Week 22...Mogi Mirim, Brazil

Well, right now I am super excited. My companion and I will stay in Mogi Mirim for another 7 weeks. It is crazy to think that by the end of this transfer I will have almost 7 months on my mission. Time is literally flying by now. I feel comfortable with the language, the people, and teaching now.

I honestly love it here in Brazil and it will be tough leaving it. Luckily, I don´t have to worry about it for a little bit. The only sad news is one of the Brazilians that lives with me that is really good will leave but our zone has a joke that when you enter it you will never leave. President has been known to just move people around in this zone. Everyone says it´s because the zone that I am in is the toughest zone and President likes to put people in this zone to learn. I have done just that. I feel like I have learned so much and grown so much in the past 11 weeks.

As for this week, it was definitely a little crazy. To start things off, my companion is the District leader so that means that we go on splits with other Elders so he can learn how and who they are working with. My companion decided to do all the splits in the last week. So, 4 out of the 7 days I was in a different city or in my city with another Elder. In other words, it was super tiring but I learned a lot. I think my companion learned also that we should spread them out.

 

Also I decided to change my name a couple of weeks ago and this transfer I will have a new name. I was getting tired of everyone having problems with it and President kept saying that I should change it. (He went with Elder Zachary-Sarah).

 

The weather down here is crazy. The first part of the week it was raining like crazy and freezing(60-70 degrees), then the end of the week was really hot (90´s with humidity). I know it isn´t as bad as Kansas right now but when you are used to 70-80´s everyday it is a big difference. It is also weird to think that Christmas will be hot and my birthday will be cold. Oh well, I guess it´s just a Brazil thing.

 

We had daylight savings time recently so we moved an hour back and lost an hour of sleep. That is so great that Will is being a missionary. Since I changed my name I am thinking about sending my name tags to you guys and Will could use one on Sunday. I really am glad that I am serving in Mogi Mirim. It is really weird trying to help a Ward know how they should be working with in-actives and less actives. I have seen a lot of progress though recently. We re-activated 3 families and our recent convert is helping us so much teach others. As for translating you can help Will with this.

 

Eu quero começar que eu amo vocês e orar cada dia para você. Eu sou muito grato que você está servindo nosso senhor. Uma coisa que é muito engraçado é quando nos precisamos fazer cocô nos cantamos a musica, "knock, knock, knocking on heaven´s door." E agora a musica está tocando na Lan House. Eu amo vocês muito e estou muito animado por Natal.

 

Anyways love ya´ll and take care.

 

Love,

Elder Zachary

 

 

 

Week 21...Campinas, Brazil

This week flew by. It is crazy that it is almost to the next transfer already. This one is a little different because it is only 5 weeks because of some meetings that the president needs to go to in Salt Lake. I´m pretty sure I will be transferred after this transfer which is next Tuesday so I´m sure in two weeks I´ll have a lot more to say. The good news about this is I´ll finally be done training. I have been being trained for almost 6 months or 1/4 of my mission.

This week was really good. First off it was one Elder´s 1 year mark so we made him a cake and had a little party. It really is a blast here with 3 Brazilians. I am learning so much from them and their stories are so good. It is really cool seeing how much my Portuguese has improved and how much I can talk now. This week I had an interesting experience of teaching the rules to baseball and football to a group of Brazilians. It really is hard to explain what is common knowledge in the US. I´m not sure if I helped them or not but I told them to use Google/YouTube. Also this week President came to look at our house in Mogi Guaçu to see if we are slobs or not. We had a window that was broken and last time president was at our house he said that we need to fix it. So, us being missionaries, waited till the day before to repair it. Here, on the windows they use clay to seal the windows because they don´t have to worry about the clay freezing. We had a little left over so I made a sculpture of one of the Elders that I live with that we call Elder Gordinho. Then he stuck the little flag on the sculpture that says President Perrottão. When you put ão on a word in Portuguese it means big or large. So when President went into our house that was the first thing he saw. Luckily he loved it and now he wants to put it in his house. 

Also this week has been really good for our work too. Our first baptism in Mogi Mirim is rock solid. Her name is Cida and she had problems with smoking and drinking, the same problems as our other investigator. We asked if she would help us teach and she did just that. She taught perfectly and she was so happy afterwards.  That is just the beginning. Since we started working with members we have seen them help so much. They really do want to help they just didn´t know how. It is really cool seeing how people will change.

It is crazy that it is almost Christmas. They are starting to put Christmas stuff in the stores now and I´m sure Christmas music will start playing here soon. It really is weird thinking that we will have Christmas and it will be 90 degrees outside. I love you guys so much and pray for you. Stay safe

Love,

Elder Saueressig