This past week has been quite the experience!  Once again lots has gone on!  I will get right to updating.

Monday we went to the only WalMart in the state of Espirito Santo.  There are only two Walmarts in the whole mission.  But it was in the area I was in those few days before transfers, so we went.  Super strange!  Virtually all the brand names are different.  There is a whole aisle for crackers, so many different kinds.  It is a supercenter with food, but most of the food section was fruit!  I bought a suitcase because one of mine is falling apart.  And words in Portuguese don´t generally end in the letter ´t´.  So they pronounce Walmart ´´Wall-March´´.  They pronounce President Pickett ``Presidench-ee Pick-itch´´.  The Walmart still felt bizarrely American except for the Portuguese everything and the windows with views of palm trees.  It also had a parking garage underneath and you ride moving sidewalks up to the store.  Good grief, if I give any more details i won~t get through one day.  It´s so interesting though!

So, Tuesday, I packed up AGAIN and we went to the big bus station where transfer meetings happen.  I found out that I am serving in the area called Vitória 1.  It is in the Vitória Ward, Vitória Stake, Vitória Zone.  Elder Anderson is serving in Vila Velha, the city across the ´´river´´ from Vitória.  Vitória is actually on a big island, sort of like Manhattan, but a bigger island.  I can see parts of his area from our apartment.  The Terceira Ponte connects our areas!  Google Terceira Ponte Vitória and you will see one of the landmarks of Vitória!  I am with Elder Hein, an American from Lindon, Utah.  He actually knows Elder Mortenson, my trainer in Georgia quite well.  He has been in Brasil a year and a half.  We share the area with another companionship.  Both of them are Brasilian.  One is ridiculously tall-Elder Brito, and the other is ridiculously short-Elder Rodrigues.  They make quite a pair.  They are from Salvador and Fortaleza respectively.  Elder R speaks pretty good English because he took a private course, Elder Brito speaks almost none.  It is an adventure trying to understand everybody when we come home and they all start jabbering away.  Our apartment is really nice.  It is big.  It has an actual washing machine, though it still isn´t like an American machine.  It is plastic on the outside for example.  But it´s nice not to have to rinse the clothes or to have to manually put the water in and drain it out like I had to do at first.  There is one portable fan, and they let me use it at night.  

About the weather.  For real, the weather here isn´t so bad.  I sweat through my shirt everyday, but that´s because we walk everywhere.  It´s hot to be sure, but the hottest days in Boise are still more miserable that daily summer weather here.  Generally, it´s hot from 11ish to 5ish.  The nights and mornings are cool.  Also, there is a nice breeze most of the time.  Similar to San Francisco.  The closer you get to the water´s edge, the more breeze there is.  Elder Hein says that some parts of the mission are hotter in winter that it is here in Vitória during summer.  I believe him.  It has only rained a few times, and hasn´t been a big deal.  Generally, I shower at night and then sit in front of the fan to write in my journal, and I am just fine all the way up until leaving the apartment when it is hot and I start to sweat again.  I´m forcing myself to get used to it.  I imagine it´s just water.

As for the area, the people here are way different than in the States.  We work up in neighborhoods on the hills.  Steep staircases, lots of neat lizards, homes that don´t look like they should be holding onto the mountainside.  They are very welcoming and kind.  One drunk man took ten minutes to give us advice telling us that if we want people to accept our message, we should dress like the people and not in shirts and ties.  (Many many many people wear as little as possible to beat the heat.  For instance this drunk man was in only very short shorts.  He thought we should adopt his dress style.  AFter finally discerning what he was trying to say--he kept trying to speak English to us because he used to live in South Africa apparently--we thanked him for the advice, went around a corner, and promptly started laughing hysterically.)  We find a lot of people who are willing to hear us teach, but it seems to be harder to find people who want more than just a spiritual thought, who are willing to take action and make the spiritual committments that will help them.  For instance, we had 16 people who agreed to come to the church, who knew where it was, who assured us they´d be there.  And no one came.  There are a lot of good people here though.  I am still following Elder Hein as we teach, because I am still trying to listen and understand what the people are saying.  I always always know the general subject matter, but I am just frantically trying to expand my vocabulary.  I can communicate with people very well though, especially when they are patient with me.  I´ve had some interesting charades displays with Elder Brito for instance.

Cockroaches here are much very much bigger than in Georgia.  Luckily, we don´t have them in our apartment, nor do we see them often.  But Elder Hein got quite a laugh when he ran the point of the umbrella up the back of my leg and yelled Cockroach!!  I may or may not have let out an embarrassing cry of a rather embarrassing nature.

The mission office is in our area.  Today we walked there to run some errands.  Up to the fifteenth floor, right by the Vitória end of the Terceira Ponte.  I love the office.  Now we are going to go try açai and caldo de cana, a drink made from sugarcane!  This morning we had cheese bread (pão de queixo) and açai guaraná (a juice) from an awesome little bakery.  Excitement.  Things are beautiful here.  

So many spiritual experiences each day!  I will have to share some next week.
I would´ve this week, but I got caught up in the physical details.  I am adjusting to Brasil, slowly but surely.  If it weren´t so sweaty during the day and I already had a perfect knowledge of Portuguese, then I would have nothing to complain about.  :)  

Our area include downtown Vitória!  It´s super neat.  More next week!  

Até próximo, (see you again, soon)

ELDER J BODILY