Semana Longa (Long Week)

Oi gente.This week was quite interesting.  We are teaching a man who is a vendor of coconut milk.  This is quite common on the streets here in Vitória near the bus stops.  He always has way too many coconuts.  Therefore, this week I ate coconut with a spoon directly from a coconut, and drank coconut milk directly from a coconut with a straw.  Here it´s called water of coconut.  This is a better name because it tastes like some strange flavor of Propel, nothing like milk or even close.  This man came to church for the second time yesterday!   Progress!

I started a habit with Elder Souza, one of the other missionaries I am living with.  We are running in the mornings.  We live quite close to the water´s edge and the port (most of the city of Vitória is an island.  We live on the island, the mission office is on the island, etc.)  Anyway, we are running along the pathway next to the water´s edge.  Palm trees, cobblestone sidewalk, barges entering the port, little crabs on the path, the whole bit.  The road is called Avenida Marechal Mascarenhas if you want to look at it.

I conducted the baptismal meeting for the baptism of an investigator of Elder Rossi and Elder Souza´s yesterday.  I also played the piano, and was a witness for the baptism.  It was a little crazy, but we got thru and there were no glitches.  Well, that´s a lie.

Our investiagator Irene was all set up to be baptized yesterday, but backed out on Friday.  Despite a powerful lesson with us, and the wife of the former mission president of the Brasil Curitiba Mission, she still backed out.  We hope to reschedule... :?  This was very disappointing, especially because her reason is pretty silly.  Perhaps she has a deeper issue.  We hope to help her overcome whatever obstacles she is facing.  We have a family home evening with the family of that former mission president and her tonight.

On Tuesday I went on exchange with Elder Souza.  On Thursday and Sunday night I was on exchange with Elder Rossi.  We had a full and successful day on Tuesday, an awesome experience.  However, Thursday was without any appointments, just looking for people to teach.  We found only one person all day.  This was difficult.  Always interesting and refreshing to work with different missionaries, though.  If sometimes, a challenge.

Good news!  Various times in this email my brain has been saying a Portuguese word, and I am having to force the English.  Just a little, but this is exciting.  It´s already starting to happen in spoken language.

We are downtown right now, from here we will go grocery shopping, go home, clean, and hopefully relax a little before another week starts.

Tchau everyone.
Elder JOSHUA BODILY

downpour

So.

This week things are back to normal, as in, our local LAN House (computer kiosk) is open.  No more Carnaval.  It rained almost everyday this week.  Yesterday and Saturday it was super wet.  Even with umbrellas we were drenched several times each day due to the wind and water splashing off of roofs and us having to walk in ankle deep water and traverse staircases that were acting as waterfalls on the hills.  Also, just like on the movies I got splashed while walking on the sidewalk by a bus passing through a big puddle (or mini-lake, as you prefer) on the road.  I laughed.  It feels really weird, like jumping into a pool sideways.  Dramatic thunder and lightning displays.  Today the sun is out again.  I prefer rain.

Elder Gneiting, my companion in Georgia got his visa, and arrived in Brasil on Thursday.  President let him call me.  Two of the people we were teaching in Portuguese (a mom and son- Fátima and Luca) made considerable progress.  Luca was baptized and Fátima is going to be baptized on the 20th!  Also, a woman that we found who spoke English got baptized.  Finally, after 6 months in the States, he got his visa and is here.  It´s good to know that all the labor, time, and effort that I and the thousands of other missionaries contribute each hour of each day has at least some tangible yet exceptionally delicious fruit.

Yesterday was Stake Conference at the Stake Center a 30 minute bus ride from here.  It was interesting.  President and Sister Pickett gave talks.  The Elders that we live with had a baptism afterwards.  On the bus from there to our lunch in downtown Vitória, there were two Dutch women who were a classic image of confused tourists.  They spoke British English with heavy Dutch accents, but no Portuguese.  They were lost.  We helped them, along with a random Brazilian who spoke broken English with them...which, ironically they understood better than my flawless English.  If I do say so myself.

A strange woman started walking with us on the street when we were on our way to the chapel to have a meeting with our Ward Mission Leader.  She asked if she could come in to the church.  We said of course (one of the members teaches a drama class in one of the classrooms this particular night of the week).  She invited us to her house for pizza and pop.  I think she was crazy.  

