´´Nossa!´´

Carta semanal:
I usually have our P-day mornings to write down bullet points to write to
you guys, but we´re planning on going on a bike ride of sorts with a few
members and the other two elders today, so we had to get ready and head out
so we can get here early to write, so forgive me as I try to recollect what
happened this week. Today has been a good week with a few stressful moments
in between. I´ve gotten to the point where when not a bunch happens in my
journal entries, I just write them out in Pòrtuguese for the practice. I´m
almost fluent in written Portuguese, reading and writing. Speaking and
understanding are still the big difficulties, but I´ve developed a habit where
before we do language studies and head out the door, I go into our bedroom
and say a prayer alone and out loud that God will bless me with the ability
to understand and respond so that I can be a proper missionary. I´ve
noticed that that helps quite a bit. Not perfectly by any means, but man,
when you compare my progress from Day 1, and when you also take into
account I´ve only been learning this language fore 3 and a half months, I´m
pretty darn proud of myself!

This week, we went to a wedding! Basically how it connects and how we were
allowed to go, is that the lady getting married is a cousin of Zeak´s and
Christine is our investigator (Zeak´s wife) so President didn´t have a
problem with us going. It kind of sucks because the bus we took to the wedding took forever
for us to get there, so we literally showed up right as Zeak said the
closing prayer. We did get pictures and the chance to eat cake and snacks,
so we showed up right on time ;)

Oh yeah, last P-day, we spent a day at a different part of Pelourinho. Look
at the typical pictures of Salvador with the lighthouse and the rocks by
the beaches and that´s where we went. Very pretty! I wish you all could be
here to see it. We didn´t do a whole lot though, just took funny pictures,
laughed when people gave us looks when we walked by them speaking English,
still in shirts and ties even though we were walking around the beach (not
actually on the sand), and just messed around.

I want to share kind of a funny story that happened last week that i forgot
to mention. One day last week, I woke up in the middle of the night kind of
out of it still, and because the bunkbed that i sleep on is very small with
no room between mine and Elder Rivera´s, I woke up and had like a little
panic attack and thought the bed just fell on me in the middle of the
night. So I started to like russle around and push on the bottom of his bed
for a second and I said in a loud voice ´´Nossa!´´ which doesn´t really
translate to English. It´s just an exclamatory expression, like ´´Woah!´´
So yeah. It´s official. I´m dreaming and waking up thinking in Portuguese
sometimes. I told Elder Rivera what happened in the morning because he
thought that´s what happened but he was part asleep too. He got a kick out
of that though.

Anyway, as of right now, I can´t think of much else. Once again, sorry for
the short letter. I´ll be sure to look in my journal mais uma vez para ver
quais histórias eu esqueci mencionar. oh, e também por favor me diga se
vocês não gostam quando eu escrevo certas partes em Português no meu Blog.
Eu só gosto de praticar :) beijos e abraços para todo o mundo!

-Élder Skinner