The Dog’s Dinner

January 24, 2011

So this week has once again been very crazy! I now have three companions! Sort of. We've been having some training this week, learning some new techniques and changes to the way we teach. It should actually be easier for me, since I still don't really know how to teach, but it's a little overwhelming. But it's all right. For another week we'll be in a foursome, which in some ways is a little better. We split up every day and I've gotten to experience what it's like to teach the gospel two by two! So this week has been hard (training wasn't exactly loads of fun) but good.

Probably the best thing of the week was learning that Nene can be baptized! He's been taught all the lessons and hasn't been able to set a date because of difficulties with work and such, but thanks to a member his schedule at work is now such that he's going to be baptized, along with Maria his sister, on February 5th! Nene was the first member of their family to meet with the Sisters and since then his sister has been taught and will be baptized, and his cousin Mane has been baptized, received the Priesthood and just got a calling on Sunday! It's really exciting and was really special seeing the excitement Nene felt when he found out he could now be baptized! And hopefully now, when Silvani their little niece is 8, she'll be baptized too! I love seeing how the gospel blesses whole families.

I experienced my first blackout! And I now understand why it's called a BLACKout. Holy cow, it gets dark. We're not allowed to teach without lights, so we came home early and pulled out the candles and spent the night em casa.

My new experience of the week: This weird little beetle/bug dropped on my head while I was praying. Gross.

We had a really awesome Family Night in the home of a part-member/less-active family with some of our investigators and some other friends. It was really great. We were able to have a lesson and introduce some people to the church and how it helps families be more unified.

And we had some homemade pizza and cake. Win-win-win situations. I've sort of given up on the being careful what I eat. If it tastes good, I'll eat it. And thus my reputation as the American who eats everything continues.

Another new experience: As we were walking to Zelino's house, we saw a dog carrying his meal in his teeth: a little piglet. Too gruesome?

The Riches of Cabo Verde

January 10, 2011

Well, I can't believe it's P-day again, but it's been a great day. We cleaned our apartment, ate some sweet potato french fries (courtesy of Sister Pinto) and went shopping! Ha-ha. I experienced the mall of Praia: Sucupira. It's basically an outdoor market with tons of American clothing, products and some Cabo Verde crafts and food. I want to buy everything! I'm trying to remember that I still have over a year to accumulate souvenirs. And most of the stuff wasn't even made in Cape Verde, so I try to remember that too. :)

Well, this week I learned several things:

1. They have Vienna sausages in Cape Verde.

2. Vienna sausages are still gross.

3. This one really gets me. It sort of burst my bubble of happiness: the chapel is just orange (pinkish orange) and off-white. But there are green and yellow plants around it.

4. The word for cockroach is barata. And they're gross. But not as gross as Vienna sausages.

5. It's really funny and really disrupts the lesson when a barata flies into Sister Pinto's hair.

Really great moment of the week. We're walking up the path to Zedina's home and a man comes towards us, riding a horse (a really skinny horse) and he's dressed in jeans, a padded motorcycle jacket and giant motorcycle helmet! He must have been dying of heat! Or he was really worried about falling off his skinny horse. I wanted to take a picture, but I was too busy trying not to laugh.

We had Zone Conference this week! It was awesome and...exhausting. My brain felt like it had taken a couple ACTs and maybe an Anatomy exam...in Portuguese! But it was great. And I got to bear my testimony in front of everyone. And play the piano. But I love our Zone and President and Sister Neves. And Elder and Sister Adams. It was a good day. But my brain really did hurt. And then I ate about half a chicken. Literally. We each had trays of fries and a giant half chicken.

It was Sister Almeida and Sister Pinto's birthday this week! We had a family night with Isa and Zezito, who are going to be married on Friday and baptized a couple weeks afterwards, to celebrate. It was fun, but I was out of my comfort zone. But I have a great game for Dad to play with his BYU ward. It's called Agua na Cara. Yup. Water in the face. Basically one person chooses a color or animal or whatever and then people have to guess. If you guess right, they throw a cup of water in your face....my kind of game, right? And the Sisters say hi.

