December 27, 2010
There's always this kind of awkward space at the end of the year where it's too late to wish people a Merry Christmas, but too early to wish them a Happy New Year. I guess that's why Mom and Dad got married during this bizarro, meta-holiday week, exactly one thousand years ago. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!
Guys, it was so nice to talk to you on Christmas. I know we get to communicate each week through emails, but there's something special about hearing everyone's voices. Speaking of which, Mom mentioned that my voice sounded deeper -- is that true? I just read an email from Brady saying that you guys apparently had the bass turned up really loud on the laptop speakers or something, so maybe my deep voice was just a technical problem, and not a sign of manliness at all. Anyway, I loved talking to you all. I just wish we could have had more time para conversar because that hour went by waaaaay too fast. I guess that's what happens when you have such an insanely big family. It was a fun time to hear how (and what) everyone is doing, to listen to your funny mouse stories, and to hear the little nieces and nephews talk or make noises. Honestly, that was probably the weirdest thing about the phone call home: stuff is changing, and time is passing. I still can't believe how much Katelyn sounds like a real person instead of a little toddler-zinha or how Collin can already talk. Shoot, Sam even has an extra deep voice now. Everyone's growing up!
Christmas Day was only unique because it was so underwhelming and ordinary. We ate an early lunch with a nice family who has no Christmas traditions, looked for an open LAN house for awhile and never found one, made the phone call home, and then ate dinner with the LZs at a member family's house from their ward. It was a nice day, but it wasn't especially memorable. I did have a satisfying buildup to Christmas, though. Starting with the rebroadcast of the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional, the few weeks leading up to Christmas had their share of holiday cheer.
This week, we had a mission Christmas conference in Ribeirão Preto. For the first (and probably the last) time in my whole mission, all the missionaries had a conference in the same chapel. We had a special Christmas program that was actually really good, President spoke to us, and we got to watch the Grinch (the Jim Carrey one)! It would have been better if we got to watch it in English (dubbed movies are the worst thing in the world), and if it wasn't a pretty crappy movie in the first place. I couldn't believe how obnoxious it was.
For the last three weeks our mission has been engaged in a competition between the zones. Each zone can get points based on the cleanliness of the missionaries' houses (we have been sending weekly photos of the houses to the office), whether or not we achieve the standard of excellence each week (5 people at church, 160 contacts, etc.), and if we baptize. Each dupla that gets two baptisms for the month, which is the mission goal, gets a ton of points for their zone. Anyway, my comp and I baptized two this month, as have most of the other duplas in our zone, so we won! I found out this morning. That means that tonight we are going to have a pizza party and watch flippin' Toy Story 3!! And there's no way I'm going to watch that movie in Portuguese. I'm so dang excited.
Of course, I'll only get to watch the movie if I survive the rest of the day. In just over two hours, I'm going to go to a little health clinic, and someone is going to cut, rip out, or maybe even burn my ingrown toenail out / off. I don't really know how it's going to work, but I guess they just cut a vertical line down the nail and take out the part that's growing under the carne. I don't know if I'll be allowed to walk this week, or when I'll be able to use shoes again, or even if it's going to hurt. I just hope they use anesthesia.
Anyway, é isso aí. I want to personally wish you guys a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Maybe we'll get to see each other during the holiday season next year. Happy thousandth Anniversary, Mom and Dad! I love all of you so much, and I hope you're having fun with everyone back at the house together!
luv
booooga
ps I'm attaching some photos. The first is my list of the things to talk about on the phone call, the second is my companion and me wishing you a Very-Berry-Merry Christmas, and the third is me on Christmas Eve. [Editor's note: Sorry! Photos won't copy]
Monday, December 27, 2010
'Cause I'm not sure if I live here anymore
December 20, 2010
Merry Christmas, everyone!
This week was nuts for two reasons: my companion and I barely worked at all, and we baptized. What?!
