Hello! Well, I hope the first week of February went well for everyone. I can't decide if January went quickly or took forever. Everyone told me January lasts a long time because you spend all your money in December and you have nothing to do or eat in January. Ha. I think we, as missionaries, stayed the famine pretty well, but it was quite a cold month. And apparently February won't be much warmer. Haha. Oh well. Looks like I'll continue to regret leaving my cardigan in Praia. :)
Okilidokilee. (Um...I don't think Ned Flanders would have spelled it like that, but that's as close as I'm going to get.)
This week, I learned a great new word (relearned) that I may have already shared with you, but since we seem to have been spending lots of time around little Joao, it seemed quite a fitting description of the week:
Bagunca (the c has a tail) - baw-goon-suh - it basically means disorder...haha. I don't actually know. But if someone's making a 'bagunca' they are either running around in only their underpants, messing up the house, or just going a little bit nuts. Bagunca; noun. Take that Webster's.
All right, in other news, we taught the first lesson in...English!! To a Chinese man. It was absolutely...horrible. Haha. Sister Dee started out and then I began my part...got half way through and couldn't think of the English word for 'igreja' (just kidding...almost). Anyway, so I just turned to Sister Dee and she took over. I'm pretty sure Fong's English was about as good as mine (not good), so he probably didn't understand any of it, but it was a fun experience. (Kudos to all you English speakin' missionaries.) And, it was kind of cool because a few days before we met a woman named Princess (awesome, right?) and she's from Nigeria so she only spoke English and Nigerianese (yes, I know that's not actually what it's called). Anyway, so we set a time to teach her and I put our only English Restoration pamphlet in my bag but then she never wanted to talk to us again, so...I still had the pamphlet when we met Fong! Cool. Yups. (That reminds me, I need to email the office and ask them to send us a couple copies of the Book of Mormon in Chinese --which I know they have.)
Okay, sent the email. Back to you all. So we met another Nigerian family this week in their restaurant and were introduced to 'fufu.' A very strange, tasteless dough that you dip in spicy fish sauce. It was cheap, but not exactly something I'm planning on trying again. The Elders told us about it and when we walked in and asked if they sold food, they gave us a weird look and asked what kind of food we wanted. We said 'fufu' and everyone in the place started laughing, but then they brought it out. Yeah, so that's our food experience of the week.
We taught quite a few new investigators this week--exploring some new parts of our area. After one long day of knocking on doors, I dreamt that one of the women we had taught, after her long spiel about not belonging to any church but being open to hear from any religion (that really happened), that all of a sudden she told us that she had already been baptized and was just inactive. And I woke up and realized that's the thing I dread most when I do a contact that they're going to tell me they were already baptized and the reason that I've never met them in the four months I've been here is because they've been inactive since the week after their baptism. Argh.
But...we do have a couple good new investigators (I don't like telling you about them because then they tend to disappear off the face of the earth). I've got to tell you about Raquel, though. At the beginning of the transfer we talked to a member in Fogo who knows Raquel and wanted us to go by and get something...blah blah blah...something about young woman's, but then we met her and started teaching her and found out that she's living with a less-active, her dad's an active member in the US (he was introduced to the church when he visited her several years ago and she had just talked to some Elders). Yeah. Anyway, lots of complications in her life and she knows they're breaking the law of chastity and so now she's looking for a new house and she's SOOO smart and knows tons about the Bible. And she's really nice. Okay, more on Raquel in the weeks to come (I hope).
Oh man, and for the first time in my entire mission, a member gave us a ride to a lesson and then taught with us!! It was so bizarre. And kind of awkward. The Relief Society President (I think the only member with a car) helped us yesterday teach a woman named Teresa and we got to ride in her car. That's it. Cool story, but it was fun. And I got to tell little Bryan that we rode in Lucy's car because every time we see him he tells us that 1) Lucy drove away in her car, 2) Lucy's car is at her house or 3) Lucy didn't give him a ride in her car. Haha. All right.
I think that's it. I feel like a lot more happened this week, but I don't have time to write it. Briefly:
Saw some fire trucks and a big fire out in the desert and the primary kids love us and I'm going to ask our neighbor if I can take Daniel home with me. And his little sister because she's super cute too.
Okay, love you all lots! Tchau!
Love,
Sister Brooks
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