Vila Sônia - Week 15

This dessert is chocolate cake, and Elder Lindsey melted down an entire bar of Hershey's cookies and cream chocolate to make the "frosting" :) hahaha, not the healthiest thing ever, but you know. They actually do have decent Hershey's chocolate here, that's one good thing. But Elder Lindsey did all of that dessert, for Barbara also. Elder Lindsey is a really good guy, he's keeping me on my toes here for sure.

We did have our conference with the Cabral's last Thursday, it was really good. It's crazy how much of a bigger...gospel perspective I've gained on the mission, even just until now. And more pressure because of that perspective, but you know, I guess that's how it goes. It makes me feel like I missed out on stuff that you guys maybe had to share with me but I just never made the effort to find out. But at least I know I didn't miss out on the same example that Sister and President Cabral set for us. 

Oh, also, I found a tie bar. There's this religious shop (it felt a bit weird going in there, but oh well :) ) that sells music equipment/accessories, lots of religious music/books, and church clothes (mostly interested in the tie bars and ties though). So I ended up getting a tie bar and a cool tie, I'll get some pictures of me modelling them this week (haha). :) 

Funny story, I think that they actually don't carry size 12 shoes here. I'm a 44 here in Brazil, and I've never seen a single store sell 44's. Highest is a 42 I think. So that doesn't really help my case, but it's funny anyways :)

Rocambole

Last P-day, I think after we e-mailed, we went to this fancyish bakery/lanchonete/gas station store (it was pretty reminiscent of home actually), and we ate there for Star Wars Day. There, we also bought these ginormous yule log kinda things, I think called rocambole. I got brigadeiro, and Elder Lindsey got doce de leite. 

We also started teaching Christiane (Elder Zenger baptized her two kids Nicole and Daniel) and she's just the most amazing person ever. She's already read the Book of Mormon TWICE, from cover to cover (literally, everything) and she's starting on her third time. Her only problem is smoking. She is unemployed, and so she just stays at home and reads the BoM for most of the day I guess. Actually, a miracle happened with that. We had lunch with her on Thursday, which we weren't sure how that was going to work out since she doesn't have a job and their family doesn't have a lot of food (she's a single mom). But, when we got there she had everything, rice, beans, pasta, sausage, juice, this saladish thing, dessert, everything. One of the bigger lunches I've had. And she told us that she hadn't been able to sleep the night before, since she was so worried about what she would do for the lunch. When they were planning the lunches in Relief Society at the beginning of the month, she felt prompted to volunteer, even though she had very little. So anyways, the day of, a bunch of people brought all sorts of food to her house. Her son actually found a box of juice (the powder, anyways) on the road on the way home from school. A neighbor brought a cake, somebody else brought pasta, and so on. She actually doesn't even have gas in her house to cook with, so she cooked everything with alcohol somehow. And Elder Lindsey and I ate everything we could (it was just us two there), and she and a friend ate, and there was still 5 ice cream tubs (that's what a lot of people use for tupperware here, along with normal tupperware) of food that she sent home with us for the other Elders and for dinner that night. And she STILL had food from that same lunch, leftover for her and for her kids. From the food that we took home, I think people ate a total of 5 or 6 meals from it. It really was a miracle (feeding the five thousand, anybody?) and it showed me how we, as missionaries, are able to bless the people that we have lunch with, just by going to their houses and accepting their sacrifice. It was amazing. 

Berimbau

In lesser news, at the most recent capoeira class (we just teach a little message at the beginning and then leave, our ward mission leader is teaching), they had one of the little competitions with another capoeira team or school or whatever. So everyone got in a big circle, and the leaders of the other team had the instruments that they play (I can't remember what they're called, you can probably look it up. They look like a longbow with a kinda coconut looking-think on the bottom, haha), and so we stayed there for a bit to watch. It was very Brazilian :) 

Until next Monday!

Love,
Michael