Isa and Zezito have a little boy who is adorable!!

I saw my first few mice yesterday. They're just little guys. And I still think they're cute.

We taught Mane about missionary work yesterday. Did I tell you about Mane? He was baptized in December and is incredible. We're also teaching two of his cousins. Maria is going to be baptized in two weeks and Nene is ready to be baptized but can't come to church because of work. It's really hard because he's not quite willing to change...but we're working on it

I'll admit I've really been struggling lately, with the language, the work, everything. But when we taught Mane about missionary work, everything sort of went away. It's still going to be hard, but I know why I'm here. I only forget that when I start thinking about myself. I was thinking (for about the 80th time) about President Hinckley's father's words: “Forget yourself and go to work.” How many missionaries, do you think, have been helped by that experience and those six words? If President Hinckley had done nothing else but share that story with the world, I'm sure he helped thousands of missionaries and who knows how many others because of those missionaries!! The Lord really knows what He's doing when He calls our prophets!

Emanuel. Unfortunately he's not progressing because he won't make time for church or our lessons. That was hard because he's really smart and really listened and thought hard about the things we taught him.

Nidia IS progressing, though, and came to church on Sunday! I'm really excited for her. I think church might have been a little hard for her, but I hope she'll keep coming. She's 14 and very smart and I know she'll be a real help to her family if she continues.

We got to clean the chapel on Saturday...for almost five hours. Sister Neves was a little upset that not very many members came to help and said so during Relief Society on Sunday. It was what the Sisters refer to as uma faca sem bolo. A knife without cake. Ha-ha. Oh man. I love Portuguese. And I'll like it more when I can actually speak and understand what's going on. : )

I think that's about it. No, wait. The Riches of Cabo Verde: rocks. There's danger of tripping over two things here. The first, obviously, is the rocks. The second is the dogs. Especially in the heat, there are hundreds of dogs splayed out all over the place. I think they're sleeping...

Here are your words:

abacaxi (ah-bawk-ah-she) - pineapple
ananas - also pineapple
chinelo (shin-el-u) - slipper
berinjela - eggplant (That one's for Grandma Hall)

Well, I love you all! I hope you're well! Miss you all! Keep being good.

Allons-y!
Sister Brooks

The Burnt Brownies

January 3, 2011

Hello, Family!

Well, I'm still alive here in Cabo Verde. And it's 2011! That's really weird because I always associate the new year with snow or at least a couple days where I'm in need of long sleeves! The weather here is incredible. Pretty hot and windy, but very nice. You should all be jealous. But just remember: It's still winter and sooner or later I'm going to experience how hot Cape Verde really gets!

I'm glad to hear you listened to the conference announcement [about the Lisbon Temple] in Portuguese. If you think it doesn't sound how you expected, know this: I miss that Portuguese so much! The Portuguese here is...well, not the Portuguese I learned. To cite “The Best Two Years,” "What language was that? I'm in trouble because that's not what they taught me in the MTC!!" Bah.

I miss the kiddos so much! I can't help but laugh at all the stories about them.

My suitcase got here!! It had a million little tags and stickers on it, but it's here and I have stuff. Well, more stuff. Haha. And I can't complain about my clothes anymore since I lived in the same shirt and skirt for eight days. :)

Okay. New Year’s!! I went to sleep at, like, 4 o'clock Utah time. Haha. But don't worry, Sister Pinto woke me up about a dozen times to tell me how long there was until 2011. And then at midnight...oh, my gosh. I've never heard such loud noises! The whole island was screaming and honking their horns and blasting music and there were fireworks (that we heard but couldn't see). Yeah. And there were still parties going on when I woke up. But we had to be back home at 6 pm on New Year's Eve because everyone drinks. And when Sister Almeida was asked by one investigator why we had to stay home she answered, "Because of the violence," and they just nodded their head like that made perfect sense...dun-dun-dun.

