I'm A Father

The other day at transfer meeting I was called to serve in Ala Jardim Do Horto inMaceió.  After about 10 months on my mission I finally get to serve in the city I was called to.  It's a pretty interesting area, it has some tall 10 story buildings, a pretty nice neighborhood, along with another neighborhood that has houses nicer then probably most of the houses where we live.  It also has some neighborhoods that I'm used to and Grota!  For those of you who don't know what a Grota is it’s a kind of Favela, for those of you who don't know what a Favela is it’s a slum that is built on top of hills.  Grotas are different from Favelas because you descend into the Grota instead of climb to the top.  It's pretty different; they've got houses built on top of other houses all willy-nilly with staircases climbing to the top as roads.  They have Catholic shrines of Mother Mary inside and some of the houses are even made out of scraps of wood and tin metal.  It's a pretty daunting looking place.  There's a road that passes next to our Grota and there's always stuff going on inside, you can here barking dogs, commotion of people, and a blend of all the music they're blasting at the top of the Grota, it's all sorts of chaos and madness.

Jardim do Horto Maceio Alagoas Brazil

So naturally I had to go inside.

It's pretty cool inside the Grota, it's definitely not what I'm used to but it's pretty cool.

Oh and I'm training.

Yeah when I got to the transfer meeting they announced that Kyle and I would be training.  Training, since I got here, has been one of my biggest fears.  Training takes quite a bit of responsibility and this would mean I would be whitewashing into my area. So yeah when I was called to train (and I could feel it coming too) I definitely didn't know how to respond.

I would like to liken receiving the call to train unto receiving the news of having a terminal illness.  People come up to you and say things like, "Hey man it's going to be alright." "I know you can do it!" "You're good enough." "I bet it won't hurt too bad."  Other people congratulate you and as with congratulating someone who just received word that they'd be dying from a terminal illness, it made absolutely no sense to me.  "Hey congratulations Bro!" "Way to go on your imminent doom buddy." "Man I wish I was in your place."

Yeah, no sense whatsoever.

So all of us trainers chilled at the church until the secretaries came to get us.  We got to the Presidents house and we saw all of the new missionaries.  I was called to train Elder Torres!  Who is a Gaúcho (cowboy) from Rio Grande Do Sul (southern most state in Brazil) and has the accent to prove it "Que Barbaridade Tche!"  He's really cool and I really don't have to do much training he's the most excited missionary I've ever met.  He just goes and makes contacts like there's no tomorrow and just tears it up all day. So my son is pretty cool.

We whitewashed into an area that was previously an area for sisters and so they left the house all clean and instructions on paper with hearts on it.

So yeah it's going pretty well here in Brazil.  They don't really have Halloween down here so I was really sad, but it's cool I'm over it. Well I'm going to be down here trying to train a missionary. Wish me luck!

-Elder Johnson