December 13, 2014 - Elder "Good"

Hello, Family and friends!!  

How are you!?  Espero que muito bem!!!  This week has been one of the most relaxed weeks that I think I have ever had in the misison office, yet hahah..

Sunday night we had another choir performance in Guarujá!  The Leadership in Guarujá is super good and they were super prepared for what we were wanting them to do.  Especially with announcing that there was going to be a Christmas program at the church house and getting it out there to not only members, but also to those who aren't members of the church as well!  In total, there was just about 250 people there and about 25-30 were non members which is fairly good!!  I got to see some of the members from Enseada where I  served last March!! 

It was super cool because I haven't seen the majority of them for a long time!  I was pretty happy too becase they all remembered me.  But the thing is, they don't remember me as Elder Thurgood, but as Elder Good. haha They can't figure out the "th" sound and so they simplify it for everyone!!!

Monday it was pretty laid back. I basically studied the whole day only checking the mission email if I needed to do anything.  The only thing that came up was about the two American sisters that want to stay another transfer and so I had to make sure they

actually could with their visas and when the expiration date was.  I just had to call the Church association and ask them how to figure all of this out and yeah that was about it!  hah I told you guys that it was a super relaxed weeek.

Tuesday I worked a lot in preparation for the new transfers that will happen this next week!  We will only have 4 new missionaries, but they are all from the states so it should be fun to see where their Portuguese is.  There are exactly two ways to see how an American's Portuguese is.  The first.....talk to them in English. If they stutter and keep pausing, you know that they think in Portuguese.  You can tell that my Portuguese has gotten a lot better  because writing in English is difficult. I forget how to spell and grammatically I forget everything (sorry, Tate).  The other way is to ask where are they from in Portuguese.  De onde você é?  You cant ask them their name because that's what they are expecting and if they answer correctly then you know you can talk normally in Portuguese and if not, then you translate everything you just said into English. hahahah

Wednesday was good  nothing much happened.  I studied quite a bit about the fall of Adam and Eve and how that affects us today.  I also went to the English class in the other ward to help out teaching while the Assistant had a baptismal interview in our ward!  It went pretty well. I like teaching English because they think that you are super cool because you speak English and Portuguese.

Thursday we started our back-to-back-to back choir performances.  We were in São Vicente at the stake center.  It went really well.  It was definitely the funniest performance we had, too.  There is a new missionary that has only a month on the mission and he's a big innocent dork and sometimes he just gets distracted really easy.  He's one of the shepherds in the little theater part.  When the cue came for the shepherds to walk up to the manger, (there's 3 in total)  down the aisle came two shepherds...missing the new missionary.  Then the music was already about to start and in comes running the new missionary through the chapel trying to hold his little crown on while the whole choir and Sister Cabral were trying to not break out laughing.  He told us after that he was just chilling and looked back and everyone was gone and he just came a runnin'.

Friday morning we had a meeting with President Cabral and Sister Cabral!  We learned about how we need to prepare ourselves to have spiritual experiences and also what our focus is on the  mission and why all of these different resources are being used by the church: So that we can baptize and so that more people can enter into the Kingdom of God.  At night, we rented a bus to

go to Belas Artes which is about a 2 hour bus ride.  It was pretty fun. We made a little groupie on the way up to the chapel talking about some cool stuff in the scriptures that we had learned in our studies.  It was a good time, but about half way through, the bus' motor burned up and the bus filled up with smoke.  All of the elders were in the back dying and the sisters were just chilling in the front.  If there was a real fire, the sisters would have been guilty for not getting out of the bus fast enough while the elders all burned to death. haha We teased them quite a bit hahah.

At the end of the night, we got home about 11. I was exhausted. hahah I'm turning into a little baby. haha If it hits 9 or 9:30 at night, I'm already in zombie mode. hahhaha

Have a good week and I hope to hear from all of you!!!

Love 

Elder Thurgood