Yeah. We didn't really work this week. But it's for a good reason! I went to the doctor last Tuesday because of a pesky ingrown toenail that I have been dealing with for a good couple weeks now, and she said that I needed to take the week off. She gave me a signed note and everything -- if I were an employed man in this city, I would be legally obligated to get work off for seven days. Crazy, huh? She also gave me a prescription and forbade me from wearing a closed shoe on my right foot for three months! So for the last few days, I have been walking very little, although I have been working more than the doctor said I should. We have still been visiting our best investigators (luckily, they live really close), and I have done some walking in order to go on divisions with other elders, but that's pretty much it. Elder Harris and I have been staying in the house on the doctor's orders, studying a lot, talking, and singing hymns. We're both going a little crazy.
And somehow, even with us being imprisioned for the week, we managed to baptize! There's an eight-year-old kid named Lucas who has been going to church now for easily six or seven consecutive weeks, and we baptized him yesterday. I usually try to avoid working with kids because they pretty much always believe you, and they have little chance to stay firm in the Church without their parents. But Lucas has been going faithfully for awhile now, and I think his grandparents will support him. t's not really up to me to deny him from being baptized, anyway.
I have kind of discovered over the course of the last few weeks that the area that I'm in has something of a reputation for being difficult. My LZ told me this morning that it's pretty much the hardest area in the mission as far as ward members helping out is concerned, but I don't really believe that. Anyway, it's cool to see the Lord blessing us, because we haven't done anything other than work hard and be obedient, and we have had some real, tangible success here.
So, I am very excited to talk to you guys this Saturday. Christmas doesn't really feel the same on the mission (no holiday does), but it's looking like we'll still manage to have a special Christmas this year. We're having a special Christmas conference tomorrow in Ribeirão Preto, and the entire mission is going to be there. It's going to be nuts, and I'm stoked! And then we'll have the Christmas call on Saturday, and things are going to be aaaallll right. I just found out last night that we are allowed to do Skype video calls for the phone call home, but I don't know if that will be a possibility. It will be hard, if not impossible, to find a LAN house that'll be open on Christmas, and I don't know of any members in our ward that have a webcam, or even a good computer for that matter. Most likely, we'll have to do a normal phone call, but I'll do what I can to try to set up a video call. I'll call some time on Christmas Eve, probably in the late morning or early afternoon for you guys, to set everything up. Dad suggested that we do the call around 4 PM my time (10 AM in California), which works for me. Is that good for everyone?
My mission president hasn't said yet how long the phone call can last, but I'm guessing it will be for an hour. Maybe he'll be generous and let us talk as much as we want, but I doubt it. We'll figure out all the details on Christmas Eve.
Eu amo vocês so flippin' much! Até o sábado! Feliz natal!
abraço
elder wiggins 4 (or 5)
Merry Christmas, everyone!
This week was nuts for two reasons: my companion and I barely worked at all, and we baptized. What?!
Yeah. We didn't really work this week. But it's for a good reason! I went to the doctor last Tuesday because of a pesky ingrown toenail that I have been dealing with for a good couple weeks now, and she said that I needed to take the week off. She gave me a signed note and everything -- if I were an employed man in this city, I would be legally obligated to get work off for seven days. Crazy, huh? She also gave me a prescription and forbade me from wearing a closed shoe on my right foot for three months! So for the last few days, I have been walking very little, although I have been working more than the doctor said I should. We have still been visiting our best investigators (luckily, they live really close), and I have done some walking in order to go on divisions with other elders, but that's pretty much it. Elder Harris and I have been staying in the house on the doctor's orders, studying a lot, talking, and singing hymns. We're both going a little crazy.
And somehow, even with us being imprisioned for the week, we managed to baptize! There's an eight-year-old kid named Lucas who has been going to church now for easily six or seven consecutive weeks, and we baptized him yesterday. I usually try to avoid working with kids because they pretty much always believe you, and they have little chance to stay firm in the Church without their parents. But Lucas has been going faithfully for awhile now, and I think his grandparents will support him. t's not really up to me to deny him from being baptized, anyway.
