November 3, 2009

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009

Bom Dia Familia!
Life is crazy out here! I am jealous of the snow that you are having. I am in constant heat and it is only spring. I sweat a lot. I have never sweated so much before in my life. My shirt was literally drenched yesterday and I probably could have rung water out of it. Mom, I am glad that you weren't scared after hearing my robbery story. That was a bumpy start but now I realize that this place is awesome. I have no idea what my street address is... Sorry neither does my companion. If you are going to send letters and what not, the best place to send it to apparently is:

Elder James Bullough
Caixa Posta 13008
Porto Alegre - RS
91010-971 Brasil

Please send them here. I will get them quicker. If I find out the address to where we live I will let you know. Capistrano de Abreu is the name of the street that we live on.
The Portuguese is still really hard. I don't understand anybody. I feel like I haven't started the real work yet because I can’t communicate. I do have a funny story if you would like to hear it and I hope that it is not too inappropriate. The sister Missionaries in a neighboring zone needed help teaching a family because the 12 year old boy in the family wouldn't sit down to listen. The sisters told us that he likes Elders so we should come and get him to listen. We tried but this kid was kind of a brat. Anyway we were walking back to our area with the sisters and they decided to treat us to a snack for helping them. It was some sort of pastry with yummy stuff inside. One of the sisters is Brazilian so I was trying to speak as much Portuguese as I could so that she understood. I tried to say "Mmmm, I'm in heaven," but instead I said, "Mmmm. I'm in boob." It was pretty embarrassing once they explained to me what I had said.

When we knock on doors here, we don't really knock. We go to the gate and clap. When we were 'knocking on doors' we came to an inactive member’s house. We did not know that they were members but she explained to us that she and her brother were. Her son and her husband were not. Anyway, we delivered a message and asked if we could come back again later. We came back a couple of days later and were going to share a message with the entire family. It was incredibly hot and they were all out in their backyard with a pool set up and hammocks. We sat down and were making friendly conversation with them while drinking sprite. Their son is 3 years old. He grabbed one of the glass cups and was walking around with it. He tried to kick a little mini soccer ball that was in front of him, but instead stepped on the ball and slipped. He dropped the glass cup which shattered and then he fell on the glass. Immediately there was blood everywhere. We weren't quite sure how to react, or what happened. The father jumped up and picked up his son really quickly and looked at his hand it was sliced pretty good, but from what I saw it didn't seem so bad. There was a lot of blood though and I didn't quite understand what happened. The father quickly wrapped up his son's hand and took off to the hospital. We wrote down our phone number and said if they need anything to call us. We came back a couple days later to check on him. Both of his hands were wrapped up a lot, it looked like he had a cast on each arm. We asked what happened and she explained to my companion who later explained to me. When he fell on the class, one of his hands got sliced open and some pieces of glass were stuck inside his hand. The other hand the glass sliced a muscle or something and touched the bone. They had to do surgery because he wouldn't be able to move his fingers without it.
Crazy stuff.
On Friday we got to listen to Elder Scott speak. I was disappointed. The whole thing was in Portuguese, I didn't understand any of it. I was happy to reunite with my friends from my CTM district and talk about how missionary life is like so far.
Dad, tell me more about your mission. I enjoyed reading your letter. I'm glad you can relate and understand what I am going through. How long did it take you to have the language down well enough to hold a conversation with others?
My companion is from São Paulo and he is called P. Silva because there are ten 'Silvis' in the mission. The 'p' stands for Pereira. He told me to tell you that it is because his name is Puff Daddy Silva. He helps me out with the language a lot.
Mom about pictures, I am just going to wait until the first memory card is full and then put it on a CD and send it home. It takes way too long to send through e-mail.
So you want to hear something exciting?! Six baptisms! When I got here, one family was already committed to baptism with a baptismal date and everything. The other two I was here to hear them accept the baptismal challenge. I really didn't teach either family but I have gotten to know them pretty well. It’s awesome.
So a lot of people out here believe in witch craft and reincarnation. It’s pretty insane.
On Sunday, I got up in front of the whole ward to bare my testimony. Everybody knows that I am a greenie and I immediately had everybody's attention as I walked up to the pulpit. I started by saying, "Woo! This is scary! I am still trying to learn Portuguese so this will be fun." I got some good laughs out of that and then I bore my testimony. It was pretty crazy.
Eu gostaria prestar meu testimunho com voces. Eu sei que Jesus Cristo vive e ele é nosso salvador. Eu sou grato por sua expiação porque sem ele, eu não posso viver com meu pai celestial. Joseph Smith foi um profeta verdadiero e atraves ele, o evangelho de jesus cristo foi resturado. Eu sou feliz para ser um membro da Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Ultimos Dias. Eu sou muito animado para compartilhar este evangelho com as pessoas de Brasil. Este Trabalho é bom. Em o nome de jesus cristo amen.

I love you all! I am working hard and you are in my prayers!

Elder Bullough