´´Glory to God!´´

Carta Semanal:

So last Pday as expected, we just ended up playing more board games with João and his sister Leidiane, which was pretty fun. I´ll have some pictures to show you guys. With everyone knowing that I had been playing this game since I was around 10-11 years old, they all decided to gang up on me and for that, I lost both games that we had played but I did win a game of Munchkin that Elder Cerna has. At the end of the night, we had some pizza out front of our house and then said goodbye. 

So yeah, it was the Brazilian Independence day, but it wasn´t anything special. Of course, we didn´t go downtown or anything so I can´t say for sure if anything was different, but at least for us, we didn´t see anything. No Brazilian flags out front, nothing. Just a day off for everyone, so it was happy for us because normally João works.

Clayton is still going strong, went to church and everything yesterday. Still trying to get his marriage and everything in order before a baptism can be talked about and like I´ve probably already said, the process of getting married here in Brazil is a joke and takes forever. What else? The guy´s from Salvador, so he´s naturally pretty funny. He was going off in a little rant on how ridiculous some of the people here in Brazil are with respect to religion. Pretty much every church here in Brazil I don´t even have words to describe. You just show up, listen to pastors and other ministers scream and shout random things about God. They literally yell. Occasionally, they read a passage in the book of Psalms, Proverbs, or the new testament and the whole congregation yells out, ´´Hallelujah!´´ and ´´Glory to God!´´. Sometimes it gets so loud that everyone starts jumping and yelling, and it´s just.. wow.  Anyway, Clayton was going off making fun of all these people that show up to church, clap hands, and scream these things and then return to the streets after their meeting doing worse wordly things than before. Elder Cerna and I thought the things he said were so funny that now every once in a while we mimic him adjusting and tightening a tie around his neck that symbolizes the worldly people putting on their best tie to look impressive at church. So yeah, Clayton has been a pretty funny guy. 

We had a companionship exchange last week, and Elder Williams, from Salt Lake, came into my area and worked with me. He was my District leader for 2 transfers in 7 de Abril, so it was pretty cool to spend a day working with him and having him as our Zone Leader here. The next morning was 9/11, so we paid a little tribute to the USA by seeing the national anthem out loud in our little front service area for everyone to hear, it was pretty funny. We also filmed a special little video that I´ll try and send to you guys, it´s pretty awesome. 

I can´t imagine there´s much else to say. Next week, we´re going to have a ward conference and we spent sunday evening with a few members inviting some less-actives and such to next week´s conference. The bishop and the ward had put a goal for every member to hand out 5 little cards to anyone you wanted and at the end of sunday, there were still a few left over. Anyway, that little girl that I took a picture with a long while back that was holding a lollipop, Bruna, who´s like 7 years old or so, started talking to me. I don´t remember word for word what she said, but I´ll try and quote our little conversation.

Bruna: ´´Elder Skimmer! (yes, she still calls me Skimmer) Take this one and invite your mom!´´

Me: ´´How am I going to do that? She lives in the United States!´´

Bruna: ´´How did you get here?´´

Me: ´´I took a plane.´´

Bruna: ´´Okay, well She can take a plane and come to the church!´´

Me: ´´okay, how´s she going to understand what´s going on? She only speaks English.´´

Bruna: ´´Wait a second, she doesn´t speak Porkutes?´´ (how she says Portuguese)

Me: ´´Yes, she only speaks English.´´

Bruna: ´´And your Dad?´´

Me: ´´He only speaks English too.´´

Bruna: ´´Wait a second, How did they learn to speak English?´´

Me: ´´How did you learn to speak Portuguese?´´

Hahaha, it was really funny. That was more of a summary of that conversation and various other ones we had in the past of her asking how I know how to speak English and such. She went on to say some other things that I forgot.  It even had Elder Cerna. He said that it was sweet. 

I suppose that´s all for this week. Elder Cerna and I are dirt broke from having to go to Pedra Linda all this week, so we plan on just relaxing a little. Once we get our weekly allowance or whatever you want to call it, we plan on (hopefully) doing some activities with our zone. The problem is is that Elder Cerna hates being around people. It kills me at times but he´s pretty reasonable so I´ll have to talk him into going.

Até o próximo, galeira. Boa semana pro todo mundo!

Tchau.

-Elder Skinner

 

Elder Cerna´s creation. It´s cuscuz with banana and sausage. He thinks it´s amazing but it´s....meh!