I have kind of discovered over the course of the last few weeks that the area that I'm in has something of a reputation for being difficult. My LZ told me this morning that it's pretty much the hardest area in the mission as far as ward members helping out is concerned, but I don't really believe that. Anyway, it's cool to see the Lord blessing us, because we haven't done anything other than work hard and be obedient, and we have had some real, tangible success here.
So, I am very excited to talk to you guys this Saturday. Christmas doesn't really feel the same on the mission (no holiday does), but it's looking like we'll still manage to have a special Christmas this year. We're having a special Christmas conference tomorrow in Ribeirão Preto, and the entire mission is going to be there. It's going to be nuts, and I'm stoked! And then we'll have the Christmas call on Saturday, and things are going to be aaaallll right. I just found out last night that we are allowed to do Skype video calls for the phone call home, but I don't know if that will be a possibility. It will be hard, if not impossible, to find a LAN house that'll be open on Christmas, and I don't know of any members in our ward that have a webcam, or even a good computer for that matter. Most likely, we'll have to do a normal phone call, but I'll do what I can to try to set up a video call. I'll call some time on Christmas Eve, probably in the late morning or early afternoon for you guys, to set everything up. Dad suggested that we do the call around 4 PM my time (10 AM in California), which works for me. Is that good for everyone?
My mission president hasn't said yet how long the phone call can last, but I'm guessing it will be for an hour. Maybe he'll be generous and let us talk as much as we want, but I doubt it. We'll figure out all the details on Christmas Eve.
Eu amo vocês so flippin' much! Até o sábado! Feliz natal!
abraço
elder wiggins 4 (or 5)
Sunday, December 19, 2010
And if the snow buries my neighborhood
December 13, 2010
Bom dia, everyone!
This week went by really fast for me. My birthday went very well, and was much more memorable than my first birthday in the mission field. Some of the other elders in my zone and I went to a really good restaurant downtown that I hadn't ever heard of before. There are a lot of restaurants out here that serve rice, beans, meat, and vegetables, where you just serve yourself and they charge you for a plate of food. This restaurant was the same, except that they had a churrascaria (it's basically a big brick barbecue furnace thing) in the corner. So we got to take a bunch of suuuuuper delicious, freshly cooked cuts of beef and pork with our food. I ate chicken heart for the first time, and you won't believe it, but it's actually really good. At lunch, the other elders gave me a present: a cheap Barbie towel they had bought down the street. After eating, we went to the chapel and watched The Other Side of Heaven, which I really enjoyed, even though that's not really what my mission has been like at all. We ate cake and chatted for a while, and then we went back to work!
We confirmed Bruno, the rapaz that we baptized last week, in our ward yesterday. It was a bit of a fiasco because I talked to the bishop before sacrament meeting about how it was going to go down, and he suggested that an irmão who knew Bruno do the confirmation. I don't think that irmão had ever confirmed anyone before, so he kind of struggled with it. I ended up whispering in his ear exactly what to say as we were standing up in front of the congregation with our hands on poor Bruno's head. It all worked out in the end, but I hope Bruno didn't get too freaked out.
I met a lady from England yesterday! It was the weirdest thing ever: Elder Harris and I were making a bunch of contacts to try to reach our weekly goal, so we started talking to a middle-aged couple in the park. After going through the spiel, the guy mentioned that the lady was from a Inglaterra and she started speaking English with us! It was really weird. We didn't stick around for very long because we were interrupting a tender moment, but it was pretty cool. I made a contact in English, and it was very strange. And they kind of rejected us.
