18 Oct 2010 - Henrique Jorge Area (Dad)

[Dad made some comments about the poor maintenance by the owners of Michael's apartments.] I'm sure its not that bad, you and Michael have seen worse on the missions. I remember the little cement house you lived in on a mission and had church in, at least that's what I remember. :) It will just make everyone more humble after living there for awhile. Besides all that matters is if the owner is a nazi, like mine was. It's much better when she is nice but your place is still a dump.

 

[Told him about the house fire around the corner triggered by some sort of explosion in a car in the garage.] It makes me grateful that you park the older cars with more chance of exploding in the driveway and street. Who calls a SWAT van to a car exploding scene?

 

Speaking of getting shot, for some reason I have almost been shot twice the past few weeks. Not to alarm you, I'm sure that my missionary name tag would have stopped the bullets. We were walking down the street and a drunk guy almost hit me on his motorcycle, well he hit me with the mirror. So I expressed my disbelief and anger to my companion but I guess he heard because he stopped the motorcycle a few feet in front of us (in front of his house) and started yelling to his wife to grab his gun because he is going to shoot this little punk. Oops :) I guess it was my fault. The worst part was this street is super long with nobody on it and a field on one side and a wall on the other. A perfect place to be shot and thrown into a ditch in the field. We just kept walking and everytime we heard a motorcycle coming we just prayed ;) The other time we were walking behind the Catholic Church (figures... of all places to be shot) and this guy was robbing a girl on a motorcycle but she peeled out and was screaming etc. ( she ended up t boning another motorcycle but not very hard they just kind of fell over) then the gang looked at us and one of them started running at us with a gun but since the lady was screaming etc his gang told him to come back. He looked at us for a bit, clearly wanting to shoot the one in with the glasses and steal all of the "valuable" Mormon pamphlets and Book of Mormons in his backpack, what a haul that would be. Instead he just ran away. Later the police stopped people in front of our house but they weren't the robbers. I have also come up with a genius technique to stop people from taking my money. I keep my money in my chest pocket in a protective covering they give you for the missionary guide. I put a picture of Jesus on my planner so when they go to steal the money they will see Jesus and think twice....yeah genius!!

 

[Dad had written, "We often learn and grow the most through trials, and the Lord always throws in a lot of happy experiences to balance out the tougher ones. Açaí to go with the mandioca."] Açaí and mandioca would be the nastiest thing ever. They have açaí in the US but surely it isn't the same.