Week 14! November 30, 2009

hey everyone!
thanks for all your concern and stuff about my sickness, it did suck, but its over now,and i´m doin fine.
soo thats pretty cool that clayton is home, sounds like he had a good but tough mish. tell him i said hi, or hallo. so, this week was alright, we went to the zoo last pday with another companionship and a member about our age named weverton. the zoo was alright, not as cool as the portland zoo or wildlife safari, but it was alright. took some pics, funny thing was, it was only 2 reais to get in. so about a 1.25 american dollars. lol. afterwards we ate some good food at some restaurant in bauru, these mini pizza/pita things, pretty good. then we went to walmart! lol, walmart is way different here, pretty much just like a huge normal brazilian store, but with more stuff. i did get some cereal there cuz it was cheaper than the store in our town, but i found out when i ate it, that it sucks just as much. the cereal here is seriously like eating twigs and dry leaves with milk. gosh.
well thanksgiving was a downer, missed eating lots of food with the company of family and all that good stuff. tday lunch was at this all ya can eat place in bauru cuz our family that day bailed on us and just gave us some cash. so onofre wanted to go to this place. idk why, cuz all the other mishies hav a joke about this place and i guess its known to be pretty mediocre but cheap. anyway, so you have to get some meat in order to have an all you can eat other food, so i got some stuff that looked like fried chicken. then got my plate of other normal brazilian food, and when i went to eat the meat, i found out it was some sort of fried fish. ughhh, and i ate it too cuz i payed for it. so i just loaded it with a bunch of sauce and yeah, that was my tday meal. no delish dinner :(
my birthday, didn´t get to have breakfast cuz we were fasting, but for lunch we had another lunch cancelation, but this time we just bought food at the store, so i didnt have to eat beans and rice! so i got one of my favorites at the store. bread cheese and butter, and tang, went home and made a bunch of grilled chee sandwiches and delish tang. and had some wafers for dessert. still havent rewarded myself with some icecream, but i will soon. that night, our neighbors, who are members, invited us over for birthday brownies and soda. so that was nice of them. then, that night, i woke up in the wee hours with a bad pain in my stomach and stuff, soo i went to the bathroom, had some diarhea, then, surprise! barffed all over the bathroom! i aimed the projectile vomit as best i could at the drain for the shower water, but, most the barf just went everywhere else, and the best part was, i got to clean it all up right after. i thought to myself, at this time at home i´d normally be eating ice-cream cake with family and friends, just wonderful. lol. oh, the reason i got sick, btw, is cuz during lunch that day, my companion made french toast, and he gave me a couple peices. and i ate them to be nice. he later got pains in his stomach and went to the bathroom several times, i guess my system just isnt as accustomed to badly prepped food. oh, the reason for us getting sick was cuz he made the french toast with eggs that have been sitting in the fridge for who knows how long, cuz they were there when i arrived here my first week in marechal rondon. i did go on a couple comp exchanges this week. once for around 24 hours with elder bower in his area, he´s american and is from virginia, went to byu, and we got quite a bit in common. music wise and everything, both play drums. anywho, learned and practiced alot of portuguese with him and celebrated my birthday early with him by getting a pizza that night delivered to his place for only 10 reais! it was good too, and about 14´´ in diameter. made really good mango smoothies in the morning too. that was tuesday to wednes day btw. then on saturday, while my comp had to do some baptismal interviews in the bauru inter-city area for some elders, i got to go with elder souza, a brazilian, teaching and stuff for about an hour or so. it was way fun and the way he taught was far more enjoyable and i learned quite a bit in that little bit of time.
well, had a good lunch with a family after church yesterday, they made a whole chicken, so i´m countin that has my tday dinner. she also made this good pudding like dessert with prunes on top called Manja, i really liked it, 2nd time i´ve had it on my mish, guess its popular around the holidays here. oh, it also rained a ton here the other day, had a gnarly lightning and thunderstorm. the lightning was soo close that when the thunder hit, it set off a car alarm once, we took shelter in a members home. well guys, my companion is making wierd sounds while doing nothing, which probably means he wants to leave, so, i´ll talk to ya guys later.
thanks for all your care and support, i appreciate it soo much! cant wait to open those packages! take care, i love you all! bye<3333333333

