We Went to Church

I know, it's a startling fact, we missionaries went to church this week.  Well the thing is we went to another person's church.  We have this one investigator who we were teaching who goes to another church.  She, one day told us, that she wouldn't be able to visit our church because her pastor said she couldn't because we are a cult, we don't have doctrine, we worship images (apparently having a paintings of Jesus Christ is a sin) and that we sell people's organs, you know the usual normal stuff people say about us.  My companion and I didn't think that was very nice of him to be saying such untrue things about us so we came up with a deal, we’d go visit her church and she'd come and visit ours!  Does that sound like a very hard exchange?  I think not!!  We also wanted to go and talk with the pastor to clear up some nasty little rumors about us and to be overall respectful.  So we went for about half an hour and talked a bit with the pastor and he said she was free to do as she pleased.  He, however, still didn't say very nice things about us to our face, but we were very respectful to him.  In the end our investigator didn't end up coming to church, which really hurt my feelings.  She still believed everything the pastor said and wouldn't listen to us or anything we tried to tell her.  All in all it was pretty interesting experience.

So one cool thing about my area is that it's super close to my first area so I get to see members from Siqueira Campos all of the time.  It's been cool seeing everyone at conferences and everything.  They all say that my Portuguese has gotten a lot better.

So one thing we did that was pretty different is that we did this pretty cool family home evening with members and investigators where we made American Pancakes!!!  They were nice and thick and I felt I was going to die of pure sugary American happiness.  The actual lesson we taught went over well too.  I had the kids draw a replica of my ID badge and we talked about the importance of authority.

This was an interesting food week too.  I ate something called Acarajé, which is some food from Bahia where they fry some dough made out of beans in a ton of oil and you eat it with shrimp and something called Caruru.  It was really really healthy.  I also ate Arraia or as it translates to Ray, like Manta Ray.  I thought the lady who gave it to us was lying, but it turned out to really be a Manta Ray.  It was pretty good I guess, they cooked it with coconut milk and what not.  I also had TACOS!!!!! I know, exotic ain't it?  Well to a Mexican food starved missionary it sure is.  It was so good.  I was so happy.  One of the members learned how to make it from companions he had on his mission and had a packet of taco seasoning.  #tearsofhappiness

Well other than that that's about all of the interesting things that happened this week.  We've got General Conference coming up which should be pretty cool, I'm sure excited.  Before the mission I never got excited over things like General Conference, but I now I just get amped for Conference!!!!!  Anyways, I'll talk with you all next week.

Adeus, 

-Élder Johnson

P.S.  We saw this really weird dog this week.  It couldn't bark, it's owner just told it to make Santa noises and it would just basically scream.  The dog was blind so it kept slamming its head into the wall and furniture and made it really difficult to concentrate on our lesson.