the week nothing made sense

This week was...interesting. Literally what was this week. But I'll get to the weird stuff after!

So our "old" investigators are having trouble. One is having trouble believing in God and is considering leaving us, and another has been talking to people who hate mormons so that's fun! (Its not fun) Its very likely that we'll have to leave them. BUT WE HAVEN'T GIVEN UP HOPE YET. WE WILL FIGHT TIL THE END. Everything will work out.

This week we met Valessa's daughter Valesca who is 11. She reminded me a lot of my dear 11 year old sister. While we were waiting for her mom to finish up some things we talked to her about school and how her tests are going and what she likes to do and all that, and it made me miss my sister more! What was funny though is that this 11 year old knows her bible almost better than I do! Everything we talked about with her she could quote bible verses about and knew the references for everything! She told us she's mad because her church says she's not old enough to be baptised and she wants to really badly and we're like "well hey guess what you are old enough!!"

We got 4 new investigators this week! They're still super new, so I'll talk more about them next week after I see how things go but all of them seem pretty solid!

Now the weird stuff.

So first of all this week we played marriage counsilor, which I didn't know I, the dating expert that I am, was qualified to do. I hope everything we said was valid...and that they talk to people who know better what they're doing.

Secondly in the oddities and annoyances of this week was on thursday we taught this teenage girl and her mom, right? Everything went super well, the daughter was SUPER pumped about what we taught, mom wasn't interested but said her daughter can do as she pleases so we were all set to continue teaching her when out of nowhere her grandma pops up and starts yelling at us about how her granddaughter is a minor and doesn't know what she's doing and how dare we try to change her mind and practically kicked us out! It wasn't even her house??? Unfortunately her mom now sides with her mother-in-law and we can't go back, which seriously bites! The girl was soooo excited and said everything we taught was what she'd been looking for and it was perfect!! Someday. :(

Ok so then we were teaching someone, and literally their entire house fell apart a few months ago and they havent rebuilt it yet so we taught them on a couch in the middle of literal ruins. Like just dirt and piles of broken bricks. They're in the process of rebuilding but still like??? They don't have a bathroom??? Also there we learned the story of their sister who ran off with an older man she hardly knows and married him right away (which sounds like something from a few different books I've read) and the boyfriend who is 17 but already has an exwife? They were married for 2 years starting when he was 14? I think the girl was 12 or 13. Most of the time if I'm quiet while we talk to someone its because I'm struggling to understand what they're saying but this time I literally was speechless because I cannot imagine my 16 year old brother saying "my exwife and I seperated because..."

And lastly, we had just been half chased from a house (the other half being us running) because when we said the word Christmas the woman started sobbing/screaming and we weren't exactly sure what to do in that situation, when a young man, I will assume he'd been drinking, wearing nothing but a bedsheet-toga ran up to us waving a gigantic rainbow umbrella and yelled "you guys are believers?!?! WOOOHOOOO" and ran out into the street without looking and almost was hit by a car.

Yeah, so this week was weird. I hope you guys were slightly entertained by my experiences this week. 

I'm sorry I still haven't sent pictures!! I can't seem to figure out how? SOMEDAY I WILL I PROMISE. 

Now, for any of you that maybe will serve a mission some day or will spend next christmas away from your family or alone even, I offer one piece of advice: BRING EVERY SINGLE SONG FROM YOUR FAMILY'S CHRISTMAS PLAYLIST. Because if you don't you'll find yourself sitting on the floor at 6:30 am eating panetone listening to "Breathe of Heaven" on repeat because its the only song you have that feels like home. I learned this week that christmas music isn't really about christmas, its about the memories. Somewhere online there's this collection of "bad analogies" and one of them is something like "there was an eerie feeling in the air, like when you're on vacation and Family Feud comes on at 7 instead of 7:30" and thats how I feel about christmas music in portuguese. Because its the same songs but I can't sing along!!

A mission is a crazy crazy thing. But every annoying thing has a positive side! For example, I have 47 mosquito bites (not kidding) but I don't have dengue so clearly I've got good luck and God on my side. I haven't been properly dry in 6 weeks because its so hot, but that gives me the excuse to say "some people are worth melting for". My sense of humor has been reduced to reading my dictionary and writing pop culture references in the margins, but it turns out thats a really good way to memorize new words! Literally, this is the craziest thing I could possibly be doing right now, and that's not just the toga man talking. But on wednesday when we said a prayer together with one of our new investigators and she said super cutely and sincerely "God, I want to know if the things the sisters taught me are true. I feel really good about this and want it to be true, please help me know" I was reminded of why I'm really here. So as crazy and weird and bizare of a week this was, it was also absolutely fantastic.

I love you all! <3<3<3