Elder Benson Plaster

This week felt like it was never going to end. I got to try another new food. It is called Pequi. It is only really eaten in Goiânia. It smells absolutely terrible, like super stinky socks. It also has needle-like spines inside the center of it so you can't bite it. You just use your teeth to scrape off the outside skin and that is all that you eat.  Our ward is so awesome, they gave us 2 big boxes of chocolate and cake for Christmas.  João Miguel got baptized this week so that was awesome. He is Mr. Pokémon from last week. Our other 2 friends decided they aren't ready to be baptized yet, but we are going to keep working with them.  This little 3-year-old girl had a birthday party this week and her mom invited us, so we went. We didn't realize until we got there but she was also inviting us to help decorate. So we got to blow up a few balloons and hang them on the walls.  My spiritual thought this week is a scripture from the Old Testament. It is Proverbs 3: 5-6. " 5...

This week was awesome. We had our Christmas Zone conference on Wednesday and I got to see my guys from the MTC again so that was awesome. One of our Uber drivers this week had an electric car and it was by far the nicest car I have been in on my mission.  We are teaching these 2 boys right now and they are hilarious. The younger one told us that the worst sin he had was one time him and one of his friends got some animals together and pretended they were Pokémon and threw rocks at them to try to "catch" them. His little brother then walked in the room just to tell us that his "Pokémon" were trash. Elder Price and I laughed about that for the rest of the day.  We had divisions this week and I got to hangout with Elder Patterson. He is awesome and we invited someone to be baptized, and they accepted the invitation. I was told I look like Messi again this week. This was by a grandma who was playing the song "Not Like Us" and Elder Price and I definitely thoug...

This week felt like forever. Packing up all my stuff just to unpack was a lot more annoying than I thought it would be. I already love the new area I am in. Elder Price is awesome. He has already helped me so much with Portuguese and being more confident in my skills.  We had a ward Christmas party and church on Sunday so I have already met a lot of the people in our ward. We share our chapel with another set of missionaries, so we got to sing with them and the little kids in our wards during the other wards primary program on Sunday.  I got to try some more interesting food this week. Someone gave us corn flavored Popsicles after we ate lunch with them one day. My brain was so confused by it because I never thought I would eat something like that. It was Elder Price's birthday this week and some members invited us over to celebrate with some cake. We have many friends that are close to baptism but sadly none of them were at church this Sunday. Please pray for them so we can g...

This week was a little rough. I was sick for most of the week and that made me feel even more homesick. The hot weather is still messing with my body a bit. While I was sick my brain kept on telling me I should be getting chills but it was just too hot for that to happen.  Last night we found out what would happen this transfer. I will be moving to a different area that is about 20 or 30 minutes north of Garavelo. I will be in a completely different zone of the mission though. Luckily I will have another American companion, Elder Price, so I won't be completely lost but I will have to try to force myself to learn Portuguese. We are going to be over the Goia area and it is pretty big like the Garavelo area.  This week we had district council and one of the sisters in our district is going home tomorrow so it was fun to see that if you work hard you will eventually get to go home. I got on the most full bus I have ever seen this week. The bus driver shut the door and it pushed m...

This week was very long. It feels like forever ago that I was writing you guys last. We had interviews with our Mission President this week so I got to talk to him for a little bit. Mine was pretty quick though because I don't need much other than to be told to keep trying to speak Portuguese and learn as much as I can.  After that I got to do divisions with Elder Artigas. He is awesome. He is a Brazilian but he speaks fluent English and knows a lot of slang from the American companions. Probably more than me. We weren't able to meet with a lot of people but he helped me a lot with Portuguese and by the end of our time together I could understand almost everything he was telling me in Portuguese. We did see a super sad situation involving a few little kids. They didn't have great lives and it was very hard to see. It made me really grateful for how I was raised and how my parents treated me.  They don't celebrate Thanksgiving here so we had to celebrate in our own way. ...