But things have been great/really hard. Not hard in the ways I expected, but hard. I still don't understand much, but I've been able to teach more in the lessons. Two teenage girls that we've been teaching agreed to be baptized! But then they didn't come to church. That's one of the biggest problems here: laziness. No one likes to wake up at 9 o'clock and come to church for three hours on Sunday. And if they don't come to church, there's not much we can do for them. Though I got to watch Sister Pinto wake up one of our investigators on Sunday. Haha. Probably not totally acceptable, but really funny.

We've been teaching a lot. Every day we have lots of appointments, which is great. But a lot of our appointments fall through because the people don't show, which is not good. We also have to spend a lot of time with less-actives and recent converts, which is too bad for a couple reasons. A) A lot of the less-actives are recent converts and B) the missionaries don't get a ton of help from the active members. They like us, but there's not a whole lot of fellowshipping going on. But the members are really great. And our branch is huge! Not Utah huge, but Cape Verde huge.

We found one man this week named Emanuel. I'm really excited about him because right as we were leaving the first lesson with him (we just told him about the church, our purpose and prayer), he stopped us at the door and asked why there were so many churches and how can we know which is the right one. Remind you of anyone? Yeah. I'm excited. We'll teach him again today.

After the whole culture shock wears off, I'll be able to say more about the people, but there are too many other things I have to tell you first!

Okay. So if you've never heard a pig scream, you don't want to. It's the most horrible noise ever! And we've had three pig slaughters this week during our lunchtime. It's so loud and so horrible and literally right next door to us.

So it's pretty windy here and really dusty. Most of our area is concrete 'conglomerations' and dirt roads. We've taught lessons on cinder blocks and stone walls. Most people have one room where they sleep, eat and live, which probably explains why the roads and fields are full of all sorts of garbage and...refuse. It's not like we could form a youth service project and pick up trash. It is literally everywhere. It's very sad.

When the house floors aren’t dirt or concrete, they're tile. There is a TON of tile here. Everything is tile. Yup.

It also gets really dark here at night. (Duh, Emma, that's sort of what happens when the sun goes down.) What I mean is there aren't a lot of street lamps and half of them don't work. I don't think I've ever been scared at night before, but I get a little nervous here. And I feel like a creeper when we contact people on super dark streets. :)

So I tried to make brownies the other day. We don't have measuring cups. Our oven and stove are gas and in Celsius. And all the ingredients are a little...different. But they were only a little burnt! And almost tasted like brownies. Almost.

Cape Verde has really good yogurt. There's your surprising fact for the day.

This morning we played futebol with the missionaries here in Praia, by which I mean I sat around for 45 minutes while my companions got ready and then watched the Elders play, and then the Sisters got to play for about 10 minutes and then the Elders kicked us off. SO FUN! Haha.

That's about it. Here are your words of the week:

Garfo = fork
Maluco = crazy; crazy person.

Love you all!

Sister Brooks

"Do not judge your potential by what you are today, but by what you can become under the guidance of the Lord." Elder Scott

The First Few Days

December 27, 2010

Tudo bem? EVERYONE says that. All the time. Tudo bem? Tudo bem. Tudo bom? Tudo bom. Tudo bem? Tudo direito. And so on.

Merry Christmas!!

I'm finally here! I think that's what you call a miracle.


Let's see...well, we got here on Thursday, really early in the morning, slept for a few hours and then went to the Christmas party at the mission home. I was really, really tired! But it was nice to meet some of the missionaries and President Neves and Sister Neves. Then on Friday we had some orientation things and our interview with President. I guess that was Christmas Eve, so we had to be home at 6. But we met with a couple people and talked a little about Christ's birth. I really can't say a whole lot and I understand approximately...nothing! Everyone speaks Creole here and it makes no sense to me. Then add that to the fact that I really don't know Portuguese yet. Agh. But I can still pray and bear my testimony, which I've already done a lot.

Then Christmas Day! We had an awesome breakfast/party at Elder and Sister Adam´s home and I got to play UNO! I felt right at home. Then we pretty much just hung out at home until the Christmas choir concert at the chapel. The chapel is sweet. It´s orange and green and yellow and I never would have guessed it was our church, but it's really nice.