-Elder Yuma

Week 13! November 23, 2009

Ola todas!
i´m hopefully going to baptize a 9yr old in a family where only his lil sis and older sis and mom are active by this weekend or next. his name is anderson. then we have a guy that we´ve been teaching named odir, and i think onofre is gonna baptize him this weekend. then we´re teachin two other kids that are both in their young teens with a catholic mother and innactive member father. thier way cool, hopefully i´ll be able to baptize them this weekend or next. i seem to be able to connect with the younger kids and people with what little personality i can show thru my language and actions. lol. anyway, hopefully this week goes better with my birthday and thanksgiving and all. i´ve been writin all my happenings thru out these days in my journal daily, so i´ll have a pretty funny/spectacular account of my mish when i get back home. well, love ya all and to all a happy thanksgiving. peace!!!!! :)
-Elder Yuma

November 19, 2009

IN BRAZIL...
-It is common TO HAVE RICE, BEANS, & MEAT DAILY.
-It is common TO CLAP INSTEAD OF KNOCK.
-It is common TO HAVE STREET NAMES 3 & 4 NAMES LONG.
-It is common TO SEE PEOPLE BEING DRAWN BY HORSES IN SMALL CARTS THROUGH CITY STREETS.
-It is common TO ALWAYS HAVE A GATE OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE.
-It is common TO SEE LIGHTNING VERY OFTEN.
-It is common TO BE VERY HOT AND SUNNY AND HUMID.
-It is common TO HAVE RANDOM DOWNPOURS OF RAIN.
-It is common TO SEE PEOPLE USING MOTORCYCLE TAXI'S.
-It is common TO HAVE COCKROACHES THAT ARE ATLEAST 3 or 4 TIMES LARGER THAN NORMAL, IN YOUR HOUSE!
-It is common FOR A MOTHER TO NURSE HER CHILD IN PUBLIC.
-It is common FOR PEOPLE TO THROW THEIR TRASH WHEREVER.
-It is common FOR PEOPLE TO START DRINKING IN BARS AT 11am.
-It is common TO BUY MILK WARM, & THEN REFRIGERATE IT.
-It is common FOR ALMOST ALL BRAZILIANS TO BELIEVE IN CHRIST.
-It is common FOR WILD DOGS TO ROAM THE STREETS.
-It is common TO HAVE GRAFFITI ON EVERY WALL.
-It is common TO HAVE A PROPANE POWERED OVEN/STOVE.
-It is common FOR VEHICLES W/ ANNOYING LOUDSPEARS TO DRIVE THRU YORU NEIGHBORHOOD TRYING TO SELL STUFF.
-It is common FOR MOST EVERYONE TO HAVE A FAVORITE SOCCER TEAM.
-It is common FOR MISSIONARIES TO GO WITHOUT DINNER.
-It is common FOR PEOPLE TO POWER THEIR CARS W/ ETHANOL.
-It is common FOR THE CEREAL TO SUCK, YET BE EXPENSIVE.
-It is common WHEN ASKED HOW ONE IS DOING TO RESPOND W/ "VERY GOOD" OR "ALL WELL".
-It is common FOR MISSIONARIE'S MOODS TO CHANGE RAPIDLY.
-It is common FOR AMERICAN MISSIONARIES TO MISS AMERICAN FOOD, SPORTS, ACTIVITIES AND THEIR FAMILIES!!!

Hope ya guys enjoyed this! love ya! -Elder Yuma

November 2, 2009 LEAVING THE MTC(week 9)

