WEEK 23: December 2, 2019

AP's and short hair

Wow, this week was a TON of walking and a ton of lessons.  On Tuesday we got a call from the APs, saying that they'd be coming to visit the area before they change the branch president here in Vacaria.  So we cleaned the house real good, and prepared to work our butts off for the week with them.  And that is exactly what we did!  I walked more this week than any other time on my mission because the Assistants wanted to get a good idea of how dangerous the area is, and what areas in the city are safer and not as safe.  We worked in a lot of areas that I've never seen before , and other areas that members told us not to go into because of drug trafficking and other sketchy stuff... BUT we found some good people to teach and I'm hoping for the best!  (They’re called “favela” neighborhoods).

Internet photo of a favela

One really awesome guy we found is a Mason here in Vacaria, we taught him the restoration and mentioned that Joseph Smith was a Mason, and now we have an investigator with some real interest! That investigator gave us the biggest mate cup I've seen in my life (picture below lol). 

AP Elder Baker from Seattle with the giant chimarrao cup

I had one thing happen this week that was really cool!  The APs are highly addicted to Chimarrao  (the mate’ they have here in Rio Grande Do Sul.  Mate’ is an herbal tea that is very popular in many parts of South America and many DeLong homes.) and so they like to start a conversation by saying, “what kind of herb do you use in your mate’?”.  We were making contacts at the park where we saw a person drinking chimarrao, and my companion for the day (Elder Baker) asked about the herb... then they said  “you guys wanna come visit us tonight and we will teach you how to make it the best wa?”  We said yes and it was a very good lesson and ending to the week.  Thanks for reading!

chimarrao and studying

A big "vaca" in Vacaria

Christmas lights!

HUGE spider

(Also before i forget, this week was really hot, so you will see that I shaved my head, i won't be offended if you decided not to look at the pictures for a little while... lol) 

Elder Hammond