New Places with Old and New Friends

Questions:

OK so tell me all about your new companion.

1. What is he like?

2. Where is he from?

3. Life member or convert?

4. Is he fun?

5. How old is he?

6. How many siblings?

7. Do you have a lot of investigators to teach? Did you get to say good bye to your last area of investigators?

8. What is your new area like? Is it clean or run down? Odd question to ask, but Google map pictures of the area were sad.

9. Are you cooking meals with Elder Furtado? Are you eating better?

10. Please give me a Phonetic pronunciation of Elder Furtado's name.

11. Silly question...but where do you email from?

12. If you start cooking with him...Please send me a yummy recipe so I can make it for us here.

13. Tell me all about your trip to your new companion...How did it go? Easy or complicated...I want to hear it all.

14. Did you forget anything at your old casa?

15. How many Elders are in your new casa?

Answers:

I'm in a suburb of São Paulo

1-6: He's pretty fun. He likes to joke with everyone and goof around, but he doesn't let it get in the way of the work we're here to do. He's from Cabo Verde. He's a convert from his childhood. He's 22 right now and will reach the one year point of his mission this month. He's a middle child of 6, 3 boys and 3 girls.

7: We've got more than a handful of investigators here and I didn't get to say bye to my last area of investigators.

8: It's not run down, but it's got the city trash and smell :/

9: We cooked lunch today, and every night (minus sunday) we stop by the supermarket to get a little food. I've been eating a lot of Frosted Flakes recently. There was a discount on them one day so I managed to buy 4 boxes for 2 reais less than the price of 3! I gave a box to each of the Elders in the casa.

10: Elder Fur-ta-doh... it's funny because that means stolen... Ele foi furtado= It was stolen

11: The place is called a LAN-house here in brazil. It's an internet cafe

12: Alrighty. What we made was just pasta with a tomato sauce, corn, onions, and something that was more or less spam

13: We got a ride to the bus station in our neighbors car. It couldn't hold all my bags in the back so one of the big suitcases was on my lap on the way there and my leg fell asleep. Then Pereira and I waited for an hour for the bus to arrive. Then the bus ride was a couple hours. We arrived at the bus station in São Paulo which is connected to the metro station. We rode the metro for a while. We met a member on the metro and he said he'd help me get to my stop so Pereira could go where he was supposed to wait for his new companion. Then the member left me on the correct metro line. Luckily, a non-member son of members recognized me as a missionary and decided to help me. He teaches english at a  business college so he was pretty good at speaking english. He helped me a lot. We arrived at the correct stop and no one was there waiting for me like they were supposed to be so I was freaking out a little. He ran around for me looking for the other missionaries but they weren't there yet. He waited with me for 20 minutes and even offered me his lunch that he'd been planning to eat when he got to work! I eventually just thanked him a lot for his help and let him go and just waited and prayed. Before leaving he gave me his card and said that if no one showed up I should call him and he'd come get me and we'd figure something out after that. Almost an hour later my prayers were finally answered and other missionaries showed up. And not just any missionaries, but Elder Matos and his new companion!! Honestly I almost cried with relief when he came up and hugged me. My companion Elder Furtado showed up about 15 minutes later. After that we took a bus to our area and got to our casa.

14: I didn't forget anything, but I did leave a bit to lighten my bags and make the trip a bit easier.

15: There were 4 Elders in our casa when I arrived but by Saturday the other companionship got one more Elder so now we're at 5.

Thanks for setting up the facebook page for me! Their may be some requests popping up within the next few weeks.

So something cool about my new area is that the Elder I took the place of is Elder Beatty, one of my friends from my group in the MTC. The people in the area really liked him so the fact that he and I are friends has helped them warm up to me quickly. Elder Beatty is now a District Leader, trainer, and opening a new area! And Elder Webster is a District Leader and has already trained... and the companion they both had before this major advance in responsability is none other than Elder Furtado... in other words, it's highly likely that will happen with me during the next transfer... Luckily Furtado is actually training me (unlike my previous companions)

I love you a lot!!!!