More Missionary Moments

Note from Mom - Yes, I did creep out about the rats!  I really don't even want to think about the rest of it!

We went to the São Paulo Temple again today, and I got a hymn book from the distribution center. I figured I would keep it for the rest of my life so I wouldn´t get something like.. a silly poster or something I´d throw away like my companion.. haha. he did get some nice ones though!... I came up with a great idea for my last p-day here. I´m saving up my money for a big cookie shake from this same place I email you at (it´s called Mr. Cheney´s Cookies and it´s pretty much an american shop in Brazil). It´s about $8.50 Reais. Before that though, I´m going to eat at Rodigios, the Brazilian steak restaurant. Basically, I´m going to eat as well as I can before I go to Cuiaba because I´m probably going to be stuck with some nasty fish or something. Oh, here´s a little information about Cuiaba. The mission is so big, that there are three parts to it. City, jungle, and plains. In the Cuiaba mission there are: giant 4 foot tall rats (I think they look like hamsters), giant mosquitos that fly low and slow, but if they bite you, you get a terrible disease, and there´s malaria or something there. Also the Bot Fly, that I mentioned earlier where the larva nest in your skin through mosquitos and eventually become a fly and fly out if you don´t remove it. Fun right? I´m glad that Lacey and Danny finally got my letter. took forever. the mail down here is trashy. I did get the rectangular card, but not the square one yet. That´s cool that you got the packages sent off. I only have 2-3 more weeks here. I´m sad I don´t get to see brandon. I hear we´re getting a lot of missionaries from Provo today though. he might be in my branch if he is among those... it´s a lot better being immersed in the culture. I really don´t think I´ve been completely sumbersed yet, because I´m surrounded by so many Americans, and American food, but I do have some Brazilian roommates now that are pretty cool. They´ve been teaching me portugese words, and I´ve been teaching them some english words. They´re pretty fun, but they go to bed late, and wake up earlier which can be annoying sometimes. Last friday, we went proselyting again, but this time, in the heart of this city. Our teacher called it, the Wall Street of Brazil. We faced more rejection, but I think we handed out just as many contact cards. We even were given a Book of Mormon each and told to hand them out. Me and my companion looked for two people that were sincerely interested and we found two pretty quick. They said they´d read, and we showed them a contact number inside. One even came back and introduced us to his friends to hear our message. Pretty neat eh? Everyone really struggled. It´s because they didn´t try talking to everyone they saw, they tried to pick out people. One didn´t even get to hand out his book of mormon the whole time there. I felt really bad for them, but I really sincerely prayed for strength and God gave it to me and my companion. Some people wouldn´t even look at us, and just wave their hand away, but many people would let us walk with them and sometimes even stop. We ran into to two members on the street. There´s a lot of members in Brazil. Over a million. it´s really grown since the 1920´s with only 700 members or less then. Well, I´m glad everythings going well, tell everyone at church hi for me, and that everything´s going well for me. I´ll talk to you next week! Cião!