walk walk teach, walk walk, teach, walk walk, find out they're not home, teach their parents/cousin/whoever, walk walk teach, walk walk plan sleep

Hello all!
Things are pretty interesting here in Brazil. A couple of days ago we were speaking with a lady about their daughter, Bruna, being baptized, and her very young daughter ran up and Mom started breast-feeding her right in front of us. I was told this would happen, so I wasn't super shocked, but like I said, things are slightly different here. Yesterday the dog of one of our younger members one of the Moças (young women) was hit by a car right in front of her house. So we carried it into their backyard and buried it for them, because the parents just wanted to leave it there. Crazy.

I think the thing that surprised me most about the work here is our investigators. The first day, Elder Makiama said "we're gonna go teach Israel's brother, Carol's cousin, and Brenner's parents." Israel is 10, and a member, and his parents aren't. His two brothers, Vitor and Daniel (who we baptized this week) are both members as well, at 15ish and 13ish. Brenner is about 10 as well. Carol is about 15, and her cousin is 10ish. So yeah, we teach and baptize children here. Which is slightly odd at first because it would never happen in the States. But things are a little different here. Everyone, and I literally mean everyone, believes in God. And so when children want to be baptized, their parents let them. So Israel and his brothers walk to church every Sunday, as does Carol, and she lives pretty far from the building.

The language is coming along really well. I'm beginning to be able to understand people much better, although I'm still pretty lost a lot of the time. Oh well, it'll come. Although I feel I can express myself pretty well. You know how when you're talking to a foreign exchange student and they don't understand and you need to change the words you use? I do that every time I speak, ha. Because there are phrases in English that simply don't exist. For instance if I wanted to say, "You don't mean that," it doesn't exist. "I wonder if..." doesn't exist as well. Kinda hard sometimes. So I always have to change the words I want to use in English to fit what I need to say. Crazy stuff.

Kelsey wanted to know this:
How's your comp? What's he like, how do you get on, how long has he been out etc... Do you have any investigators? If yes, who and how is it going? What's your typical day like in the mish? Do you tract, street contact, etc? What's your favorite and least favorite things about your current area? Anything super interesting about Brazilian culture?

Elder Makiama is 9 months out on his mission, and this is his first time being Senior companion, training me. He does an excellent job, and I've got very few complaints.
Typical day is walk walk walk teach, walk walk walk, teach, walk walk walk, find out they're not home, teach their parents/cousin/whoever, walk walk teach, walk walk, plan, sleep. So lots of walking, and a good amount of teaching, which I'm grateful for, because it means we don't do a lot of finding =)

Favorite thing--it's flat. Very few hills. least favorite--it's huge, and we're the only pair here. So lots of walking. =)

Well, I'm out of time, sorry I couldn't write more. Yay questions for next time, right? Love you all!
Elder McGregor



- - - - - - - - - - - -
And a separate email:

Oi Família! Tudo bem?
Everything's great here in Barra Mansa. Answers to questions:

How do you spend your PDays now?
It starts the same--wake up, pray, excercise, personal study, companion study. Then we come here to the Internet Store, write emails, etc, for an hour and a half (30 minutes of which is spent writing the letter to the president). After, we go do whatever we need to, including buying stuff (food, commodities, precious metals to make new plates for our journals, etc), visiting Correios (the post office), write letters (which I didn't have time for the last three weeks--sad day), etc.

When we send you email attachments are you able to open them just fine and see the content? Yep--just fine =)

How's your new camera?
Fantastic, love it. Sent you some photos, you can see for yourself. And I sized them down considerably--it's an 8.1 megapixel camera.

Do you have a cable or someway to upload pictures?
Yep =)

Is Volta Rendonda quite a ways to travel?
Volta Rendonda is the Zone, I'm in the area Barra Mansa, and there's a church building here. So I'm not sure if you couldn't find it on the map, but it's about a 25 minute walk from our house.

Do you take lots of buses?
Yeah, Barra Mansa's a pretty big area, and we take at least one bus a day, but we walk far more often than we take buses. Far more often.

Do you see amazing bugs and animals where you are?
I've seen baratos (cockroaches), house flies, and that's about it thus far. Animals--lots of cachorros (dogs) and a member had a Papaguaya (parrot) that spoke português. Too funny.

Is it "Bairro Cotiara" in your address? Just checking because I'm thinking it might be Barro? Let me know if it's not so we can send your letters to the right place.

Yes it is Bairro Cotiara =)

Elder McGregor