That´s all of that story...especially because she didn´t know her address.

We have a baptism scheduled for this Sunday with a woman named Irene.  She lives alone with her dog in a tiny house that she re-modeled herself.  It is incredibly well kept, complete with garden, painted walls, and all kinds of handy home improvements and annexes that she does herself.  She is incredibly well-versed in scripture and always very passionate-she likes to talk.  She always feeds us something when we visit.  

I saw two wild monkeys the other day.  Crossing the road.  No joke.  Little tiny monkeys with little manes around their heads.  I was in shock.  It was super neat.

We are helping a man who just a few months ago was way deep into drugs and all that.  However, he has stopped and begun cleaning out his house, cleaning up his life, and attending church (we met him when he attended church of his own accord).  It is going to be a tough road for him, still.  He still smokes a lot.  As he sat and cried in front of us in fear that his 12 year old daughter doesn´t want to live with him anymore until he fixes his life, I realized how truly blessed we are when we follow the commandments, seek things spiritual before physical pleasures, and trust God- living life with love and Christlike attributes.  He has wasted SOO much time with things of no value to the point that he could lose what is most valuable to him.  

My companion is an interesting folk.  He worked in a mortuary before the mission, wants to go into a career that involves drawing, and has the most cluttered desk I´ve ever seen.  I like working with him though.  P.S. He can´t sing worth a lick, so I pick rarely sung hymns to sing at the start of companionship study.  This makes it even more difficult to sing, and I get a smile out of it.  He´s a good sport.  

Have a joyous week and be grateful for AC ----->,

 

 

Elder JOSHUA BODILY

Carnaval and Transfer

Hello Everyone.

 

Tomorrow is Carnaval, so we are using the computer of our Bishop.  This means that all four of us are taking turns to email on ONE computer.  There is still one more after me.  We have been here over an hour and a half already.  Everything is closed, you see.  There are no internet houses open in all the city.  We even trekked to the Centro to check the internet houses, and not a one open.  We have already wasted so much of the preparation day!  So frustrating.  But the Bishop´s house is really nice.  It´s actually in a high rise in the Centro.  Anyway...

 

The transfer happened.  Elder Hein went about half a mile away to the mainland in Vila Velha.  Elder Rodriguez and Elder Brito went way far away.  I am companions now with Elder Bagley.  He is an American, from a small town Hemet, California an hour outside of San Diego.  He speaks nearly flawless Portuguese, though.  Everyone we meet thinks he is Brazilian.  And that´s not an exaggeration.  He is coaching me on pronunciation.  He doesn´t like to speak English almost ever.  Elder Anderson is now companions with a Brazilian (non English-speaking) though, so I cannot complain.  He teaches very well.  We get along, but he is very quiet.

 

The other two in the house with us are both Brazilians from São Paulo.  I am learning how different Portuguese from São Paulo is from Portuguese from Fortaleza and from Salvador.  Everyone has different expressions and accents.  One of them is a brand new Elder with less than a month since entering the CTM (MTC) in São Paulo.

 

We have gotten lost a few times as I have guided the group of us four to lunch.  Embarrassing, but eventually we found the destinations, even though we had to call and have one of the members find us and escort us to their house.  What can you do?

 

I played Monopoly Deal in Portuguese with the other Elders in the house.  I won.

 

The weather has been cloudy, breezy, and rainy here.  A welcome break from the burning sun.  I barely even perspired one of the days this week.

 

Believe it or not, tomorrow will be 6 months since entering the MTC for me.  I will be 1/4 through with the mission.  2 months in the MTC, 2 months in Georgia, and 2 months in Vitória.  I´ve already had 7 companions!

 

Have a wonderful week everyone.  I have a host of beautiful photos, I wish I could send them all.

 

Abraço,

Elder JOSHUA BODILy

Batismo (Baptism) and Transfer

The view from my apartment window...building with steeple is a church.

Hello Hello.

This week was a viciously difficult week.  We searched and searched for people to teach and found almost nobody.  But, in the end we had a wonderful baptism on Sunday.  I baptized Christianne (24 years old).  We had to do it twice because her knee came out of the water the first time.  It was stressful.  And you have to give the baptismal prayer in Portuguese, in case that didn´t occur to anyone.  It was a really good experience and everyone was just happy the whole day long.

