New Companion - New Area - New Mission President

Hello!

So much has happened this week, I almost don´t know where to start.

I was transferred this last Tuesday.  I am now in the area Paulínia, which is much closer to Campinas.  This area is seriously amazing.  It´s a lot calmer than Itapira, cleaner, and there are not really any hills, which almost made me dramatically collapse in relief.   The main street vaguely reminds me of Disneyland at night, because there are tons of beautiful viney trees and street lamps down the middle.  Sister W told me that she has seen monkeys here before, so I am watching like a hawk, since that is a dream of mine.  The members are also really really nice.  They have given us so many references this past week.  One seriously pulled over her car when she saw us walking to a lesson to give us a reference.

My new companion is Sister Willard, who was a past companion of Sister Barbosa, so I had already heard that she is amazing before I met her at the Campinas bus station.  Everyone calls her Sister Barbie, though I have refrained from doing so since I don´t know if she enjoys that name.  This week has been another reminder of how grateful I am that I am not a blonde beauty, because all the drunk guys in the street, and a healthy amount of the sober ones, all want to talk to her.  

We were able to go to the Campinas temple this last Wednesday with President and Sister Hill.  It was amazing to be there with all of the other sister missionaries.  I even saw an Irmã from the Itapira ward who was working in the temple that day.  I have really come to like President and Sister Hill, so I am sad that they are gone, I would have like to have known them better.  

Want to hear something crazy?  Sister Willard and I are teaching a prophet!  Not really, but one of our investigators is a few plums short of a fruitcake and genuinely believes that he is a prophet.  Sister Willard warned me before we visited him for the first time, but I thought she meant that he was just confused about what a prophet is, and had asked if he was a prophet or something.  Nope, he sat us down for some tea and cake, started telling me his whole life story, which includes how he was both a pastor (in a church that was in one of his neighbor´s garages) and a professor of English (I don´t even want to know why he thinks that one).  Then, he looked at us both with a gleam of almost smug importance in his eye and said, ``You see, I am a prophet.``.  I almost choked from trying not to laugh at how unexpected this statement was.  It´s strange though, because he is so insistent that he wants to become a member of our church.  He is seriously so strange, and if we tell him anything about church doctrine that is different from what he believes, he will look at us with that same gleam in his eye and say, ``I believe differently``.  It is seriously bizarre.  We set up a baptismal interview for him for this Wednesday, and I´m interested to see what will happen when we set him loose on the Elders.  So that´s going to be interesting. 

As a side note, I have never really tried tea but I am finding that I actually like some of it.  I love apples and cinnamon anything, and I found that there is a herbal

tea in this flavor, so I am excited.  Also, there´s this guy that we see every night on our street who is basically an informal security guard.  There are three different churches on our street, and he stands outside and watches the cars during the services.  He also gave us a bundle of this plant to make tea out of.  I thought that this sounded like a bad idea in general, but it actually tasted like Fruit Loops, so it wasn´t too bad.  I just keep thinking of avatar every time someone offers us tea, but I am starting to like it.  I´m still definitely a hot chocolate person though.

I have also met Mxxxxn, who was baptized last Saturday.  The first night we visited him and his family, within five minutes of us walking in the door, he announced that he wants to go to the temple.  I almost fell out of my chair, I could seriously not believe it.  Because Sister W was the one who ´baptized´ him, we would be able to go with him to the temple if he goes during this transfer, so we are very excited.

We also met with Axxxxxla, her son Pxxxro, and her neice Axxxe, who are a reference that a member gave us.  We introduced ourselves and all that, and we asked what they expected from our visits, because they had specifically asked their member friend to send us to visit them.  Both Axxxe, who is 18, and Axxxxxla looked at us and said, ``We want to get baptized in the church we are attending, but we want to make sure that we do it right, and we want to know what we need to do.  We know basically nothing about the bible, but we want to learn.``  My head was spinning, seriously.  We taught them the Restoration lesson, and the spirit was very strong when we shared the first vision with them.  They told us that they believe that Joseph Smith really was a prophet, and they want to continue receiving us.

I was starting to feel vaguely suspicious that Paulínia can´t be real, this week was so amazing.  I found the flaw though this weekend during church.  I guess there´s a lot of drama going on in the ward, and the bishop isn´t handling it very well.  There´s just a lot of gossip and murmuring going on.  Sister Willard and I talked about it, and decided we should not get involved, work like normal, and not contribute any fuel to the gossip mill that´s happening.  Sister Willard, who has been here longer, was a little hesitant about this, since she knows all the people involved already, but after we talked about it she agreed to try.  I´m hoping that it will resolve itself within the next week or two.

I am so excited to hear about all the cool things that you guys are doing this coming week.  I love the Fourth in Richfield, and this will be the second year that I´ve been away, so that´s a bummer.  I hope you guys have a great week, and that everything is going well.

Until next week!