Snow White

Carta Semanal:

Not a lot happening this week. Just work, work work. Sister Melonakos and Sister Melo had 6 baptisms this week (all women) and as District Leader, it was my duty to do the quick little baptismal interviews. Saturday morning, we helped the Sisters clean the baptismal font and the rest of the chapel too. While there, I basically hopped in the font which already had water, with a bucket to fill and hand to Elder Ramirez to chuck into the womens´ restroom which had a drain on the floor. It took quite a while, but it was good work and I enjoyed helping out the Sisters. I know they appreciated it too. The Sunday afterwards, the Sísters found us in the hall and gave Elder Ramirez and me a bar of chocolate as a token of gratitude. It was pretty sweet of them. 

We also got a call from our Zone Leaders yesterday and we were informed that Elder Ramirez and I would be staying for another transfer together, much to my joy. Although at the time I received the call, Elder Ramirez was in the bathroom taking a shower, so when he stepped out, I did a small little joke and told him that he´s being transfered, much to his surprise after only having 1 transfer here. I quickly told him that it was just a little joke. The real question is whether or not we´ll be receiving more missionaries in our house. I asked our Zone Leaders and they said they don´t know. Probably not for now, or else they would´ve known but anything is possible. They said they´re going to call the secretaries to make sure, so we´ll find out tonight. 

Sunday, we had a little going away party for Sister Melonakos at a little family´s house in their ward, and she will be returning home this week. I bet it must be weird having to say goodbye to your last family on the mission. As for me, I´m pretty much at the point where I can´t remember the last time I felt major homesickness and I really love Brazil now. If all of my next areas have people like João and other families in this ward, it will be really hard to have to say goodbye. Lucky for me, I still have a plenty of time. :) 

Like I said, short week. So I have a little bit of a funny story and a video to accompany. In João de Deus, there´s this guy that we´ve seen here and there named Francisco who´s been drinking pretty much his entire life. The first time we met him, he was drunk out of his mind, which we realized pretty much immediately. He wanted to do a visit at the church and kept begging us to return and teach him. So we promised, left a Word of Wisdom panflet, and returned one day and he was at a bar, sober from what we could tell. Didn´t have a clue who we were. He said he was ´´busy´´ at the moment and told us to return another day. So we returned that day, and he was passed out on the curb in the front of his house, a bottle of booze at his side, with his friend watching over him. Once again, we said we´d return another day, although not really promising because we had a feeling he didn´t want anything to do with us. But anyway, one day this week as a matter of fact, we stopped and did a contact with some boys around our age who apparently knew this Francisco, doing all sorts of pranks and jokes on this poor ol´ drunkard. In the middle of our conversations with the boys, he would butt in occasionally and talk about things that had nothing to do with what we were talking about, much to the laughter of everyone there including us. He apparently likes to dance as well. Here in Brazil, there´s some kind of music going around from the Disney movie ´´Snow White´´. I think it´s the one where the dwarves are returning home from the mine, but anyway he started dancing and singing that music in Portuguese. I captured it on video and watch it occasionally to have a good laugh. This Francisco guy is hilarious. We find him every once in a while proselyting, and he just randomly shows up, asking in his drunken little voice why it is that we still haven´t visited him. One time, we were sitting outside teaching a lady named ´´Maria´´, and this Francisco shows up out of nowhere, destroying our lesson. I was a little frustrated at the time, but now that I look back, it was pretty funny. His memory stacks as a drunk or something because everytime we see him, he remembers us when he was drunk. Elder Ramirez made a joke that there´s two twin Franciscos: one that´s normal and one´s that always drunk, and we always see the drunk one and the normal one just hides in his house.

Anyway, I can´t think of much else. I was aware that 2 days ago was the 4th of July, and in my mind, I was thinking of you guys and remembering a little bit of the history of the United States. I was always to some degree thankful for being raised American, but after spending some time out here, I´ve become more thankful for being born in a country with so many good things. I hope you guys had a good 4th of July and some time to reflect and feel grateful for how much the Lord has blessed us. I love you guys a ton and always have you all in my heart and prayers!

-Elder Skinner