Week 6- end of transfer 1

Well transfer number one is done. I didn't get transferred so it will be another 6 weeks in Parque Jabaquara. I am not disappointed that I am staying but I would have liked to be transferred and have a fresh start. I feel like we have come into some habits that will not go away that I don't particularly like. I just feel like too much of a greeny with Elder Ramos. He does most every thing and doesn't ask me to do anything. I give the same half of the first lesson everytime and I don't give any of the commandment lessons. I do generally give a small part of lesson 2 and I have yet to give a part in lesson 3. Maybe my idea of being trained is wrong but I thought that I was supposed to be doing more than I feel comfortable doing until everything feels comfortable. But it looks like I will have to just be more forward and ask to be able to give parts of lessons or entire lessons. Right now I only give a full lesson if it is a street lesson.

I do have some very interesting stories. First is that I was kicked out of a house for the first time. They weren't rude about it and they explained the situation, but we still got our lesson cut off and we had to leave. We have been teaching this family that is rather interesting. They are not married which seems to be the norm in Brazil especially with the lower class people. They do not live with each other but she is pregnant with there third child and they have been together for 5 years. She lives in a parking garage that they have turned into a bunch of houses and he lives with his mother who we first contacted. She is quite large, but is friendly and receptive and blind. Not completely but she doesn't have glasses and she cant see much beyond 10 feet in front of her. also she cant read because of her bad eye sight. We gave her a book of mormon but she couldn't read it so we bought her a magnifying glass the next day so she can read. We taught her the first lesson and some of the commandments. Her son who lives with her wanted to be a pastor in the Universal Church. We gave him the first lesson on sunday, He came to church on sunday also, before he had had any lessons. He said that he liked it and wanted to have a lot of things explained. We explained a lot more in the first lesson with him than we normally do. He referred us to his girlfriend Fabiana on friday when we taught his mother the first lesson. She doesn't like the Universal Church because she thinks that they are just out to get her money. She is very receptive to the gospel. We had a lesson with them together in the house of Fabiana's boyfriends father because his mother was asleep already, it was about 8 o'clock. So we walk with them over to his fathers house. We gave the law of chastity to them and told them they needed to get married and they said they would and asked when they could be baptized. We told them either after they were married or when they were keeping the law of chastity. They said they would get married as soon as they can but until then they will not have any inappropriate relations so they can be baptized. Right in this great moment his father came home and seeing us first put a blanket over the stack of ############ magazines he had in the corner then asked to talk to his son outside. They talked for a minute, they argued a little, i couldn't understand what they were saying but everyone else seemed to be able to, but i got the point. But not the reasoning behind it. So we left and his father was quite apologetic when we were leaving. Elder Ramos explained the discussion to me afterward. His father lives in the bottom level of a house. His landlord doesn't like Christian missionaries or Christians for the most part. He is a witch of some sort. Or at least he worships spirits and practices magic. He had said that the landlord would have been very angry if he had found us there and by the sound of it would have tried to curse us or something. So we didn't get to finish our lesson, it was almost over already and we have the date of baptism set up for a week from sunday, they have only had the first lesson and a couple of the commandments. So that was interesting.

I also found out the hard way that all you can eat does not include all you can drink. Infact in Brazil free refills do not exist. We went to this great restraunt for lunch a week or so ago. It was all you can eat for 11 reais that is like 6 bucks. It was very nice, the first thing we got offered when we got seated was a 15 reai cup of brandy. They have a table full of all sorts of good foods all except the meats. The meats are brought to your table and are great. Every 15 seconds you have someone offering you a steak that by the united states standards would cost about 20 dollars. However everything is heavily salted and the drinks are quite expensive. My meal cost me 11 reais but my glass of juice and glass of water cost me 9 on top of that. They do not serve free water in Brazil only bottled water for 3-4 reais a glass. So in the end it was not as good a deal as i thought it would be but it was some great food. I could have eaten three or four times as much if i could have had as much as i wanted to drink, but as is i was quite full.

My entire zone is the same this transfer as it was the last except that Elder Sorenson is being replaced since he is going home. It is too bad because he was a great missionary, he and Elder Roesh had a baptism every week of the transfer and had multiple on many of the weeks, but I guess what happens when you have 2 years of experience. And this next transfer is the last for Sister Anderson, so next transfer she goes home and then the transfer after that is Elder Wright's last transfer so by the time I am 6 months out about half of my first zone will be dead (missionaries that go home are "dead"). We have some funny terms out in the mission field. Your trainer is your father (or mother for sisters) you are born when you enter the field and die when you leave. When a sister trains on her last transfer she dies in child birth. And other thinks associated with making the mission seem like a complete life of its own, which it is. But today we get the new greeny in the mission, none will be in my zone so i wont be with any of them, but it is funny because when we were at the CTM my group was the old and experienced and now my group that this next group looked up to will be just like them. It is funny how perspective changes.

Got to go love you all.

Elder Reed Risenmay