September 6, 2014 - A Day at the Zoo

Elder Debaltzo, Chase and Elder Kocinba

Hello family!

I have found these past couple weeks a little bit easier to just send the general things in one big email and then respond personally to your emails; that way I'm not wasting a ton of time.  I'm still with my "trainer" Elder Debaltzo.  

He is one of the oddest people, he is very straight forward with a lot of people and it's funny because some of the missionaries don't like him because he tells it how it is - he doesn't give you any wiggle room hahah, but we were already friends in Areia Branca and it's cool because we try to make everything fun.  

Today, my companions and I went to the zoo that is in our area!!!!!!   We honestly didn't even know that it existed. We first were going to a meeting with our ward mission leader, but he forgot to tell us that he went to São Paulo. This was at like 8:45 in the morning, so we were just like great now what.  So we walked down close to the beach near the church house when we looked to our right and it said, Orquidario parque e zoologico.  (Orchid park and zoo).  Debaltzo and I freaked out, Kocinba wasn't quite as excited, but I was pumped.  The zoo didn't have any of the super big animals like lions, tigers, elephants and that sort of stuff, but it was cool. They had a ton of plants from different parts of the world, and because Brazil is such a warm place, the keepers there can plant basically anything inside the park and it will start growing.   They had lots of plants from Asia that they had planted.  

Debaltzo had a little love affair with a parrot that literally

mimicked any kind of sound that we would do!  We got this all on video and I was just laughing; I couldn't whistle.  Then we were about to leave to go to the next thing and he starts singing, so we came back and gave him more attention, which is what I think he wanted!

This week we also had the Leadership Council meeting that was super fun!  

We also learned a ton at this council about the Holy Ghost!!  I think it was seriously some of the coolest stuff that I have learned about the Gospel!  President talked a lot about having spiritual experiences and that we need to have these experiences daily if we are to be in tune with the spirit.

The electricity was cut off today in our neighborhood from 8 to 4 where the office is and that's why I'm emailing so much later than usual!  

Love y'all