Born In The USA

American nap.

Well it was another week in paradise.  Unfortunately my time with Elder Rutledge came to an end this week.  There was an emergency transfer and they had to move some things around, so sadly Rutledge and I had to part ways and we got new companions.  It was all really sad, filled with much shedding of tears, and sobbing.  It's all good though.  He just moved over another house and down the stairs, so we basically still live together, so it's all cool still.  My new companion is Elder Schmidt and no he isn't American.  My companion is from Porto Alegre, a city in the south of Brazil, and his dad is German.  He's really cool and we get along really well.  So now there are 6 missionaries living together and it's all just a great time.

So we celebrated the 4th of July this week.  Rutledge and I decided to celebrate it by making a full on Brazilian lunch. We made, beans, rice, the whole shebang!  It actually turned out pretty good for two Americans who have no idea how to cook like a Brazilian.  I was pretty proud of our efforts.

American missionaries idea of a Brazilian lunch.

We then had to drive down to the bus station to pick up my companion, and once we got him, we went over to the mission office to wait until Rutledge's companion arrives.  Mind you this was during the Brazil vs. Colombia game and Brazil happened to make a goal while we were there.  We were up on the fifth story of this office building and we could hear the festivities taking place on below.  We could see the fireworks going off and everyone celebrated this small victory that Brazil had won.

We then headed back to our area and it was all super weird.  There was absolutely no one on the streets.  What normally would've taken almost an hour of traveling only lasted about 15 minutes because we were basically the only car on the whole road.  The only people outside were gas station attendants.  They had propped a TV on a gas pump and they were watching the game too!  And they were getting rather into it too.  When we got back home we all ate hamburgers and had a very patriotic time.  #Murica.

The rest of the week consisted of me getting lost in my area because I still don't know it all yet.  Things are going pretty well though down here.  I'm pretty sure that I saw a church other than ours this week that had a really big painting of Joseph Smith on the inside, but I'm not quite sure though.  If it is so, then we just need to show up there and we will baptize like 40 people very easily.

There was this car that went flying down the road this week and nailed this speed bump.  That was pretty interesting. Other than that it was pretty much just a normal week, nothing too interesting happened.  Hopefully things should be going better this next week.  All is well down here in Tabuleiro.  Hope you all enjoyed the 4th of July.  You guys don't know how blessed you are to be an American.  Have a great week.  Tchau!

-Élder Johnson