Rio Branco - Week 6

I don't know what I'll do for my birthday...probably nothing, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll buy a cake mix or something, who knows :)

About the marijuana, I've been hanging out in Brazil! It's everywhere! There's usually little pockets of maconheiros (translate that!) [potheads] here and there, in the neighborhoods and such. But yeah, it's everywhere.

So I'll do a little explanation of the pictures this week first. On Wednesday, we had a district meeting where we invited all of the youth and we did a little mini CTM. We taught them how to teach, ask inspired questions and do contacts. And so, Tuesday night, we stayed up until...late...making 50 churros! A little while ago, Elder Lemes bought a little plastic churro maker that just squeezes out the dough/filling). So we stayed up late doing the dough and squeezing out all the little churros :) and then we got up early the next morning and fried them, and then took them over to the church and filled them with doce de leite and covered them in sugar and cinnamon. Pretty good:

Um...here's another picture of me and the Elders and Daniel (our ward mission leader) and Felipe (his...brother in law I think, somehow). We went to a RODÍZIO [buffet] of pizza! So that was pretty awesome. It was 20 reais per person, and we got to choose 30 flavors from a huge list, and they just brought out pizza after pizza with these flavors that we picked. Some pretty awesome ones. And there were doce [sweet] ones too, with chocolate syrup and bananas, or brigadeiros, or M&M...soooo good. I ended up eating 15 slices, hahaha :) Because we took the crusts off and only ate the pizza. 10 salgado [salty] and 5 doces. I felt (mostly) fine after. I got second place, Felipe ate 19, and Daniel ate 15 too. And they're big guys. Elder Vasconcelos ate 13 or something, and drank a lot of water, so he ended up...emptying his stomach hahaha. It was pretty funny. Just a fun night :) That was Wednesday too: 

Also there's us 4, celebrating Elder Evans' 1 year anniversary with a crazy cake: 

And also us 4 playing SUDopoly, which is a Mormon version of Monopoly :) Pretty funny, apparently the Deseret whatever it's called in São Paulo sells it. We borrowed it from a member. But instead of cities or whatever, you get temples and you add on chapels and stake centers :) And instead of trains, it's the 4 different standard works. Pretty funny :) And...I won! I got the Salt Lake Temple and the São Paulo temple (the last two, like times square) and wrecked everyone that landed there, hahaha. Pretty fun. Mostly when you win, but oh well :) Also very contentious, even though it's from the church: 

So...here's the news from the transfer! I will be staying here in Rio Branco (btw, there's a bairro called Rio Negro too). Elder Lemes is going to Registro (5 hours away), Elder Evans went to another ward closeish here in São Vicente. Elder Lemes will stay here until the huge birthday mission conference thing Wednesday, and then go to his area. Elder Vasconcelos got a new companion, Elder Cappelletti or something like that. And I...am training! It's crazy. So I'll get my companion tomorrow, I'll have to go to President's house and do that whole thing. It'll be cool :) I looked in the newsletter, and the only 3 Elders that got here this transfer are all Brazilians. I was kinda hoping that I'd get to train an American, but oh well :) It'll be good. But yeah, a pretty big change. I'm super happy that I get to stay here with my birthday packages, hahaha :) Other than that...not too much other news! I don't know how my companion is or anything, but Sister Cabral will put up pictures tomorrow and Wednesday, for sure. So yeah! I hope everything is awesome over there. Until next week! 

Love, 

Michael