Well! Another week down. Itabuna is great and really hot. Haha oh and its only winter! That´s exciting. Well to start off i don´t know what i told you about Itabuna last week but it is much bigger than i thought! Which makes sense. There are not enough missionaries here in Brazil, in fact the Church needs more for plenty of missions i am sure. So there are only so many places to serve in Brazil Salvador South and so it makes sense to put most of the missionaries in the same areas. Anyway, my mission is very very small. I don´t know how many missionaries we have but we have less the 100 here in Salvador south which is really small compared to the size of my mission and the other missions in Brazil. Anyways Itabuna is bigger than i thought.
It is hot right now but sometimes we get rained on. One night when we were out working we got completely soaked, but it felt so good. Haha i miss the whole constant rain thing of back home.
Well what crazy things happened this week. For one, Elder Ricker and i were walking somewhere the other day when this old lady stopped us. She was saying something like God bless you and she shook Elder Ricker´s hand. Then it was my turn. She grabbed my hand and kissed it, haha and then thrust her hand up to my face to kiss back! haha In a moment of Derek panic i did the only thing i could think of... I faked it by putting my nose on the top of her hand. Ha! Then Elder Ricker said, well we gotta get going and we left. It was pretty funny.
Other crazy things, there is this guy who rides a horse around Itabuna. He even has like a little carriage thing sometimes. It’s pretty cool but weird as well. I Also saw two men riding the same bike the other day, and it was not tandem. Yesterday we were contacting less actives on the street Rua São Francisco and we saw this man who was cross dressed. Elder Ricker said something like, why are we seeing all these gay people, oh that´s right we´re on São Francisco. Missionary work can be pretty crazy sometimes.
Church was crazy yesterday, I think that when i get home from my mission i will enjoy it so much more than ever in my entire life! haha because it is very stressful and crazy. Sunday mornings we run around and wake people up for church and bring the ones we can. And then during church we try to keep them there. Well we have this family, Jamille and her 3 girls. She came to church on time this week and everything! They were even dressed up. It was awesome, but the girls were running around the church being crazy and then were hungry. We had lost the girls for a while and literally ran all around the church and around in the neighborhoods looking for them. Finally, they were found and this was when they were hungry and going to leave church. So we ran to our house and grabbed them bread, and in the end they stayed for the whole meeting. And we were soaked in sweat. haha insane. But this family has a baptismal date for Saturday and so everything is going really well.
Other cool things i wanted to mention. Our bishop is super cool, he rides a motorcycle and is really neat. He also is only 25 years old! It´s just how the church works sometimes with little members, you know? I do have to say i love the members very much. They are really nice. It is a good thing we walk everywhere cause they give us pop and sometimes chocolate and whatever. Haha i´ve never walked so much but its good cause of all the junk we´re given. The real food here, the food we eat at members houses for lunch, is pretty good. We always have rice, beans, chicken or beef, and then some potato salad thing. Though it gets mixed up sometimes. We have also had Brazilian lasagna twice which is good. It is lasagna with ham and peas and who knows what else! Haha
Oh Jason i wanted to tell you, did you think those horse flies were bad? Here there is this Big fly about the size of a mouse. It´s green, ugly and flies. I´ve seen two so far and they are really nasty. One of the ones i saw was dead, so i got a close up look.
Sounds like everything is going good, which i´m glad! I am working hard, doing good. But at night i am still getting eaten by mosquitos. I have bites on my forehead of all places. But the worst bites are on my ankles cause i walk and they itch. Oh well i guess.
Portugués is great and hard. Slowly slowly learning. My most progress now has got to be in understanding what the heck people are saying. ha But i´m doing good. Thanks for your prayers and every thing. Just as a side note mom, thanks for the blog and everything! If you ever want to send me a package, deodorant and shaving cream and peanut butter are probably the best. But as of now i don´t need anything! Love you all!
Elder Kent