I can't believe that its the Christmas season. We got to watch the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional yesterday (I loved it!), and it was really the first time that I thought of Christmas. I mean, Christmas Christmas. It's hard to be distracted by thoughts of snow, stockings, candy canes, Christmas movies, or hot chocolate when you're almost literally melting in the street every day in the middle of nowhere. Do you guys realize that I get to talk to you next flippin' week?! I think my companion and I are going to call from the luxurious, air conditioned comfort of the bishop's office, so we'll be able to be nice and cozy (I don't know if I'll be allowed to make a Skype video call home). Since everyone's going to be home for Christmas this year (right?), hopefully it will be a little easier to plan around everyone's schedules. I don't know exactly how it will all work out, but I'll call on Christmas Eve for just a minute to get everything all set up. It would help me a lot if someone (Dad?) let me know what time would be best for you guys to make the call. Keep in mind that I'm six hours ahead of you.
I hope all of you are doing well and staying out of this hot hot Christmas heat. Start making up your lists of questions and things to talk about on Christmas so there's no awkward silence! I love all of you so much. So much.
um abraço
elder wiggins
Bom dia, everyone!
This week went by really fast for me. My birthday went very well, and was much more memorable than my first birthday in the mission field. Some of the other elders in my zone and I went to a really good restaurant downtown that I hadn't ever heard of before. There are a lot of restaurants out here that serve rice, beans, meat, and vegetables, where you just serve yourself and they charge you for a plate of food. This restaurant was the same, except that they had a churrascaria (it's basically a big brick barbecue furnace thing) in the corner. So we got to take a bunch of suuuuuper delicious, freshly cooked cuts of beef and pork with our food. I ate chicken heart for the first time, and you won't believe it, but it's actually really good. At lunch, the other elders gave me a present: a cheap Barbie towel they had bought down the street. After eating, we went to the chapel and watched The Other Side of Heaven, which I really enjoyed, even though that's not really what my mission has been like at all. We ate cake and chatted for a while, and then we went back to work!
We confirmed Bruno, the rapaz that we baptized last week, in our ward yesterday. It was a bit of a fiasco because I talked to the bishop before sacrament meeting about how it was going to go down, and he suggested that an irmão who knew Bruno do the confirmation. I don't think that irmão had ever confirmed anyone before, so he kind of struggled with it. I ended up whispering in his ear exactly what to say as we were standing up in front of the congregation with our hands on poor Bruno's head. It all worked out in the end, but I hope Bruno didn't get too freaked out.
I met a lady from England yesterday! It was the weirdest thing ever: Elder Harris and I were making a bunch of contacts to try to reach our weekly goal, so we started talking to a middle-aged couple in the park. After going through the spiel, the guy mentioned that the lady was from a Inglaterra and she started speaking English with us! It was really weird. We didn't stick around for very long because we were interrupting a tender moment, but it was pretty cool. I made a contact in English, and it was very strange. And they kind of rejected us.
I can't believe that its the Christmas season. We got to watch the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional yesterday (I loved it!), and it was really the first time that I thought of Christmas. I mean, Christmas Christmas. It's hard to be distracted by thoughts of snow, stockings, candy canes, Christmas movies, or hot chocolate when you're almost literally melting in the street every day in the middle of nowhere. Do you guys realize that I get to talk to you next flippin' week?! I think my companion and I are going to call from the luxurious, air conditioned comfort of the bishop's office, so we'll be able to be nice and cozy (I don't know if I'll be allowed to make a Skype video call home). Since everyone's going to be home for Christmas this year (right?), hopefully it will be a little easier to plan around everyone's schedules. I don't know exactly how it will all work out, but I'll call on Christmas Eve for just a minute to get everything all set up. It would help me a lot if someone (Dad?) let me know what time would be best for you guys to make the call. Keep in mind that I'm six hours ahead of you.
I hope all of you are doing well and staying out of this hot hot Christmas heat. Start making up your lists of questions and things to talk about on Christmas so there's no awkward silence! I love all of you so much. So much.
um abraço
elder wiggins
Monday, December 6, 2010
And we don't care about the young folks
Dec. 6, 2010
Dear fambuhlee,
Well hello! So, it's my birthday today. I haven't really done anything special yet, but after my companion and I finish our emails, we're going to meet up some other elders from our zone, eat lunch, and watch The Other Side of Heaven at the church. It will probably make me really trunky but that's okay. The birthday only comes once a year, right?
