Hey! This week was crazy first off Dad, no I haven't received the package yet. It's kind of scaring me because I'm afraid that someone has done something with it or its gotten lost in the crazy Brazilian mail. I just received a great package from grandma though so that was way cool!
Monday we woke up pretty early and headed to the center of Recife, the huge city where everyone and their companions who were getting transferred met at the huge capela (church building). We all sat in there and had a lesson from Pres. Lanius and then each elder was called to stand up and he was told who their new companion would be or that they were training and would meet their companion tomorrow. It was actually pretty funny for some reason. But a bunch of guys were not informed that they would be training so that was a huge surprise to them. My good amigo from the CTM, Elder Erickson, felt all bad for me that I was training and then when he stood up they called him to train also and that totally took him off guard. So after that me and all the guys training met together to have a big American party and get lost in the Big city of Recife, and that's when I sent my last email. Well we ended up walking around and going to the very center of Recife where everything is measured (the addresses) and there is a huge snake thing and other stuff that is cool that I'll send a picture of. It was pretty fun.
I stayed the night with Elder Driggs, who is from Salt Lake, big surprise, he even looks like he's from there. Well his area is pretty much the BOMB! He lives in a great house and is in the ward of the temple and the mission president. When they need help with an investigator they have the mission president come teach with them (yeah, no fair). Most of the people in their ward are the temple workers, so 5 days a week they get money to eat in the temple. Actually their temple recommend pays for them to eat lunch there. Pretty awesome, unreal! The 4 guys living there don't know how to cook anything or use the kitchen. Things were molding in the sink. It was gross! So we cleaned all the dishes, and I decided I'd make dinner for us all. So we went to the store nearby which was like any nice store in the US (the area is way nice) and we bought a bunch of food and meat and I cooked dinner for them. Spaghetti and sauce with meat mixed in it. I tried to teach them so they wouldn't starve, but they didn't learn very well. They might have to do a lot of fasting if they want to make their starving meaningful.
But it was way fun walking around the area and of the temple again already and just being in a new house with new guys… American guys! Oh by the way, Elder Sacilotto taught me how to cook some stuff so I'm way thankful for that. In the morning we weren't sure what to do because we were supposed to go to the escritorio (mission office) at 5 to give birth to our children. So we first went over lessons and how we all teach because we are going to be doing most of the teaching from now on. Oh dear! Good thing simple lessons are recommended :) Then we took pregnant pictures (haha) that I'll send. For our almoço (lunch) a lady took us to a really nice restaurant and we ate whatever we wanted...this area is bem legal (way cool)!! Afterwards, we walked around the area a little and the temple. Then the ZLs came to drop off some BOMs and after that we headed off to the mission office! It was a crazy feeling when all the new missionaries showed up and they were all Americans and only 3 Brazilians! So fortunately, I ended up with a Brazilian!!!! Thank goodness because my area needs at least one Brazilian. Elder Erickson ended up getting Elder Mclaws from Mesa!!! He is Sister and Brother Wells great nephew. I was super close to getting him as a son but he ended up with Elder Erickson. That is a little scary for them but luckily they have a really good area with lots of baptisms. We all are going to have to work really hard these next three months and pray and fast and study like crazy! My companion is Elder J. Vargas, a big huge white Brazilian from Portalegre Sul. He is super nice, like a big Brazilian Portuguese speaking white teddy bear! One thing all of us new trainers decided we are going to do with our new elders is teach them the way we wanted to be taught. All the trainers have been out from 11 weeks (like me) or up to 5 1/2 months but it's a pretty solid group of missionaries so President is excited to see what happens.
I got lucky and caught the right bus home for us and we arrived safely. I explained most everything to Elder Vargas on the way home, and I think my Portuguese got way better just doing that because he speaks ZERO English so that will be good. And it turns out that my last companion Elder Saci is in my district of 3 companionships. How ironic is that! Today we had a big mission conference with a seventy that spoke to us but I'll leave that story for Monday. I'm just here to let Elder Vargas email his family. It's just him and his grandma that are members, but he has a ton of member friends and cousins that are in the church and they sent him off with a bunch of big parties. So these next couple of months he'll probably be pretty home sick, poor guy. But I'll treat him well!
Ate segunda-feira meus Amigos!!!
Come Amor Elder LeSueur
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