President and Sister Vecchi with Tim
Elder Palmer, Tim's first companion
Elder Palmer, Tim's first companion
August 26, 2009
Hey family!
How are things going? Sounds like things are going well. I'm just chillin here in Brazil. Our zone leaders came out to hang with us today on p-day. We went and flew our kites. Me and Palmer both got cut down. Our kites are at the bottom of the ocean. It was funny cause these little kids cut them down. They’re so good at flying them though, it’s crazy.
We had zone conference this week, yesterday actually. It was really neat. We combined with another zone. My district preformed a musical number. We sang that Christmas song that holds the glooooooriiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaas (gloria) forever and we had one guy sing GL..........then the next guy sang ooooooOOOOoOoo and then the next oooooOOOOOOoooooO and the next oooooooooOOOOOOOoooo and then the last guy RIA. Haha, it was funny. President Vech came and his wife. They’re way cool - just really laid back about everything. I like them a lot.
This week was kinda of a hard one - the beginning at least. It rained so hard for like 3 days in a row, like really really hard. I was soaked, the power was out and the phone lines were down. So after a full day of being muddy (cause the roads we work are dirt) and the real roads turn into rivers cause there’s no where else for the water to go. and after all that, we come home and have to take a freezing cold shower because the power was out. And like all of our baptisms and everything fell through because the people will not leave there homes if it’s raining. Even active members, about half of them didn’t go to church. There is one family in our whole ward who has a car and they didn’t even go ha.
I got a letter with pictures of Justin from the Nalders. It was really nice. Justin is getting big and buff, but don’t let him read that. But as I read Zach’s e-mail it made me realize I may not have been giving the best details about this place so I will write a little more now. A normal day in my life right now - I get up, walk across the street and buy 2 lingua de sobres (like a corn bread doughnut kinda) for 25 cents and some pulp of a fruit to make juice with. It's so good. Then we have personal study, companion study and then language study. Then we go out and do street contacts. You run into some really interesting people here. Everyone here believes in God and Jesus, everybody, but most of them don’t do anything about it. Dogs just run the streets - lots of stray dogs. Kids always yell “give me money” or “os Mormons” or something. Lots of people ask what time it is to see if you speak Port or to hear your accent and laugh at you. There are no white people here at all. Most are very, very black too. But, so we invite people to go to church, and everyone says they will go ... which doesn’t mean much. Then we go to our lunch. We have lunch provided for us every day, which is nice, but I trust my own food a lot more. I've been really blessed to not really care about my food anymore. I can pretty much eat anything, even if it's really gross. It's true you eat A LOT of beans and rice with meat sometimes mixed in with it. Sometimes in soup they put in what looks like a chicken that went threw a blender - like the spine and all - and they lick the bones clean and then bite the bone and suck all the marrow out and everything. It’s gross. Also the kids go to school if they want but even when they do, school only lasts for a couple hours a day. We run into lots of 16-ish year old kids who don’t know how to read. There is always music playing here - always being blasted from a home or a car or something. It is really starting to get hot and it’s just starting they say. So then the rest of the day we work to try to find new people to teach. People are always just sitting on their front steps so we say “Hey if God tells you in your heart that you need to be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ, will you?”. Most of time they say “yes”, so we say “Okay great, our job is to help you feel that. Can we teach you a lesson?” and most of the time that gets you into their house. More about Brasil - at least Bahia (cause everyone says its a different country than Brazil). Lots of really crazy things happen here, like a 15 year old boy we taught is living with a 34 year old woman and has a child with her that is 2 years old! Women always breast feed during the lessons. It's so awkward. Girls are very upfront here and will just come up and say “You’re beautiful, will you date me?” and stuff like that. They whistle and hiss at you. It's ridiculous how bold they are. Water heaters don’t exist here, even in a nice home. They just have a shower head that heats it right before it comes out, so it really doesn’t do much at all. Our house is still under tons of water. They haven’t fixed it yet. It’s like a swamp on our floor which attracts a lot of mosquitoes. I’ve seen cockroaches, ants, lizards, frogs you name it. I’ve seen it in our house ha. I saw a rat the size of a cat the other day! But I’m about out of time. I love you all.