Transfer news:  So, I will have a new companion and two new roommates.  All three of the other Elders in areas Vitória 1 & 2 (Elders Hein, Rodrigues, and Brito) are being transferred!  I don´t find out who is going to be my companion or the others in the area until tomorrow!  I am inheriting a lot of junk that the other three are leaving behind in the apartment.  Including a really nice blank leather journal, Portuguese grammar books, and excellent writing utinsels.  Yes, only I would get excited about the writing utinsels.  This is exciting.  I am going to be the only one that knows the area, the ward, and where everyone lives!  In the whole southern half of the city of Vitória!!  It will be interesting.  Elder Hein went through almost everyone we are even acquainted with (hundreds of people) and I took notes on where they live and what their statuses are.  Now that everything is on paper, I am a lot more calm.  And I am surprisingly familiar with the city already.  Should be good.  

On Monday, a Sister gave me two bananas to eat in her home.  I couldn´t figure out how to open it because Elder Bodily hates bananas and never eats them.  The skin was thick and I didn´t want to squish the insides.  As she noticed my difficulties, she said don´t you have bananas where you´re from?  She started laughing and saying even the monkeys know how to open bananas.  What was even worse was I had to eat them with a straight face.  She spread the word in the ward and now tons of people think I can´t open a banana.  Which is partially true. A random member at the baptism yesterday came up to me and said, if the baptism is a success, I´ll give you a banana!  Ay ay.

I did another exchange with the zone leader in Serra, Espírito Santo.  Elder Manis and I had an excellent day.  He is from Arizona, and is almost finished with his mission.  We taught a lot of people and got fed by various very generous folks that we visited.  It was fun to mix things up again.

I discovered that Elder Hein had the CD that we listened to every day in the car in Athens, GA.  It is a collections of hymns played on a cello.  Super beautiful, brought back very good memories...especially the memories of a car.

I am feeling pretty happy and excited to have a completely refreshing transfer, get to know new Elders, but also to stay in Vitória where I am still a bit comfortable and know the members well.

Brazilian money...Reais

Funny story, I was walking through an alley with Elder Hein and someone up in a high window threw out some trash into their ´´compost pile´´ slash dump in their yard.  However, of all things, a banana peel was ill-aimed-- and hit me, square in the chest.

 

I hate bananas.  

Until next week.

Elder Bodily

Good News

Good News                                                                             February 21, 2011

Greetings all.

So, yesterday we had the baptism of Micaela (the girl who lives in the jungle, where we saw the tarantula).  It was pretty neat!  She is the first person that I have seen baptized on the mission that we started teaching and also saw her baptized.  She is quite the phenomenal thirteen-year-old.  She reads the scriptures everyday and volnteers to pray at our visits.  Also, she knows a lot and learns very quickly.  She was super nervous right before the baptism, but she felt wonderful afterwards. 

Also, Christiane, the woman who lives in the Centro or Downtown of Vitória has confirmed her baptism this coming Sunday.  She has begun distributing invitations to friends and family, and she also attended the baptism of Micaela.  She is determined in her decision.  We have a rule in the Vitória Mission that each missionary can only actually baptize one person each.  After that, a member of the ward into which the person is being baptized actually baptizes the person.  Seeing that I haven´t baptized anyone yet, and Christiane wants one of us to do the baptism, and acknowledging the fact that Elder Hein has already baptized someone, I will be baptizing Christiane on Sunday.  This is quite exciting.  It has been very inspirational to see her growth and development in the Gospel.  She told me today (we took the bus into the Centro this morning to have a lesson with her) that she will not be happy if I try to drown her.  ;)

We had the Zone Conference on Tuesday.  It went phenomenally well.  It was very motivational, exciting, and thought-provoking.  We practiced teaching, watched training videos, brainstormed, and received training from President and Sister Pickett.  The lunch was fabulous as well.  

We taught a woman who had a stroke, and half of her body does not function as well as the other.  It also affected her vocal cords, so her voice was very different.  Strangely, it actually helped me understand her better.  Always good.  