hola todas!
soo, this week has been absolutely loco! our last week at the mtc was pretty good. we all said bye to our teachers and friends. on thursday night, i stayed up packing and talking til like 2:45ish or so. ghormley didn´t even go to sleep! then we had to wake up at like 3:15 or so to get ready by 4 when we caught our vans for the airport. so i got tons of rest lol. the flight was good, a little over an hour long. Londrina is beautiful! everything is much more spread out here compared to são paulo. its more like a normal big city in america, except lots of brazilian stuff. lol. the air quality is much better, and you could really notice a difference from it and the air in são paulo.
we met our companions, mine is elder Galdino, and jensen´s is e. Azevedo. then we went to our apt. our apt is alright. kinda run down, but it has a living room, kitchen, and 3 bedrooms, and a bathroom. oh, and gecko´s. and bugs for the geckos to eat. lol. our companions are super nice and help us out soo much. during a day i probably speak about 80% português now. the language is tough, but i´m startin to understand more and more about it. we walk soo much! i street contact everyday and invite them to hear our message, i´ve helped teach like 3 lessons so far. pretty crazy!
oh, yesterday was our first sunday so we got to go to church. the churches here are a little different, no a/c, just windows. we had priesthood meeting first, then a gospel class, then we had testimony meeting. i went up and bore my testimony, it was super exciting! :) i did pretty well i believe cuz several people complimented me and thanked me. lol. elder jensen bore his too, i guess we were the first americans to ever bear our testimonies on our first week there!
soo, i´ve found out that i love eating at members houses! they cook some dang good meals and always seem to make soooo much food. i eat soo much food during lunch, because thats the main meal here and the members provide us with lunch everyday but p-days. so i just eat lots during lunch and moderate breakfasts and light dinners or snacks at night. we were teaching the 2nd lesson at an investigator´s house and after the lesson they offered us some food to eat. it was the BEST FOOD i´ve had in brazil yet, it seemed like gourmet, idk, maybe i was just super hungry. but it was like this delicious bread wrap thing with delish meats, cheeses, tomatoes and herbs all wrapped into like a cinnamon roll type thing. it was sooo good, then they had us eat this like choclate cheescake like large brownie type things for dessert. i love brazilian people, they´re soo nice, they like kept telling us to eat more food, and i was like, this stuff is really good, i dont want to eat it all. she ended up sending us home with like the rest of the sandwich roll thing because they said it´d probably go to waste anyway. soo bomb!
did i mention it is FREAKIN HOT here?!!! gosh, it´s probably been in the upper 80´s F. plus lots of humidity. it sucks! my clothes are soo sticky and gross by the end of the day. lol. but, i´m handling the weather just fine i think. i was told that the worst part of the year is january, so i just can´t wait for that. oh, today, (monday) is now the day of our p-days for the rest of my mission. so everyone right me on sunday nights and keep me updated on exciting things, and i´ll do the same back! ;)
alright, well, i get transfered tonight or tomorrow morning depending on where i go, if its tonight, i guess you go to iguacu falls area, which would be super tight. but, i´m just stoked to get my real trainer and my own area where i can dominate and work like crazy and then speak fluently. well, wish me luck! i love all ya guys!
-love elder Yuma :)

Oct 20, 2009 Week 7- proselyting in Sao Paulo!

olá todas!
so this week has been like super amazing and super sucky at the same time. and by this week, i mean the last week.
soo... with the good stuff.
We went proselyting last friday in downtown são paulo and it was just absolutely amazing/nutz! first off, our large van got stuck in traffic on the way there cuz there was some parade goin thru all the streets. we saw several crazy people all dressed all funny, one guy was wearin cardboard boxes for clothes! when we finally made it to like what i think was kinda like the city square, we went out and started lookin for people to talk to. after we prayed, seriously w/in like 2 minutes we saw this girl about our age sittin by herself on a ledge. and i was just like "Lets go talk to her!" so we did, and after we explained who we were and why we can barely talk we started talkin about the gospel to her. she was pretty interested so we coninued talkin to her and brought up the book of mormon and talked about prophets and stuff. after E. Ghormley bore his testimony i think she really felt thru the spirit that we were preaching the truth to her. she took the bom (book of mormon)and we said bye to her, and then later as we were walkin around, we saw her still sittin there, reading the bom! we were soo happy. so then i went to go write my testimony in my bom and this stinky old bum sat next to ghormz and started ramblin on about who knows what, long story short, he basically changed his entire wardrobe right there next to us. wierd. then he got into an argument with these teenagers that walked by, so we were like caught in the middle of this really awdward situation and we just casually slipped off. lol. this next experience was just simply awesome. we were walkin around in the park, away from that crazy bum argument, just talkin and smilin and stuff, and this skateboarder that looked about 22 or so just yells a hello to us, so we went to go talk to him, i said hello and how are ya doin and stuff to him, not expecting to get into much of a gospel oriented convo and he just started askin us what we were doin. we told him that we were missionaries for our church, and then asked if he´d like to hear a message from us. he gladly accepted and we just got into this awesome very mutual conversation. he was soo cool. he would ask us questions, and we would explain them the best we could and he would understand. and what else was crazy is that i was able to understand like at least 90% of what he said! soo... i then shared my testimony with him after talkin to him for about 10 to 15 minutes or so and then i gave him the book of mormon and some stuff to read in it, including moroni 10:3-5 and told him to pray about it and what we said to konw if it was true. he agreed to and then told us that when he first saw us, he recognized a spirit about us, he actually said he "saw our spirits" and that we just seemed soo happy and stuff. he said that he really felt something in his heart while talking to us and he kept looking to the sky and thanking God during our convo with him. he said "God bless you!" to us and we said the same to him, then he skated off as we said bye. then we watched him, and immediately he started sharing the bom with a girl that he went and sat by. ghormley and i just looked at eachother and were like, WHAT!!!??? so stoked, so we decided to go talk to him again and get his name. his name was jusei or something like that, and before we left he made sure to get out his backpack and show us his very marked up bible. it was soo cool. later, we look back at him again, and he had another skateboarder dude there along with the girl, and was still sharin the book of mormon. how incredible, we created a missionary! lol
then these two guys came up to us and started talking to us. the first guys name was kevin, and he happended to be a drug-runner from london that just got out of prison the day before and it happened to be his birthday too! and he was drunk, lol, para bens! i being the lucky one, got to talk to him, while ghormley got to talk to the friend he had just met and was supposedly going to go buy some food for. the friends name was Crisiano. and ghormley got to have an awesome in-depth convo with him. basically gave him the entire first lesson. cristiano was really feelin the spirit and askin lots of good questions and ghormley was really able to help him out. he gave cristiano our last bom and some stuff to read and he was immediately happy and started reading it.
soo, let me now tell ya the next chain of intersting events. while we were waitin for our van to come pick us up, elder burt and i joined 2 random guys juggling a soccer ball. it was way cool, our entire district and some random onlookers just kinda circled around us while we, and two like 40 yr old dudes all just juggled a soccerball. it was soo sick. first time i´ve juggled with a real ball since i´ve been here. anywho, as we were juggling, our teacher wasnt able to flag down our van so we had to wait there while he tried to make a loop around the block. so we waited there for many more minutes. as we were waiting there we saw 2 sets of drunk dudes both go up to a wall, different times, and starting to pee all over it. both times some street police saw them and tried to go up and talk to them. the first group did get caught and talked to and even got poked by some nightsticks. the second group saw the po po´s coming and just whip´d and zipped and ran away! haha. soo funny.
we ended up havin to walk about 2 km´s away to another point to meet the van cause he could not make it to us due to the parade. as we were walking there, ghormley and i being in the back of the line, a brazilian girl with a group of 3 other friends, all about our age approached me and asked me what we were doin and if i spoke portuguese. i responded that we were missionaries and that i could speak a little. another girl in the group that could speak english then asked us if we knew what was going on and if we wanted some beer. we responded with a no thank you and that we really had no clue what was going on. another girl told us that it was basically the equivalent to the thanksgiving in america. sooo... we finally made it to the meeting spot of the van and piled in. then the other district made it there too. however, there was a problem. their van was not able to make it there due to getting stuck in traffic. soo, another long story short, we piled 25 people into a van about the size of like a dodge sprinter. it was absolutely nuts, the vehicle is only meant to hold about 14 or 15. that trip kinda sucked back to the mtc.
soo, that was proselyting! what an experience!

