Bom dia minha família!!
So I´m pretty sure you are all still asleep but I´ve been up for 5 and a half hours now. It´s really weird to think that I´m on the opposite side of the world right now but it´s really cool here. I´m in Assomada right now. It´s the area on the opposite side of Santiago, where Praia is. It actually isn´t that hot here. It gets cold at night! I never thought I´d be saying that. Not super cold but still cold enough that you need an extra blanket. I love it here so far though. My companion is pretty cool. He helps me a lot but apparently I speak pretty good for someone who just arrived. A lot of the members think it is crazy that I only got here last Wednesday. I still get completely lost though when they start speaking in Crioulo. Not a big fan. Good thing is we are not supposed to teach in Crioulo so I don´t have to learn how to speak. Only understand it which apparently just comes with time.
We are teaching quite a few people and we have a few investigators that are progressing. However we still have to do a lot of contacting. The people here are really friendly and we rarely ever get denied but we usually only get one visit and then when we go back they are not there. I can help pretty well in the lessons though and yesterday we had two really good lessons with the family of one of my companions current investigators. This was good because his family was the thing keeping him from committing to baptism. He didn´t want to do it without his family. So hopefully we can help them all progress now! I haven´t seen anything too weird yet. We´ve taught a few Catholics who basically let us in just out of kindness but they told us straight out that they wouldn´t change. Yesterday we were teaching a lady who was Catholic but she said she was open to learning. The lesson was going really well and then her mom came in and lost it on us. She was yelling in Crioulo so I couldn´t understand anything but Elder Bunderson, my companion, said that she was basically telling us to get out because they were Catholic and they didn´t want anything to do with us. It was too bad but we had to leave.
Last night we had a FHE activity at a members house which went really good. I gave a spiritual thought and then they played some games. We got 4 referals out of the activity so that was really good. The members are really nice. There are actually quite a few who are leaving on missions soon. They aren´t supposed to speak Crioulo in church but yesterday all three speakers in sacrament meeting did so. I didn´t understand a thing. They all tell me that I need to learn Crioulo but I think I will just focus on Portuguese.
Our house isn´t too bad either. We have running water and plumbing and we even have a heater for the shower. The water is all filtered pretty intensly for us so that we can drink it and there are some rules we have to follow but otherwise it´s not too bad. Food is basically whatever you can make with the ingredients that you can find here. We´ve had pancakes, soup, pizza and chicken and potatoes so far. It´s not too bad as long as you get creative. We do have to use powdered milk though which is disgusting!! I´m definitely going to appreciate real milk in two years. We even made ice cream one night!
Today in the morning we went to this big tree. It is massive!! We took some pictures and I will send the pictures next week. Anyways we went to this tree and we took a local member to help us out and show us where it was safe to climb and stuff. I didn´t go very high but it was pretty cool. However one of the elders slipped while trying to climb a more difficult area and hurt his ankle. I didn´t see what happened but apparently he fell about 10 feet. He should be ok but we definitely need to be more careful. We decided that maybe the tree wasn´t as good of an idea after all, no matter how safe we tried to be. I made sure I didn´t do anything crazy though. Kind of a bad way to start my first p-day.
It´s so cool being on an island. We are basically isolated from the rest of the world and surrounded by mountains and water. It´s an amazing place here. Brodie is in Mindelo right now I think. It´s on the opposite side of the islands so I don´t know how long it will be till I see him. Thanks for the emails, it´s always good to hear from home. I miss you guys but I'm having a lot of fun and I know this is what I´m supposed to be doing. I love you guys so much!
Fica fixe!!
