Vila Sônia - Week 17 - Transfer Day

I got transferred! So...yeah! I'm pretty nervous. I haven't left Vila Sônia yet, so I don't have any news on the new area/companion, but it's called Rio Branco. I know it's a branch (except the "chapel" is even smaller), and it's the area that my first companion, Elder Richards, spent a lot of time in (and the area to which he went after he was in Vila Sônia!).

So...I already have my bags packed, and we're kinda waiting here for the other companionship to get here before I leave, so that Elder Lindsey won't be left alone. The other two Brazilians that were in our house got moved too, so only he is staying. He will be training an Elder fresh from the CTM! So he'll actually get his companion on Tuesday. Anyways...here in a few hours I'll take a bus (or a couple. I think it's a couple) to Rio Branco, with my 3 ginormous suitcases. I don't know where I got so much stuff! I'll definitely have to work on down-sizing some. So anyways, packing was kinda a miserable experience. I got everything to fit, I just left some books that I got in the CTM, that I will never use. But yeah, I'm not looking forward to moving. It'll be okay once I get there and get settled, but until then...ugh. And, I'll be a...senior companion! What?! It's crazy! I don't know how President thought that was a good idea, but it's going to happen, haha. So I kinda really don't feel ready for that either. I think my companion is Brazilian, so that'll be interesting too. Luckily I was able to learn Portuguese with Americans, so now I should be fine, haha :) But yeah. It was kinda expected, but still. I'll be sad to leave Vila Sônia, Irmã Barbara (she fed us coxinha again last night, for my last supper :)), and all our pesquisadores [people we are teaching]. 

But luckily, we were able to baptize Irmã Cristiane, and Naiara (a friend of Cristiane's daughter) this week! It was super cool. We made programs for the baptism all nice and fancy (we used a picture of them two together, which I had to "photoshop" in MS Paint to get rid of the background. So that was fun), and I played my Baptism Hymn from the Jon Schmidt book. I messed up quite a few times, since I wasn't quite as prepared as I would have liked to have been, but it happened, and it was nice :) So Elder Lindsey baptized Cristiane, and I baptized Naiara. It was pretty cool, a neat experience for sure. Cristiane bought us these motorcycle alarm clocks, since she knew we like motorcycles, which was really nice of her. And she also made these dolphin keychains out of beads, which are pretty slick. So I guess I was just supposed to stay here until Cristiane got baptized? She said that she wouldn't get baptized with any other Elders, so I guess it was good we stayed until now :) But Elder Lindsey will be able to keep up with her. 

Irmã Cristiane, with her kids

My scriptures did get here! It was like Christmas! Everything all new and smelling like the São Paulo Temple distribution center. It was nice. I've been reading a little bit of Das Buch Mormon (holy heck, German's hard), and I've been thinking about getting the audio of the German to help me out even more. Also, I found out that we are allowed to use headphones, as long as it's only one ear. Per Sister Cabral. So I bought some funny LEGO headphones for 10 reais, that seem like they'll be okay. Anyways, it's really interesting reading the German. There's a few things that I understand, a few things that I think I understand and then find out that I don't, and then a ton of stuff that just doesn't make sense at all. I can kinda get a gist of what it's saying, but that might just be because it's scriptures, I dunno. It's a very different language. But it's cool, I used my new Portuguese Book of Mormon to have side by side with the German, to help me figure out what the German means. Which is super weird when I think about it. I don't have any problems reading the scriptures in Portuguese whatsoever, so I guess I'm 2.5-lingual! :) or 2.15, or something. But very cool anyways. The new scriptures are great, now I'm just trying to take care of them better than I did the last ones, mostly to keep the gold leafing on, haha :) 

Something that is normal to me now would be...always wearing shoes/slides inside, even in the shower. How do you guys like your carpet, and clean floors? :) Only a few houses like us to take our shoes off before we go in, which is nice. Speaking of that, my left slide is coming apart a little bit. But I'll just get some super glue, and pronto [ready]! :) It made me sad though, I really like the slides. I hope they last my whole mission. And um...going to the bathroom is pretty different. You know, the whole can't-put-toilet-paper-in-the-toilet thing. Which is still weird. It's either that, or sometimes that we don't have toilet paper. So, hahahaha :) I hope I answered your question, Jake. :)

A funny thing happened yesterday in church. The 1st counselor in the branch presidency gave a talk, because he's moving to Maceió I think (I already told him about Chris), but it was kinda more of a vent than a talk, haha. It was funny. But one part that was not funny, was that he talked more about me being a prophet. He actually named me and his son (Helamã (Helaman), cool right?) as some of the last prophets of this dispensation. So we were just like "APOSTASY!!!" He actually made me stand up in sacrament meeting so that everyone could see who the prophet was going to be in 60 years or whatever -.- it was not cool. Everyone understood (almost everyone) that he was just giving a compliment, but he kinda went about it in the wrong way. We had to explain to the sweet little old lady that kisses everybody's hands, as well as Cristiane, how revelation works and how prophets are chosen. So that was kinda fun. And then everybody for the rest of the day was referring to me as prophet, so...at least they were joking. The 1st counselor was actually greeting me something like this: "Tudo bom, profeta?" Which is not right. It's probably an okay thing that I'm leaving before everyone can make too many jokes about it. 

Wish me luck in Rio Branco! I'll need it! And wish me luck on the Ônibus with my 3 super heavy suitcases! :) I'll be fine, don't worry about me. Just stay nice and comfy at home :) I'll talk to you next week!

My starfruit breakfast (I hope they have the markets in Rio Branco)

Me and some LEGIT suco de maracuja [passion fruit juice] that I made! I bought two maracuja this Friday for 3 reais and then I blended them up with some water and sugar! It was really strong (I didn't put a lot of water, haha, only like half a liter), so it was really good.