Week #44

Dear Family,

We had a pretty darn eventful week this week.  Pretty nuts.  Here are some highlights.

Probably the most stressful part was our activity that Elder Rock and I planned.  It was all so perfect, sheer inspiration.  We really wanted to get the ward excited about things, so we put together a short skit based on Alma 46, the story of Captain Moroni making the title of liberty.  Elder Rock was Moroni and I was Amalickiah and it ended up going really well.  We got the other missionaries in our zone to come and help us with it, acting as the other nephites or the lamanites.  We even made some super sick armor out of some silvery, plastic platters, and helmets that put a peacock to shame.  I'll send you some pictures, hopefully today.  We had a lot of fun.

The stressful part about the activity was getting people there.  In Brazil, when you say that an activity starts and 7, every shows up at 8, and if you don't give someone a specific assignment, there's only a 50% chance that they'll come.  We had to learn that the hard way this time, but we learned our lesson and our next activity is going to be even better.

Another good highlight of this week was teaching an English class.  Some of the other missionaries in our zone started an English class in their area, but after transfers the only American missionary there was moved, and the class started to suffer.  So Elder Rock and I are now the English professors and we'll be going there every week.  It turned out to be super fun.  My favorite part is helping Brazilians with words that sound like swear words, like beach or bit.  We're working on putting together some more activities to teach.

Doing street contacts is hard.  I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to them, but we're getting better.

We rescued an abandoned kitten in the middle of a huge avenue yesterday.  We named him Mr. Cat.

After spraying poison last night on our patio, we awoke to find 105 dead cockroaches.  We burned them with alcohol and hand sanitizer so they would stop twitching.  Cockroach genocide.

We are also helping to organize a choir, since Elder Rock has some experience in that.

Marcelo still hasn't baptized because of smoking, but he's getting closer and I'm super excited for him.

Sorry to just throw a bunch of highlights at ya, but I wanted to get it all in there.  I love you all so much and want to thank you for being the best!

Sincerely,

Jack