I'm Super Catholic... so I can't
This is probably going to be my last full week in Itapira. My second transfer ends next Tuesday, and I´m pretty sure I am going to be transferred. I´m excited by the prospect of going to a new area, but I´m going to miss Itapira. I´m especially excited that I will no longer have to do the twelve week training activities. Mostly the activities were memorizing a bunch of stuff and doing demonstrations of how to teach the different lessons for my STL´s. They were awful, and I´m glad to be done.
Oh, another Welcome to Night Vale-y thing about Itapira that I wanted to tell you guys. Every morning and night I hear a train go by somewhere near/in the city. I have been here for nearly 10 weeks, and walked from one end of this city to the other, and I have never seen any train tracks. I have no idea where this train is, and why it blows its whistle every time it goes by, but it's here somewhere.
I´m starting to worry that the people we teach are going to think the Church is just an elaborate Cevada campaign. Cevada is made from coffee beans, but has had the caffiene removed, and a lot of the members drink it as a substitute for coffee. Sister Satiro talks about it every time we teach the Word of Wisdom, and will occasionally give a bag of it as a present to our investigators.
Brazil played its first game in the World Cup yesterday. One of the ward members, Lucas, asked if we were going to work like normal, and Sister Satiro said that we probably would. The following conversation happened.
Lucas: Who is going to receive you during the game?
Sister Satiro: The true followers of Christ, Lucas.
Lucas: So, no one.
Sister Satiro: How about we come watch it at your house then?
Lucas: Oh, I won´t be watching it, I´m a true follower of Christ.
We ended up not going out proselyting. Sister Satiro admitted there wasn´t really a point, since everyone would be watching the game, and afterwards be too drunk to function. It´s been kinda fun to see all the Brazil flags that have appeared on a bunch of the houses and stores for the games.
Word of the Week
Puxador. This word cracks me up, because there are four possible definitions for it in my dictionary:
A handle, like for a door or drawer.
A car theif
A hemp addict
A leading singer of a samba parade.
I´ll leave you all to guess which definition was the one I needed.
We found a house that had a sheet tied over the gate to give the house more privacy, but the sheet thad a couple holes in it. Not super big, but big enough that we could see through a little. We clapped, and we heard someone walk up. We saw this guy kinda peek through one of the holes to see who it was. Apparently he needed a couple more looks before he could decide if he wanted to open the gate, because he started kinda bobbing and sliding past the other holes in the sheet to get a good look at us. After about five seconds of this, Sister Satiro started introducing us through the hole he was currently sliding past, but he didn´t stop moving. He kept sliding past the different holes, and Sister Satiro started following him from hole to hole as she kept talking. I just stood there, trying not to laugh as they both kept awkwardly sliding from side to side of this sheet. He eventually told us he wasn´t interested, and we moved on. It took me a couple minutes to stop laughing.
This Week
We have district meetings every Tuesday morning. I like getting out of Itapira for a little bit, but I don´t like these meetings because we have to take the bus early to get to Mogi Mirim, and we don´t have our normal study schedule that day. Personal study is basically sacred, and I feel cranky when we have to miss it. I sometimes receive letters during the district meetings, but it´s normally at the zone conferences that we receive stuff. Yeah, everything should be sent to the mission home. We´re the only ones in our area at the moment.
We´ll be traveling to Campinas this Wednesday for our last interview with President Hill. We weren´t going to have an interview this transfer, since we had that conference with Elder Cook planned instead. But, with the gasoline shortage and everything, our conference got canceled and we´re having our normal interview instead.
We thought we were going to have a baptism this weekend, Vitor is one of the teenagers of the Peachy Penguin family, and he was all set up for his interview. We just needed to get the paper filled out that says his parents give permission for him to be baptized. When we were filling it out with him, we realized that he was not the age he said he was. If you´re over fourteen years of age, which he told us he was, you only have to attend two Sunday´s of church to be baptized. But, when his mom told us his birthdate, we realized he is not fourteen yet, and he needs to attend eight weeks of church to be baptized. So that was kind of awful. I was so sure I was going to have a baptism on my last weekend in Itapira, but there´s nothing we can do. Still, Sister Satiro will keep visiting with them, and I hope that I´ll see pictures of his baptism on the weekly mission email in a few months.
Other Stuff
That´s crazy about Aunt Gina! She mentioned she was having a Girl Scout shindig coming up, but I forgot when it was. We had a fire drill every week at Camp Tifie, but that´s crazy that there was actually a fire. I feel like it´s a requirement to just adore firemen. I saw this Tumblr post once about how it´s impossible to not like firemen, because you never hear about any bad firemen. They are all just awesome.
That's so good that Ree found a place to stay, and that she´ll have a friend nearby. I never asked if she was going to serve a mission, so that´s exciting that she´s considering it. I have no idea how Emily keeps up her energy, because she just goes full out with everything.
Funny story, one of the people we teach was all interested in the church until we gave the law of chastity lesson. After that, she was super awkward and tried to avoid our visits. We finally found her at home one time and asked how living the commandments were going. She told us that she´s "super Catholic, so it´s hard to change". We managed not to start laughing until after we left, because not only was it a blatant lie, but it wasn't even a good one. After we calmed down sister Satiro asked, "Do you think she knows that Catholic's keep the commandments too?" Which set us off again. Every time I don´t want to do something now, I tell Sister Satiro that I´m super Catholic, so I just can´t.
Love you guys! I hope you have a great week!
Sister Sheffer
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