We had church on Sunday in the church near our house, though. And it's just a basement floor of a building. Church was good. There's almost more missionaries than members, but I understood a little bit and it was cool. They have one investigator who's going to be baptized in January and he came. The rest of Sunday was pretty cool. We walked all over and taught a few people.

Ah. Also. Ironically, I´ve never been kissed so much in my life. (The mission is not what I expected!! Haha.) All the women greet each other by kissing each other on each cheek. It will take some getting used to. :) And for some reason I think there are other causes for sicknesses than the water or food. Haha.

Okay. Now what you really want to know about: Cabo Verde! It´s incredible. I don't think I even need to say that I've never been anywhere like it in my life. There are animals everywhere: chickens, dogs, cats, cows, and goats. I've never seen so many scrawny dogs walking around and barking on roofs. Well, I've never actually seen any dogs on roofs before now, but here it happens a lot.

There are some pretty nice places here and all the houses are painted cool colors, but we visited a few houses that were built of cinderblocks and concrete and that's it. It was interesting going in there though, because they still have leather furniture, china, and TVs. And posters of Allen Iverson. But not all of them. There are many people here with very little.

Let's see...well, we´ve taken a lot of taxis and buses (which smell bad) and walked a bit along some very bumpy roads. We also climbed a mountain to get to part of our area. A mountain with steps all the way up it. It was pretty steep, but not too bad. But there are women who have to climb it several times a week and with giant tubs of water on their heads.

So the place where I've been staying isn't my area. Just this afternoon, I barely moved to my new area: Terra Branca. Still near/in the city of Praia. My companions are Sister Almeida from Brazil and Sister Pinto from Angola--yup, you guessed it. Neither of them speak English. Which will be really good for me! Our house/apartment is actually really nice, by Cabo Verde standards. And it's purple. Which is awesome.

I'll have to take/send a lot of pictures when I get my camera cord. Which is in my suitcase. Which still hasn´t arrived. But it really is amazing here. There is an absolutely incredible view of the ocean and the lighthouse which I'll have to send. And then there are the hillsides covered in tiny concrete houses and the cobblestone roads and everything else.

Okay. Here are some words for you all to learn:

fofo (foh-foo) = fluffy
tubarao - the second 'a' has a tilde over it. (too-bar-ow) = shark
ladrar = to bark
fixe (feesh) = cool/awesome, etc. (I think it might actually be Creole)

I love you all! I´ll try to think of more to say and tell you about now that I´m officially in my area and ready to get to work (and learn the language).

Fica fixe,
Sister Emma Brooks

Also, you better have watched the “Doctor Who” Christmas special!

The Arrival...sort of

December 22, 2010

Ola!

Well, I´m here in the mission office of my mission...oh wait, no I´m not! I am in the mission office, but it´s the mission office of the Portugal Lisbon Mission! I can give you the details when I call on Christmas (and, hopefully, I will be in Cape Verde by that time), but the basics are these: Our flight was so delayed from Salt Lake to Paris that we missed our connection to Lisbon, waited in several lines for several hours and then eventually (after many, many difficult phone calls to President Neves) ended up in a little Parisian hotel for the night. Just kidding. It was this lame little Park Inn--pretty much an American place. But I got to stay the night in Paris!! And then we flew to Lisbon and actually met up with our whole district, which was/is awesome! And now we´re with them and we´re just going to have lunch and then get a flight (hopefully) tonight to Cabo Verde! Estamos animados!

OK. Well, I´ll tell you more about it when I talk to you on Saturday. But I´m safe and alive. And very sick of airplane food. Love you all!

-Sister Brooks

PS George Clooney is even famous in Europe. :)

"Sister Brooks...standing on a chair"

December 17, 2010

Hello!

Well, in case you've forgotten, I fly out on Monday! In less than 72 hours! And, yes, I am excited. This past week has been pretty bizarre since we've all been thinking about travel plans and other such things. Luckily we've been keeping busy enough that I haven't had time to go insane thinking about flying for 24 hours or trying to pack 18 months’ worth of stuff into less than 55 pounds.