Love, Elder Anderson
Thanks for the pictures too, I love them.
Hey family!
How are things going? Sounds like things are going well. I'm just chillin here in Brazil. Our zone leaders came out to hang with us today on p-day. We went and flew our kites. Me and Palmer both got cut down. Our kites are at the bottom of the ocean. It was funny cause these little kids cut them down. They’re so good at flying them though, it’s crazy.
We had zone conference this week, yesterday actually. It was really neat. We combined with another zone. My district preformed a musical number. We sang that Christmas song that holds the glooooooriiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaas (gloria) forever and we had one guy sing GL..........then the next guy sang ooooooOOOOoOoo and then the next oooooOOOOOOoooooO and the next oooooooooOOOOOOOoooo and then the last guy RIA. Haha, it was funny. President Vech came and his wife. They’re way cool - just really laid back about everything. I like them a lot.
This week was kinda of a hard one - the beginning at least. It rained so hard for like 3 days in a row, like really really hard. I was soaked, the power was out and the phone lines were down. So after a full day of being muddy (cause the roads we work are dirt) and the real roads turn into rivers cause there’s no where else for the water to go. and after all that, we come home and have to take a freezing cold shower because the power was out. And like all of our baptisms and everything fell through because the people will not leave there homes if it’s raining. Even active members, about half of them didn’t go to church. There is one family in our whole ward who has a car and they didn’t even go ha.
I got a letter with pictures of Justin from the Nalders. It was really nice. Justin is getting big and buff, but don’t let him read that. But as I read Zach’s e-mail it made me realize I may not have been giving the best details about this place so I will write a little more now. A normal day in my life right now - I get up, walk across the street and buy 2 lingua de sobres (like a corn bread doughnut kinda) for 25 cents and some pulp of a fruit to make juice with. It's so good. Then we have personal study, companion study and then language study. Then we go out and do street contacts. You run into some really interesting people here. Everyone here believes in God and Jesus, everybody, but most of them don’t do anything about it. Dogs just run the streets - lots of stray dogs. Kids always yell “give me money” or “os Mormons” or something. Lots of people ask what time it is to see if you speak Port or to hear your accent and laugh at you. There are no white people here at all. Most are very, very black too. But, so we invite people to go to church, and everyone says they will go ... which doesn’t mean much. Then we go to our lunch. We have lunch provided for us every day, which is nice, but I trust my own food a lot more. I've been really blessed to not really care about my food anymore. I can pretty much eat anything, even if it's really gross. It's true you eat A LOT of beans and rice with meat sometimes mixed in with it. Sometimes in soup they put in what looks like a chicken that went threw a blender - like the spine and all - and they lick the bones clean and then bite the bone and suck all the marrow out and everything. It’s gross. Also the kids go to school if they want but even when they do, school only lasts for a couple hours a day. We run into lots of 16-ish year old kids who don’t know how to read. There is always music playing here - always being blasted from a home or a car or something. It is really starting to get hot and it’s just starting they say. So then the rest of the day we work to try to find new people to teach. People are always just sitting on their front steps so we say “Hey if God tells you in your heart that you need to be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ, will you?”. Most of time they say “yes”, so we say “Okay great, our job is to help you feel that. Can we teach you a lesson?” and most of the time that gets you into their house. More about Brasil - at least Bahia (cause everyone says its a different country than Brazil). Lots of really crazy things happen here, like a 15 year old boy we taught is living with a 34 year old woman and has a child with her that is 2 years old! Women always breast feed during the lessons. It's so awkward. Girls are very upfront here and will just come up and say “You’re beautiful, will you date me?” and stuff like that. They whistle and hiss at you. It's ridiculous how bold they are. Water heaters don’t exist here, even in a nice home. They just have a shower head that heats it right before it comes out, so it really doesn’t do much at all. Our house is still under tons of water. They haven’t fixed it yet. It’s like a swamp on our floor which attracts a lot of mosquitoes. I’ve seen cockroaches, ants, lizards, frogs you name it. I’ve seen it in our house ha. I saw a rat the size of a cat the other day! But I’m about out of time. I love you all.
Love, Elder Anderson
Thanks for the pictures too, I love them.