This week was a bit of a struggle.  While we have a handful of people that we are working with, we still have lot of time that is spent simply searching searching searching for absolutely anyone to just hear us and what we have to share.  Elder Rodrigues and I agreed that there is no other way to learn patience so thoroughly as missionary work.  Patience to receive blessings, patience with the heat, patience with people breaking promises, patience with the companion you spend all of your time with, patience with laundry and dishes and sweeping and mopping the house as well as spending nine hours a day out teaching or trying to teach.  It is a labor of love.  Real labor.  Real love.  And also real labor.  Did I already mention that?

One of the members showed us pictures of his mission which was in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.  I would love to come back and travel here.  Porto Alegre looks nothing like Vitória and actually gets cold!  Meeting people from all over the country here makes knowing the geography important, so I´ve been studying a map of Brasil.  It´s a super diverse place, and is only just smaller than the USA.  

Portuguese sounds even more beautiful when you understand what people are saying, and you cease to hear just sounds.

The weather here continues to cool, ever so slowly and gradually--in fact so slowly it might be my imagination.  Next week we have transfers, though.  I could be leaving Vitória or getting a new companion.  Which would leave me responsible for knowing the area.  We´ll see what happens.

Hebrews 12:1-3  Run it out.

Uma ótima semana para todos vocês. (a great week for you all)

Elder JOSHUA BODILY

Happy Valentines Day

Another week passes.

First of all, here in Brasil, they have ´´Valentine´s Day´´ on a different day of the year.  The 12th of June I think. 

So.  I almost forgot it was Valentine´s Day except for it being on my American made calendar.  Anyways.

This week was kind of ridiculous.  We had more appointments fall through than I´ve ever had before.  On Saturday we had 8 scheduled appointments, a majority of which were with people that are very dependable schedule-wise.  All of them fell through.  The people weren´t at home anywhere near the scheduled times we set up with them.  We went back to several later in the day, and we still only found one of those eight people, and they were only able to briefly talk for about five minutes.  <Sigh…>

On the bright side, the lady that lives in downtown Vitória that we started teaching last week wants to be baptized and we have it planned to happen on February 27.  She is really neat.  Few and far between are the people we visit who actually want to learn and actually ask sincere questions rather than just humor us. 

I had another exchange this week.  It was with Elder Brito, with whom we live.  My companion went with his companion for the day on the east end of Vitória and I stayed with Elder Brito on the west end.  Therefore, it was up to me to know where all of our appointments lived and how to get there and what we should teach them.  All but two appointments fell through.  So, we talked to a lot of people on the streets and in their homes searching for someone interested in learning more about the Gospel.  We found one really neat woman who really was intrigued with the church and we had a very spiritual lesson.  Sadly, when she told her husband about the lesson he apparently has something against religion and so we aren´t allowed to come back.

I gave quite a fright to someone in a hammock.  I recognized the lady in the hammock as the mother of the person we were trying to teach.  (The hammock was right in front of their home in a miniature park.)  I didn´t realize that she was asleep though.  I approached the hammock and said Good afternoon and she nearly fell out of the hammock!  She scared me just as much as I scared her.  From what I could discern she said more or less among other things: ´´What fright!  O my heck!  I could die of fright!´´  Her daughter wasn´t home.  Elder Brito laughed and laughed after we left.  It was pretty funny.  I was paralyzed.

On one of our treks out to the corner of the area in the jungle to teach the family that lives there we saw… A TARATULA!  Real life!  Big and black and covered in little white hairs!  Elder Hein almost stepped on it!  I gasped and pointed and he stopped just in time.  After we admired it in a mix of awe and terror, Elder Hein decided to roll a rock at it (we were 10ish feet away at this point).   As soon as the rock touched it, it put its front two legs straight up in the hair, slapped the sidewalk with its fangs, and emitted a small puff of powder!  It just stayed there with its front two legs vertical.  We freaked out!  Elder Rodrigues says that the powder makes you itch really bad and makes your skin swell up.  Yikes.  Welcome to Brasil.

Elder Hein and I took a ´´shortcut´´ that turned out to be much longer and sweatier a journey than our normal route to the place we were going.  We ended up climbing a great big hill and descended on a dirt trail rather than taking the road around the hill.  It was actually kind of fun.  I felt like an explorer, except for the fact that I was in a white shirt and tie and really sweaty.