Honestly, I just about started bawling when I saw that everyone in the family wrote me special birthday messages and then read them. I kind of thought that everyone would have forgotten about my birthday, or at least that you would have forgotten to write. The mission is the hardest thing in the world, always, and a lot of times it just takes a reminder that someone, somewhere, cares about you to make things better. Thank you so much for remembering me and helping me feel loved. It makes such a big difference.
I actually received a very special, slightly early birthday present: we baptized yesterday! Hooray! There's a twenty-year-old rapaz (how do I say that in English? young man? dude? guy?) named Bruno that we have been teaching for a good little while now. He has been going to church for over a month because he's going out with a girl from one of the other wards in the stake here. He was interviewed on Friday night and baptized yesterday after church! It was actually pretty crazy; his interview, I mean. One of the assistants was spending the week in my city here because there were some emergency transfers and stuff, so he was the one who conducted the interview. He and Bruno came back into the living room where Elder Harris and I were waiting, and the assistant said that Bruno was absolutely ready to be baptized on Sunday. So, of course, my comp and I start freaking out and congratulating him. As we did so, his (suuuuuuuper Catholic) mom came storming down the hall saying, "You're going to get baptized, Bruno?!" She went on to talk about how we're from a cult and how Bruno was already baptized in the Catholic Church and blah blah blah. I got a little worried, but the assistant handled it like a pro, and everything settled down, and Bruno was baptized! Hooray! Que milagre!
There is another girl named Franciele who we've been teaching for awhile that was also interviewed on Friday night. She passed with flying colors, but she thinks that she's still missing something. She thinks she's not quite ready to be baptized. That same elder who interviewed Bruno set a goal with this girl so that she could be baptized on Sunday (yesterday) as well, so we went back to her house on Saturday night and talked to her. She talked about how she didn't feel like she was ready and everything. Elder Harris and I were fasting, and we were having a pretty rough day anyway, so we just bore our testimonies from the depths of our souls and talked to her about baptism, but she still didn't quite accept. I've seen a lot of people reject the gospel or fall when they were progressing. I don't know exactly why, but this time it really hurt. All hope isn't lost, but Elder Harris and I both walked away from Franciele's house crying our eyes out.
She went to church yesterday, and we're going to do what we can to get her ready for baptism soon, so it'll all work out. That was a rough night, though.
So, funny story: I have a birthday cake at my house. The ward mission leader from my zone leaders' area has a lot of money and a tendency to buy things for missionaries that he likes, and this week he was kind of rude to me on the phone when he was trying to pass a reference to me. Keep in mind that I don't really even know this guy. Anyway, there was a little bit of drama and it seemed like he hated me, but then the other night he showed up in a taxi at our house with tons of food, asking for forgiveness. He bought a R$50 chocolate cake that is now going to be my birthday cake. I'll probably eat so much that I get sick, but that's okay.
I need to let you guys know how jealous I am that everyone seems to be getting snow back home. I don't know who decided to switch things around down here, but I guess that "winter" in Brasil actually means "hellish, scorching summer"! Who knew! It's so hot out here, gente.
Anyway, my time's up. Thank you SO MUCH for the kind birthday wishes. I can hardly express to you how much that helped me this morning. Thank you thank you thank you!
I love all of you with all of my heart. Please forgive me for not having time to respond to each of your emails individually. I know it's not that much fun to write someone who doesn't write back, but I already have to sign off and go celebrate my b-day!
luv
elder wiggins the fourth (or fifth, if dad counts. or, like, billionth, if all the elder wigginses count)
ps I'm sending a couple photos your way. Enjoy!
[Photos not in a format that can be uploaded here . . . Sorry! Send me an email at wigginsbrad@yahoo.com if you want me to email the photos to you.]
