Elder Hoskisson [and his companion] got transferred, so now we are in the same area as the zone leaders, so last Monday was their first day here.
On Tuesday, no district meeting because there was a zone meeting on Friday. We had lunch with a rich less-active lawyer. His yard was sick, he has a huge pool and big barbecue area, with a wood-burning oven. He said that he would start giving us lunch every Tuesday because he asked us about our lunch situation, and this week it was not great, so that's nice of him. On the way back, Elder Martins do Nascimento pushed me, while we were walking, and for some reason I wasn't balanced at all, and I just kind of fell into Elder Bautista, who is one of the zone leaders. That kinda made me mad but I got over it quickly, don't worry. That's just a random tidbit I thought I'd share with you guys.
On Wednesday, we had lunch with the district president. He lives in Curitiba, which is another state. (Here in Registro, the city is on the border with another state to the south, Curitiba, which is pretty much the same as it was in Caraguá, because that was on the border with Rio. So I think at this point, I'm closer to Curitiba than I am to Santos or São Paulo, needless to say. It was a 45-min bus ride, within our area, because all of this is our area, these few cities, but President Obata has prohibited us from working in the other cities, we're just supposed to work here in Registro.) It was cool, he got us at the bus station, and drove us (six elders) to his house, in his normal Brazilian-sized car, which is not an SUV, so that was a little bit cramped but it was alright. The scenery actually reminded me a little bit of Florida, if Florida had mountains or hills. It reminded me of when we would go dirt-biking in the forest, and there were palm trees but also normal forest-type stuff going on. I can't really explain it that well, obviously. But it was cool because he lives in a ... not a farm... like a rural area. The lunch was awesome, he had suco de limão rosa, which translates to pink lemonade, but natural pink lemonade I guess. I'm addicted to it, it's so good. It sprinkled on Wednesday, so I made tea. I figured out that I was only drinking tea when it was cold. In hot weather, it's miserable, but on rainy days it still works. Luckily I'll get home in the winter time.
On Thursday, our dinner was with Christina, and it was kinda like meatloaf, something like that. And she made guava juice, and suco de melão, and melão I think is honeydew, so honeydew juice, which I had never tried before and it was really good. The whole dinner, the zone leader, Elder Bautista, was asking all these probing questions about the problems the branch has been having, and she was not happy about it. She told us later that she got really annoyed by his questions. I won't talk about it much, but she was talking about how it was so much better when Elder Richards was the branch president here. [Elder Richards was Michael's trainer.]
Also we had the zone meeting I told you about. I led a debate, which went well. Our lunch fell through, so we made stuff here, pasta. Also, it was Elder Moletta's one year anniversary, so we bought pizza obviously, because that's what you do. So this bbq pizza is amazing, it's got bacon and cheese and bbq sauce on it, it's the best thing ever and it's also good because it's 20 reais, which is the normal cheap price for pizza, so the price is also amazing, and it's amazing. The other pizza that we got was portuguesa, which has cheese, ham, eggs, heart of palm, peas, onion. That might sound gross to you guys, but it's really good. And also soda, obviously, because you have to buy soda. I'm not sure if this soda was around when you were here, Dad, it's called Itubaina, I think it's pretty old, or at least they make it out to be vintage or original, it's guaraná except tutti-frutti, so it's cool, I like it. That was Friday.
On Saturday, our lunch also fell through, so... pasta! And on Saturday, Sara finally got baptized! It went well. I played piano, I got some piano practice in. There wasn't anybody from the branch presidency there, well actually there's not even a branch presidency, there's just the branch president, but he lives in that other city, Pariquera-Açu, say that 20 times fast. So he didn't come, so the person with the most authority was the young men's president, Ronei (we've had lunch and dinner with him more than a few times, I've talked about him I'm pretty sure). He's super cool.
Today, it was a normal church day, there also wasn't lunch today on the the calendar but Ronei and Bibi, his wife, gave us lunch which was awesome. They're the best. Today was the first day that they switched the sacrament meeting to be the first hour instead of the last hour because that's a thing that has been switched during my mission. After church we gave blessings to this recent convert couple.
As far as the teaching side goes, this area has not been the best. The biggest difficulty we're having is with people not letting us into their houses. Apparently the sisters here had an easier time of it, which makes sense, because it's harder to want to let two guys into your house, especially at night or whatever. And even when we talk to somebody on the street and they're like, "Yeah, you can come to my house Saturday at 4:00" and so we go to their house on Saturday at 4:00, and nobody answers the door. So we talk to the neighbor and the neighbor says they went to São Paulo." That's pretty much been the story of Registro... a bunch of people doing that over and over and over again. But such is life. :)
That was pretty much all that happened this week, so that's it for me. I love you guys, I hope you have a great week.
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