20 April 2015

http://itsalmo.st/#myarrival

This week we met some fun people- here's some of the funny things we heard in the street this week: 

• "se eu be batizar eu não posso" (If I get baptized, I can't)
• "vim de Porto Alegre me chamaram de louco" (I came from Porto Alegre they called me crazy)
• "Não largo minha católica" (I don't let my Catholic go)

These were some of the things that people yelled repeatedly in our faces this week.

Here's my favorite quote from the week -- a woman who said: 

• "sou católica apostólica relaxada" (I'm relaxed Catholic (instead of Roman Catholic))

Anyway this week was good. Israel was baptized. His mom was baptized a few months ago, and then forgotten by the ward (and missionaries) well, we found them and he was baptized. His mom, Beatriz, is blessed with a great family - they're all cheerful and happy. It's cool to meet with a family like that. Sadly, her other two kids, Ismar and Cassandra, don't want to be baptized yet. Israel's inviting all of his friends to church now and two of them should be baptized this week!

What else...

• A little girl - like three years old - tried to pickpocket me on the bus.
• I broke my nametag.
• We got soaked in freezing rain on Saturday - and we ran back home, pausing now and then under store signs and bus stops.
• Our shower broke and we've taken freezing showers ever since Wednesday (I've actually gotten used to it)

and ... 

• Elder Collett taught me to juggle (he did like clown school or something like that!) 

Elder Jasperson

13 April 2015

So this week was a food thing. We're at the end of our food money, but there's always a way- a Sister from the ward gave us some weird green beans and some Asian noodles, so we ate something like Chinese takeout day and night for a few days. And then one night guess what we found? A potato promotion- 3kg for 2 royals! So we bought a bag and we've been eating all types of potatoes! Fried, baked, boiled, mashed- I haven't figured out how to make potatoes with sugar yet but we've had them in about every other possible manner!

Chinese take out

potatoes!!!!

Flávio was baptized this week- he's 19 and works as a personal trainer- his bicep is bigger than my head! That was a good thing.

So cleaning out some old stuff in the house, I found a bed canopy! I managed to hang it up with "durepoxi" (that same thing I used to fix my suitcase wheels) and I've been sleeping in the "princess bed" now! Haha it looks like something from "Sleeping beauty" :)

putting up the princess bed

finished product

sleeping like a baby

sleeping princess

We worked a lot in the central park of Alvorada this week- and we made a new record of contacts in an hour- 150! Elder Tavares is a great worker too!

Here's to another great week!

Elder Jasperson

central park in Alvorada

a shoe problem

April 6, 2015

Well General Conference passed by well and was the highlight of the week. The rest of our week was a series of lunch problems.

For example- On Wednesday we'd marked lunch with Sister Cheli (or shulé or Cirlei- we still don't know her name) so we set off to her house. We'd called her to confirm our lunch and she gave us an address- Felipe Ferrari Rd. It's about 35 minutes away from our house, walking, so we decided to go for it and walk there. Well we finally walked up to her house to find out that she didn't actually live there! It was a wrong address! We called some Sisters and they got us the real address- In a different road on the other side of the city! We took off walking, starving, and about an hour afterwards, we walked up to her house- and she wasn't home! Her husband (who isn't a member, he said) told us she was traveling and that she wasn't there! (We still don't know who we talked with to confirm our lunch or where the address on Felipe Ferrari Rd came from!) It was already 2:30 and we had a marked visit to make, so instead of going to a restaurant, we went and taught first and finally we ended up eating around 3:30 that afternoon! The restaurant was closing, but luckily the manager knows the missionaries and he got us in :)

Would you be surprised to hear that the same story happened again on Saturday? We're just training our legs and our stomachs. As some might say, we are "testing the flesh"-- that's what Gabriel, an investigator, told us! That was funny.

At general conference, we learned a lot about celestial marriage and enduring to the end. Those things are important guys! We didn't get to watch the Priesthood session yet but we'll download it and watch it this week.

Love y'all!

Elder Jasperson

Us with a guy in a banana suit
(his sign says take a picture with me- fifty cents)