I am feeling much better about Portuguese.  I am having extended conversations in Portuguese with the Brasilian missionaries we live with.  And the whole day of that exchange we spoke Portuguese.  I can easily survive, now I just have to find out how to thrive.  The exchange was really good for both of us.  We had another phenomenal lesson in the evening and despite the long hard day of searching for people to teach, we felt very satisfied and content—not to mention feeling the Spirit very strong with us during and after the lesson.   We had asked him to pray about the message we left, and promised him that God would answer his prayer.  In this visit, he told us that the morning after he prayed, someone called telling him he got the job he has been wanting and waiting for for a long time, and felt that was an answer.  Neat! 

Tomorrow is zone conference.  Exciting.  It will be my first ever.  All the missionaries in the Vitória Zone and in the Cariacica Zone will be there.

Summer showed the first signs of weakness here.  For two days the temperature was bearable, though still quite warm.  Also, the wind blew and it was overcast.  Yes, I still was sweating bad, but I didn´t feel hot.  I felt at ease.  Today is very hot again though. 

Ok.  Time to leave!  Have lovely weeks everyone!

Elder JOSHUA BODILY

Sou um Bonitão (I am an Ultra-Handsome Male!)

Bom dia todos. (Good Day Everyone)

This week I kept notes on things to email home about.  Behold.

We encountered our first cockroach in the apartment this week.  And guess who found it?  Me.  Yes.  The only one of us four that is terrified of the little beasts.  I was in the bathroom at the end of the day, taking off my shoes to get ready for my shower, but I realized that I had left my towel out on the line, so i left the bathroom, retreived the towel, and when I came back in to the bathroom there was a big nasty cockroach with antennae waving around on my SHOE!  I yelled and Elder Rodrigues kept saying ´´mata-lo!  mata-lo!´´ (kill it!  kill it!)  i stayed outside the bathroom.  He sighed and shook it off my shoe.  It went skittering away but he took my shoe and beat it to death!  It took about 7 solid whacks.  I was traumatized for the night.

I saw a rat this week.  We were walking up a staircase and it just ran across the stairs right in front of me.  Yuck.

Here in Vitória, you simply put your trash on the sidewalk anywhere and workers come by periodically to collect it.  We collect our trash bags by the door in the apartment so we can grab them on the way out.  As we went to pick them up one day, something big and black sped out from under the trash bag and across my shoe.  I let out a rather embarrassing yelp which made Elder Hein laugh.  It was a lizard.

As you can see, there are creepy-crawlies in Brasil.  I am adjusting.  They seem to be attracted to my shoes...odd.  Moving on.

We found one woman who invited us to come back and teach her the next day.  Due to difficulties we couldn´t make it to her house until 45 minutes after we scheduled the appointment.  To our surprise, she was just arriving home!  It was perfect.  When we finished  talking with her and concluded the lesson, she said to us that the past few years she has been feeling something has been missing in her life and that she had just started praying to God to help her fill the void she felt it her life the week before we ran into her.  She told us she doesn´t believe in coincidences, and we agreed.  Really neat.  And I understood everything she said!  She is vacationing in Guaraparí this week though, so stay tuned for news.  I will refer to her as Teresa.

I did an exchange this week.  Elder Hein went to leadership training because he is a district leader, so I was with Elder Wilson from south Jordan, Utah in Serra-Sede.  About an hour and a half bus ride from downtown Vitória.  It was neat.  We taught some great lessons, gave a blessing, and had some good lunch.  It was much more rural and calm there.  Good to mix things up.  It was my first time outside of the city of Vitória since arriving here.  The bus ride on the way back is along the coast with beautiful panoramic sunset views of Vit´ria, the Terceira Ponte, the beautiful beach, and a giant cruise ship leaving the port.  Gorgeous.

We were introduced to a woman interested in being taught by a member.  Both the member and the woman live in one of the tallest high-rises in downtown Vitória.  I was so excited.  We were only on the fourth floor, but the building is right on the port with views of the gigantic barges.  This was all side details compared to the lesson.  The lesson we had with her was fabulous.  She came to church yesterday and really is feeling good about it.  it´s a great feeling to help people come closer to Christ.  We were there again this morning where we gave her a Book of Mormon and explained and taught about its importance.  I loved it.