But it's been a great week. Our progressive investigator was 'baptized' on Saturday! Woo-hoo! And then we met the real "Garrett" on Sunday. Turns out Garrett...is a girl! And, no, her name's not Garrett. But she's the friend of one of our teachers and we got to meet her and hear her tell her story and it was awesome. And she was actually baptized for real in September, so it was really exciting.

And that's what I was doing, Mom and Dad--waiting for her and Irmão to show up--when you happened to drive by the temple. :) I was really glad to see you and my district and I haven't been able to stop talking about it. I'm not sure if you were crying, Mom, because you were happy to see me, or if you were just upset to see how fat I've gotten! :) I wish I could have introduced everyone to you, too. That would have been great. It was pretty funny, though, and Elder Spurlock commented: "I can't believe it! She follows all the rules and she still gets to see her family!" We call it a tender mercy.

We were lucky enough to hear from Sister Christofferson (Elder Christofferson's wife) in Relief Society. She gave a wonderful talk about the Christmas story, but best of all, she played a little video of her four- and two-year-old grandsons reciting Luke 2. It was pretty amazing and adorable and really funny. It's very cute hearing a four-year-old use words like "espoused" and "multitudes"!

Our Sunday Fireside was so great! It was a musical fireside given by the BYU Men's Chorus. They sang lots of Christmas songs and I didn't have to take any notes! :)

We did a little mini TRC with another Portuguese speaking district and Sister Laimana and I got to teach Sister Brooks and Sister Fisher. You should send me the names of Grandpa Brooks' family members because I really think Sister Brooks and I could be related. Do we have cousins in Pleasant Grove? :) And they're awesome. It was so much fun to have another opportunity to teach in Portuguese. (Yes, I realize I'll have plenty opportunities in about five days.)

Our Tuesday Devotion was Paul B. Pieper and it was, of course, wonderful. As our last time in the choir, we sang a really nice arrangement of “Away in a Manger.” I'm really going to miss choir and devotionals and firesides and temple walks!

We got to go to the temple for our LAST TIME for 16 months! Crazy! It's really given us the perspective of all those around the world who don't have a temple in their backyard. We're so blessed. Our district is planning our reunion to the Lisbon Portugal Temple when it opens in a few years. Even though I'm not going to Portugal, I can't help but get choked up hearing about that temple. If you want, go find the last conference when President Monson announces the Portugal temple and listen to it in Portuguese. It will make you cry! The translator is so emotional and it really just testifies to me what a blessing it is to have the temple and all the ordinances performed within it.

Guess what! Our friend district (the district that came in the same day as us and is [supposed to be] going to Brazil) got their reassignments! Three of them are going to the Salt Lake City Mission and the rest to Nashville, Tennessee! I felt like I could connect with them since they'll be much closer to my little ones than I'll be. Both in Salt Lake and in Nashville! Crazy.

Oh, and we got to host again on Wednesday, for the last time! I saw another sister who I worked with at Aspen Grove and got to talk to her a bit and a really nice sister who gets to go to the MTC in Guatemala in three weeks.

Okay, subject line: I feel like I might have already told you this, but probably not. So for some reason our district likes to have our teacher guess whose handwriting is whose, so we all wrote a sentence on the board and had him guess. I wrote mine as high as I could reach and so when he identified it he named me but then added the condition: "standing on a chair." Apparently I'm very short. :)

I wish I could describe our district to you. In one word though: CRAZY. I haven't told you even a percent of the funny things that are said and done lest you think we're not focused on the work, but I have never laughed so hard in my life. Our elders are just all very quick-witted and hilarious and the sisters have fun too (though in a much more quiet and dignified manner, of course). Anyway, just know that we're awesome and I'm going to miss them SO much! At least I get to take Sister Laimana and Elder Cuestas with me.

I love you all! I love this work and I love my Savior and His gospel! Keep doing what is right and serve someone this Holiday Season! Be good!

Allons-y

Sister Brooks