21 Aug 2011 - Jardim América Area (Dad)

[In answer to your questions from last week: Michael says he drove a delivery truck at BYU on snow, so apparently that qualifies him for winter driving. CC stands for Comfort Coupe. Go figure, since a coupe is a two-door and the CC is not. They claim it is like a coupe because of its raked roof. Marketing folk. Hey, VW is the same company that has had a Thing, Beetle, Rabbit, Golf. So CC doesn't sound so bad in comparison. I don't know exactly what the missionary that I mentioned who brought goodies back from Brazil brought. I remember mention of a jaguar or something like that. Maybe you could bring a pet poison arrow frog or piranha.] Delivery truck...van same thing. I'll bet they handle the same in the snow. Oh I see a lot of Golfs here in Brazil. They even have a Gol here too. They are both equally as ugly. Well I won't be bringing back any Jaguar pelts but maybe I can bring some rugged city rat pelts home. They have myths that some of these lakes around here have piranha, but I doubt it. They also tell me they find huge snakes in the lakes too. Personally I doubt anything can live in the trash dumps err lakes that they have here. The rivers and streams are really sewage....

 

Did football season start yet?!?!

 

[I mentioned I walked the trails on the summer ski slope during our visit to Solitude while Michael rode a mountain bike.] How do you go mountain biking without a bike? He flies down the mountain in 4 minutes and you have to walk all the way down? They ride double on the bikes here. In fact they can usually fit 4-5 on the bike. If it's on a motorcycle I like to call them 'eternal families' because the whole family will die together and go to heaven together. (you can probably exclude that last part from the blog post ) >:) [Oops. ;-)] Too bad you didn't get any footage of him sliding down the mountain face first for about 3 feet. That's real mountain biking.

 

[Michael and I drove straight through from Fort Worth to Salt Lake City, with a three hour nap at a Wyoming truck parking area.] Never send two tight fists on a road trip together. They won't stop to sleep or to eat anything. Watch out, those Wyoming truck stops are shady places. [No chipmunk hunting like Jeffrey did on his "man trip," just sandwiches for us.] Well eating chipmunks would have made the trip better, but you can try that on the way back home.

 

My new area is rich, bling bling and for some reason all the members are asking me for dollars even though they have gold watches and Ipods (which are extremely expensive here ) In my last much poorer areas nobody asked me for money....rich people jeeze. Speaking of extremely expensive...I looked at the cameras here and cameras with AA batteries are R$ 300ish and if I want to upgrade to lithium battery thats a R$500- R$700 camera. It would be cheaper to send disposable cameras from America.

 

Being senior is a lot different. When I was a junior I wasn't really worried about anything and I just let my senior do his thing. I have to think a lot more now and I feel a lot more responsible for our numbers and everything. It's really good though. It has definitely made me a more humble person. I think about the investigators and I'm praying for help always. Praying so I can teach the people the right things and that the Lord may guide me. It's hard enough being in this area, but now I'm responsible for everything ;) It's fine though, I feel like I'm doing everything that I can.