Speaking Porglish

Hello everyone!

 I hope you guys had a great Fourth of July, and that the fireworks didn´t start too many fires.  Sister Willard and I didn´t really do anything to celebrate the Fourth, except for wearing red, white, and blue clothes.  It was kind of sad.  I told Sister Willard we needed to go throw some tea in the river or something to get into the spirit, but it ended up not happening.  I´ve been reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese though, and I read the part where Nephi is having a vision of the future of his people, and how it basically talks about the founding of the USA as a part of God´s plan to restore his gospel in the latter days, so that was my patriotic boost for the week.

Man, this week was trunky!  For two reasons.  First, it was a little, melancholy to be away from home on the Fourth, because it´s one of my favorite holidays.  Second, one of the members that we were having lunch with was showing us all of her books, and I was reminded just how much I miss reading things that aren´t the Liahona, missionary library, or the scriptures.

Speaking of reading, I finished Jesus the Christ!  That thing is awesome, and I want to read it again after I read Our Heritage in honor of pioneer day that´s coming up.  I want to read all the other stuff that Talmage wrote now, because I seriously loved it.

As far as missionary work goes, this week was a bit of a slump.  We only taught six lessons, and none of our people came to church.  We also had the baptismal interview for our pesquisador who thinks he´s a prophet, and the elders gave us the ´no´we were expecting.  I don´t know, this week was weird.  We just never seemed to be in the right place at the right time.

This week was also really cool though, because we had our first zone conference and I got to meet President and Sister Marsh for the first time.  They seem super nice, and they have their 17 year old daughter living with them, who is super fun.  Sister Willard gave herself a headache by offering to translate everything for their daughter during the conference, and it was a struggle.

It´s been kinda nice to have an American companion, though our Portuguese is starting to become a little less prominent when we´re just on our own.  We´ve started speaking what I´ve dubbed Porglish, which is where we switch languages mid sentence, or our sentences are frankenstein-ish in nature as random words get replaced with whichever language.  I think it´s kind of cool, but I´m going to try to speak more Portuguese this week.  I might start being a senior companion after this transfer, which fruits me out to be honest, and I want to be confident in my Portuguese before that happens.

Anyways, I love you guys, and I hope that you will all have a great week!

Disneyland Jungle Trees

Açai, because I´m addicted

Transferencia where I met Sister Willard for the first time

Calda de Cana, which is literally the sugar cane plant that is squished to get the raw sugar juice out, and mixed with lime juice

After Zone Conference, and we all went out to get hamburgers