Dear fambuhlee,
Well hello! So, it's my birthday today. I haven't really done anything special yet, but after my companion and I finish our emails, we're going to meet up some other elders from our zone, eat lunch, and watch The Other Side of Heaven at the church. It will probably make me really trunky but that's okay. The birthday only comes once a year, right?
Honestly, I just about started bawling when I saw that everyone in the family wrote me special birthday messages and then read them. I kind of thought that everyone would have forgotten about my birthday, or at least that you would have forgotten to write. The mission is the hardest thing in the world, always, and a lot of times it just takes a reminder that someone, somewhere, cares about you to make things better. Thank you so much for remembering me and helping me feel loved. It makes such a big difference.
I actually received a very special, slightly early birthday present: we baptized yesterday! Hooray! There's a twenty-year-old rapaz (how do I say that in English? young man? dude? guy?) named Bruno that we have been teaching for a good little while now. He has been going to church for over a month because he's going out with a girl from one of the other wards in the stake here. He was interviewed on Friday night and baptized yesterday after church! It was actually pretty crazy; his interview, I mean. One of the assistants was spending the week in my city here because there were some emergency transfers and stuff, so he was the one who conducted the interview. He and Bruno came back into the living room where Elder Harris and I were waiting, and the assistant said that Bruno was absolutely ready to be baptized on Sunday. So, of course, my comp and I start freaking out and congratulating him. As we did so, his (suuuuuuuper Catholic) mom came storming down the hall saying, "You're going to get baptized, Bruno?!" She went on to talk about how we're from a cult and how Bruno was already baptized in the Catholic Church and blah blah blah. I got a little worried, but the assistant handled it like a pro, and everything settled down, and Bruno was baptized! Hooray! Que milagre!
There is another girl named Franciele who we've been teaching for awhile that was also interviewed on Friday night. She passed with flying colors, but she thinks that she's still missing something. She thinks she's not quite ready to be baptized. That same elder who interviewed Bruno set a goal with this girl so that she could be baptized on Sunday (yesterday) as well, so we went back to her house on Saturday night and talked to her. She talked about how she didn't feel like she was ready and everything. Elder Harris and I were fasting, and we were having a pretty rough day anyway, so we just bore our testimonies from the depths of our souls and talked to her about baptism, but she still didn't quite accept. I've seen a lot of people reject the gospel or fall when they were progressing. I don't know exactly why, but this time it really hurt. All hope isn't lost, but Elder Harris and I both walked away from Franciele's house crying our eyes out.
She went to church yesterday, and we're going to do what we can to get her ready for baptism soon, so it'll all work out. That was a rough night, though.
So, funny story: I have a birthday cake at my house. The ward mission leader from my zone leaders' area has a lot of money and a tendency to buy things for missionaries that he likes, and this week he was kind of rude to me on the phone when he was trying to pass a reference to me. Keep in mind that I don't really even know this guy. Anyway, there was a little bit of drama and it seemed like he hated me, but then the other night he showed up in a taxi at our house with tons of food, asking for forgiveness. He bought a R$50 chocolate cake that is now going to be my birthday cake. I'll probably eat so much that I get sick, but that's okay.
I need to let you guys know how jealous I am that everyone seems to be getting snow back home. I don't know who decided to switch things around down here, but I guess that "winter" in Brasil actually means "hellish, scorching summer"! Who knew! It's so hot out here, gente.
Anyway, my time's up. Thank you SO MUCH for the kind birthday wishes. I can hardly express to you how much that helped me this morning. Thank you thank you thank you!
I love all of you with all of my heart. Please forgive me for not having time to respond to each of your emails individually. I know it's not that much fun to write someone who doesn't write back, but I already have to sign off and go celebrate my b-day!
luv
elder wiggins the fourth (or fifth, if dad counts. or, like, billionth, if all the elder wigginses count)
ps I'm sending a couple photos your way. Enjoy!
[Photos not in a format that can be uploaded here . . . Sorry! Send me an email at wigginsbrad@yahoo.com if you want me to email the photos to you.]
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