so, what i failed to write in last weeks lack of an email is that we had lots of class. ladadadada, i got a hairwreck by the barber, ended up taking elder ellis´s trimmers and cutting and trimming it up myself to make it look better. cant really remember anything else distinct from 2 weeks ago. however, i think i caught the swine flu. i started feelin crappy saturday morning and have felt like that since then. our doctor wasnt in due to a heart-attack he suffered so our mish pres.´s wife checked out my throat and found that i had some pustules back there and said that i probably should take some antibiotics. i had a fever on monday morning and skipped class and slept for like 5 and a half hours thru lunch and all. we went to the são paulo temple today. and Elder Richard G. Scott is going to talk to us this friday. our departure date got bumped to next friday, so we´re here another week. lots of people were kinda complaining, but i´m alright with it. i get to hear and see an apostle talk, shake his hand. and hang with ghormley for another week. oh, one last thing. last sunday, ghormley was talking about his bro´s mish, and was talking about his bro´s training companion, and guess what his name was! Adam Wadsworth! i was like, No way dude! thats crazy, i know him, he was from roseburg, went to my ward, and i´m friends with his younger bro clayton who is serving in germany! small world.
anyway, love ya all! faça a diferença! paz ;)

-Elder Yuma

Leighton's First Week September 1, 2009

big news: i did my own laundry last night, it went well, didnt ruin anything, and i bought a throwoff nike watch today for 20 heias, which is equivilant to like 12 or 13 bucks, now i can tell time, and not rely on others to wake me up in the morning. ehh... i have a super cool companion named elder scott ghormley from mesa az. we got like everything in common and we get along super good, he reminds me a bit of eric saylor if he was a mormon. lol. anywho. love ya guys again and tell shae and sheldon to give my email and mtc address to everyone, i´m not supposed to email peeps back, but i can write back, cuz i got like 100 envelopes today, now i just need stamps. lol. alrighty peace out homies! <333333333333333333