June 25, 2012

Well sounds like a great trip to Idaho. I'm glad everything went well and everyone is doing well (minus Eric's hamstring). I'm doing great. The area is going really well and this next week we will be having a baptism. His name is Milton and he loves the church already and wants to bring his whole family into the gospel. We are really excited for him. The missionaries found him through the English class. 

The English class is definitely our biggest tool for finding people to teach. I have been teaching it basically since I got here. I think Elder Kolb was getting tired of teaching it for like 6 months. Also he is a little bit of a quieter guy. I have a new found respect for teachers now though. It gets really frustrating and stressful sometimes. Especially because everyone expects to be able to speak English after like one class. They are like you already speak Portugues, I just tell them that I studied Portugues everyday for like 6 hours for two months and now I have been living in Brasil for almost 8 months in order to be able to speak at this level. It wasn't easy. Something I have figured out is that most people want to take the path of least resistence. Whether it's in career choices, religious decisions, or even in schooling, people want what is easiest and suits them the best. A lady we were teaching and thought was progressing pretty well, told us that she doesn't think she will keep going or anything because Sunday mornings are her only time off, so she will just go to a different church on Saturday nights because it's easier. Not because she thinks that church is true or anything, just because it's easier. It's sad when people aren't willing to work for something.

The house is fine now, we had some people come over and they went up in those little hydraulic lifts to check the power lines that went to our house. They switched something out and we haven't had any problems since then, so I think we are safe. The power went out one more time, but that was during a wind storm so I figure it was because of that.

So the weather here has been pretty miserable. We have had one day of sunshine since I got here. Every other day has been cloudy and rainy. But oh well.

So today Elder Kolb and I were playing catch with his football, and obviously it progressed to the point where we were as far away from each other as we could throw it, and the ball may or may not have slipped a little out of my hands, it then proceeded to go a little off course, and since all walls in Brazil have spikes on top of them, we had to have a funeral service for his football today. I feel pretty bad, and since you can't get American footballs here, I think it would be best if you could help me out replacing it. His ball was a decent one, it was a Wilson and it was the NFL one, that says like National Football Conference and American Football Conference, in little writing under the NFL symbol. Soooo yeahhh.

Also my Nikes that I brought with me are falling apart. I would request another pair of Nikes, running shoes like those ones dad and I were looking at at the PX. Kind of a mesh material, light shoes, colors don't matter too much to me. Just not too crazy. The Nikes I have are 9.5.

Well that's all I have for this week.

Até mais. Te amo.

Elder Cameron Bruce