#ChurchGetsMeSoPumped

This is a terrible painting at this bakery near our house.  I thought it was funny.

So, this week will probably be kind of long so sorry if it's boring and what not.

The world decided to play the music I use to listen to everywhere!!  So that was frustrating.  I'd be walking down the road and somebody would be playing a song from a band I use to love and that makes things frustrating and fills me with boiling rage.

Speaking of rage, we have this one investigator, she is kind of older.  We were talking with her one day and we asked her who she'd like to give the prayer.  She said she'd like my companion to give the prayer because she could actually understand him and that it was hard for her to understand me.  REALLY LADY?  I'm so sorry to inconvenience you with my gringo Portuguese!!  I'm sorry it's so hard to not understand what I'm saying.  Needless to say, I was not too happy with her and in all honesty it is probably a stupid reason to be mad.  I put down the folding chair I was about to throw out of rage and continued on with the lesson.

On a brighter side, I saw a guy walking his lizard the other day.  He had a leash and everything and was walking down the road like it wasn't weird or anything.

We also had a rat in the house this week.  Whenever we have rats we don't get traps, everyone goes into battle mode and starts chasing it around the house until someone either stomps on it or beats it to death.  We killed the rat and fed it to whatever lives in our backyard.

People also name their cats weird things down here.  In the US you name cats like Fluffy, Cotton, or Angel of Death, you know something cute.  Here they give their cats legit people names like Tiago (James in Portuguese) or Fransisco, or João.

I went on divisions with another Elder in our district this week.  I went up to his area in Eduardo Gomes and it went well.  We talked about American things and drank Chimarrão.  Chimarrão is this tea stuff from the south of Brazil and they take this plant, mash it up, and you drink it with hot water out of this bong like thing called a Cuia.  And no it's not weed.  It tastes really earthy and it's kind of addicting.

Chimarrão

Here's kind of a religious background of Brazil.  The main church is the Catholic church and about 50% of everyone here is Catholic or they say their Catholic and don't go to church ever.  They also have churches called Evangelica, which is every Protestant denomination and every other random preacher here.  They usually hold meetings in house type things and there is usually a lot of shouting.  There is also Espirita churches, which means they worship spirits and they're crazy!  They have these guys called prophets and you can go and talk with them and they can talk of your dead grandma or something like that.  The weird thing is, is that they could tell you everything about your dead grandma perfectly and they go in knowing nothing about you.  It makes you wonder who is telling them things.

So this week church was awesome.  We had a lot of investigators there and a less active!  #ChurchGetsMeSoPumped  And some of the investigators that came were people we thought would never come so that was pretty neat.  We also got a letter from our other recent convert, Maria José, and she shared her testimony with us which was awesome!  I kind of had my doubts with her and didn't know if she was converted to the gospel or to us, but that letter got rid of any doubts.  We also had another baptism this week for Maria Rita, who is our new recent convert.  She's a daughter of this family we visit and I had the opportunity of performing it!  I also love giving priesthood blessings.  There was this one lady we went to see and she was pretty sick so we gave her a blessing.  I love giving them because I feel amazing and I swear I actually feel physically different.  So this week was amazing and the spirit was so strong.  The church is true and I can't wait to talk to you Sunday!!!

- Tanner

This is inside the yard of the slaughter house.  I found this pile of dirt to stand on
and took a picture.  There are always kids or garbage men standing on this pile of
dirt looking inside, apparently they think it's weird too.