Downtown Vitória is way neat.  Bustling shops and buses roaring by.  

Brazilians have funny accents when they say American things.  Some of note, in case i haven´t already shared these.

Titanic, pronounced (chee-tun-EEE-key)

red hot, pronounced (hedge hotch)

notebook-as in the computer kind-, pronounced (no-chee-BOO-key)

A samba group has started practicing for Carnival across the street from our house.  It is very loud and noisy, but neat at the same time.  They practice until about 10pm.  Welcome to Brasil.

An old lady who is suffering from dementia came to church on Sunday and when she saw me she apparently said ´´I want to sit down next to this bonitão´´ referring to me.  Bonitão means ultra-handsome-male.  Everyone in the Sunday School class was laughing, but I didn´t know what on Earth she had said, which only made everyone else laugh more.  Gotta love it.

Thanks so much for the mail!  I received 7 letters!  My first batch since arriving over three weeks ago!  The mail system has caught up with me!  Each of the letters from family and friends alike were written with a strong dose of personality, which was AWESOME.  I laughed and smiled as i read.

I didn´t even get through all my notes!  The weeks are so full here.  I hope you all have a wonderful week.  Enjoy your winter folks.

Até mais,

Élder JOSHUA BODILY

Address Change

There has been a slight change of address.  The address Josh provided was a little different than the address that the mission president just sent us to use.  Please take note of it and know that President Pickett said letters can take 2 to 3 weeks to deliver, due to the Brasil postal system.  His quote, "The Lord teaches us patience through the tremendous Brazilian postal service!!"  He did assure me that letters addressed with the "old" address will be delivered also.  

Elder Joshua Bodily

Missão Brasil Vitória

A Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias

Rua João Batista Parra, 633  Sala 1501

Praia do Suá

Vitória, ES   29052-123

Brasil

Nova Semana No Brasil (New Week in Brazil)

Joshua's trek up the mountain this morning!

nature!



the view!


Oi gente! (Hi Guys)

This week has been a lot of hard work in the sun.  We work on a lot of hills as I have said.  One of our investigators lives at the top of 168 steps.  There is no shade the whole way up, and all the rest of the other people on the staircase are not interested in talking to us.  It´s fun.  

This morning we took a trek to the top of the tallest hill in Vitória.  330 meters, whatever that translates to 1100 feet-ish.  We trekked through some forest.  It was very peaceful and neat, though it was a rough trail.  The weather was nice and cool, as it is in the morning and evening.

Yesterday we had a baptism.  Ana Carolina is her name.  She is a 13 year old whose brothers got baptized just before I arrived here.  Actually, the baptism got rescheduled from the afternoon at 1:00pm (Sunday) to 8:00am (Sunday) the day before the baptism (Saturday night) because the family had something major come up.  We scrambled to make the change and spread the news--including spending an hour at the church filling the font and getting home late.  Then they got hung up on getting to the church in the morning and arrived at 8:55 to the church!  Church starts at 9, so we had to re-schedule to 6:00pm.  When we went to the church at 5:30 to check on things someone had pulled the plug!  Luckily the drainage here is bad, so it was only draining ever so slowly and had lost less than half its water.  We turned the water back on.  Luckily they didn´t arrive until 6:45pm!  If I had to think of a word that describes the family best it would be: prompt.  Just kidding.  It all worked out.  It was a beautiful meeting and very spiritual.  The ward really worked together to make things happen and happen well.  Joy!

We had a really good discussion\lesson in the home of a 19 year old woman.  We are excited to return and teach her.  She understood better than anyone I´ve ever taught before and we had a really neat conversation about the Restoration.  

We trekked out into the forest for a lesson.  Actually its about half way to the top of the hill we climbed to this morning.  For real.  Not an exaggeration.  The family there had a very humble home in a little clearing.  Very sadly, more than half of that home burned down last month.  They have a living room about the size of my bedroom left.  Their bathroom was destroyed, so they are using latrines.  They take showers with a hose.  They have three electrical outlets  (the electicity wire is propped up on sticks).  We had a lesson on the dirt mound outside the home.  They have expressed a desire to be baptized.  

I love açai.  Yumm.

That´s all this week, I am out of time.  

Tchau todo mundo. (Bye Everyone)

Elder JOSHUA BODILY

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