I made a contact with a dude yesterday he cut me off in the middle of my spiel and said he couldn't attend to me. He said a few things I couldn't understand and then showed me the handle of the gun he was concealing in his pants. So I tried to be polite and took off. I could have gotten shot! Wouldn't that have been cool?
We went to a little health clinic on Friday so my companion could get vaccinated for swine flu (I was already vaccinated in Leme). While we were waiting in line, a nurse came out of the vaccination room with a syringe so she could administer the vaccination to an old man. The guy didn't seem to realize what was going on, so he sat quietly until the needle entered his arm, which made him shout a quick "Ah!" He did it again when the nurse pushed the medicine in. As she quietly explained that there would be a little prick before she gave him the second shot, he continued to sit in silence. The nurse gave him the shot, and the old man shouted, "Ah!" again. Everyone in line was laughing. The nurse politely assured him that he didn't need to yell like that. The old man replied, almost in tears, "But it hurts!" Poor guy.
That same day, we went downtown to a huge hospital so we could give our bishop a blessing. He has cancer of some kind and has been in the hospital for the last week or so. He specifically asked that we go and give him a blessing, though I still don't know why. The hospital ward that he's in has very strict rules about visitors: only two people can enter his room per day, and they cannot enter together. A senior missionary had already visited the bishop before us that day, so it looked like only one of us would be able to go in. At the last minute, the doctor in charge of the ward allowed the two of us to go in and administer to the bishop. I had just learned that same day how to anoint someone in Portuguese, so I was pretty nervous. Everything turned out fine, though. Our bishop is the kind of person who is always enthusiastic and genuinely interested in what you have to say, so it was a bit disconcerting to see him in such a weakened state.
I bought glasses last p-day. It was crazy because we only went to one glasses store, and I ended up buying the very fist pair that my helper placed on the table. I had already been to a bunch of other places before that, and I never found anything that looked good on me. That's not to say that my glasses are right for me or anything -- they're thick and square and black and plastic. Awesome. I look like such a dork when I wear them, and I love it! They have been helping me a lot: I can see things much better now, and all the snakey girls are staying away now.
Oh, speaking of which, I had my first real snake encounter. I was doing a division with Elder Jeffery, the other American in our district, and we were trying to find an address that I had. We started walking down a street, and a teenage girl passed by us. She was kind of staring at me the whole time, so Elder Jeffery said hi to her to make things less awkward. In response, and without stopping, she said "Nossa, que moço bonito!" (Basically, "Wow, what a handsome boy!") We spent the rest of the day trying to figure out which of the two of us she was talking about.
We only have one progressing investigator right now. His name is João. He was the guy who came to church last week semi-wasted. He accepted baptism, so we have been working with him to help him stop drinking and smoking. He's been doing well so far. But he didn't go to church yesterday.
We taught the first lesson to a few people this week, but they're lazy or they don't get it or their crazy wife is a rude Catholic or something, so none of them went to church yesterday, either. We need to do something to get the work moving faster around here.
My companion is awesome even though he's pretty liberal with the mission rules. My area is awesome, even though we don't have very many good people. My testimony grows every day, as long as I make good use of my study time.
The Church is true!
Eu amo vocês!
Abraço,
Elder Wing-eez
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