This week was the first week in the “jungle.” As demonstrated by the pictures that I´ve sent you, its not really all that jungly all though there is a part my area that actually looks exectly my old scout camp (you know, dirt roads, and cattle, and donkeys, and LOTS of mosquitoes biting you and snakes and rats and stuff like that).
The weather here in this area is really really hot and humid so that’s a major bummer. My new ward is a lot bigger than my others with around 200 active members. It’s probably going to split. My area here is the second biggest in the mission so we´ve been doing a LOT of walking.
I have currently about 100 mosquito bites, at about 1000 I think that that statistics are going to start working against me for contracting dengue or yellow fever or something. Luckily I bought the brazilian equivalent of OFF deep woods so I should be fine, I think.
This week I taught a few good people who are preparing to be baptized. Saul and Samuel are two young boys whose father is causing their baptisms to take forever. He’s a returned missionary but he hasn’t been to church in years. He keeps telling us that he want the baptisms to happen next month or next week–some time in the future. Of course he doesn’t really have a reason to delay the baptisms, he’s just bieng a burden so it’s annoying.
Also we have a young boy that were teaching who’s really receptive and I think were probably going to baptise him this upcoming week if everything goes well. Unfortunately he lives really REALLY far away.
This week our house started raining water when when I arrived one night. It was really sketchy because the whole stairway looked like a waterslide and we had to climb up it to get to our rooms to see what the problem was. Turns out the buoy in the water tank reserve above our house broke and the refill mechanism went haywire and overfilled the tank.
Anyway, its all good since the houses are made of brick not wood so there’s no water damage or anything. I attached some pictures of my house and my area and of my new companion. And one of the train station that’s in my area that I used to arrive here in Rio Grande da Serra.
I almost got robbed this week because someone told us to give them our money when we were wandering around late at night. I just walked around them and told them in really bad portuguese “I dont understand you, I dont speak portuguese.” and they didn’t follow us or anything. Must have been some angels protecting us!
Thanks you guys for reading and godspeed,
E. Westenhaver
York in Brazil 