It’s Winter Again

7/28/14 

Hello family and all! I hope you’re having a wonderful summer. July ends this week and we are heading to the end of this transfer here on the 11th of August pretty crazy. So we said goodbye to Elder Gray last week and got to know Elder Almeda who now has 2 more weeks until he goes home from the mission. It’s pretty fun to talk with him because he knows about everywhere in the mission and has tons of stories to tell.

Taking cover  when it rained out of nowhere!

Anyway, this past week the weather decided to pull a 180. On Tuesday morning the "northern wind" came in and brought a bunch of rain out of nowhere in the afternoon and then continued to thunder storm and almost nonstop rain for the next two days. It’s kind of miserable to walk around in the rain haha a combination of walking around in soaking socks and shoes or something turned my feet orange haha that was weird. And after the rains the sun came out again but its back to being cold which kind of stinks but it is still winter so it makes sense.

Also a cool little experience Elder Usieda and I had was when Elza, the elderly woman we are teaching, showed us her collection of old Brasilian money. Before the real (hay-aw) Brasil used the cruseiro (kroo-zay-roo) but when they switched the cruseiro lost all value and Elza had this huge wad of cash and tons of coins and there was even a 50,000 note! It was cool and she joked that she would be set if the money didn't change haha. 

Elza's cool collection of old Brasilian money

Well, another week gone by, enjoy summer up there while it lasts and I love you all!

Elder Pierce

 Me with Vó (open o sound, short for avó grandfather, I don't remember his name we just call him Vó) and Irmã Adelina (member) who we visit and Vó gives us candy :)

Elder Usieda making corn bread for his personal progress project...

6 MONTHS!!!

It's quite normal to just have horses walking in the streets #gaúchobagual

7/21/2014   

Last Sunday with Elder Gray

 Well another week has gone by. Here it feels like we go to church, then P-day is already over and we wake up on Tuesday to but realize that it’s already Friday again. Time goes by super weird and speaking of time I've now got 6 months on the mission, yea! (well the 22nd officially) I’m a quarter of the way through and a funny thought is that I've only got a "Sisters Mission" more to go. Another crazy timing event, Elder Gray the other American that we live with, is being transferred due to some mission politics after only 3 weeks here in the area setting a record for least time spent in the ward, haha. He was a great guy and I liked talking with him a lot (it’s nice to just talk with another American sometimes) and to commemorate his short stay here we got pizza- yum. 

Brazilian Pizza-yum!

Elder Usieda and I are teaching an elderly woman named Elza who is the friend of a member in our ward. We didn't "expect" much in the beginning because people around here usually have their religion and would rather just walk to the church down the street but we had an awesome experience with her this past week. We gave her a pamphlet to read about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she read it all the way through the night before we came back to talk. She liked the pamphlet a lot had some very interesting experiences she told us with her other churches but then she said to us that still to this day she felt that she hadn't received the Holy Ghost like it talks about in the Bible. And we felt a super strong spirit and invited her to be baptized with the restored authority of the priesthood again on the earth and promised that she would be able to receive that Holy Ghost that she has been searching for. Cool experience and we will see what happens next.

Also in my personal study I am doing a more in depth study of Chapter 6 in Preach My Gospel about the attributes of Christ and I feel that it is helping me out a lot as a person and a missionary so I encourage all to give that chapter a look!

https://www.lds.org/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to-missionary-service/how-do-i-develop-christlike-attributes?lang=eng

I love you all and hope this week goes well!

Elder Pierce

A "family home evening" we had

You can see the sign for  Casa do Gaucho- where you can buy traditional Gaucho clothes- hmmm

"Não Fez Frio Ainda" and The Maria Contact

"A day in the life..."- Santa Maria, Brasil

7/14/2014

Oi everyone back home I hope your summers going great! And here it feels like summer is coming early, haha. When I first arrived in Santa Maria everyone one would say "Só espera vai fazer muito frio" (just wait it will be very cold) and then when it was starting to get cold everyone said "Só espera não fez frio ainda" (just wait it hasn't been cold yet). But now it’s getting almost hot during the day and every one is saying that it didn't even get that cold and that the cold already passed, so much for that "gaúcho winter" I was promised but we've still got another month I guess of winter so we´ll see.

Elder Usieda (who is feeling much better) and I had a funny experience while we were making some contacts batendo portas (hitting doors) this past week. Here in Santa Maria there are a lot of women with the name Maria. So he decided that we would try and talk with this one lady and he said "Good afternoon, we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ and we are looking for someone named Maria who lives on this street do you know where she lives?" and the lady thought for a moment and then directed us to a house a little ways down the street where Maria lived. It was too funny because it was just an idea because there were so many Marias to try and find one and it worked! So we went over to Maria´s house and spoke with this elderly lady. And we said "Hello we are looking for a woman named Maria" and she asked the last name and so we were like "uhhh... we don’t know the last name" then she said "Maria da Silva?" and we said "yup that’s it" and she said that it was her and then "who sent you?" so we told her it was the other lady from up the street (which was true, haha) anyway we gave a quick lesson to her and her husband and we have a new trick in our bag that worked out pretty well haha the Maria Contact.

And I have to comment on the vergonha (shame) that was the Brasilian Soccer team, wow 7-1 we could hear literal sobs as we walked through the streets that night from kids crying that Brasil had lost. A funny point is that I to a Brasilian look like a German haha we had to "be careful in the street" haha (joke). And now with Germany (Alemanha here in Brasil, weird name) as champion we can get back to normal so that’s good. And we had a Birthday party for the grandson of a senhora in our ward and we ate cake and it was super good :)singing happy birthday for Bernardo (the 2 yr old little boy) everyone claps while singing the happy birthday song

Singing Happy Birthday to Bernardo ( the 2 yr old little boy). Everyone claps while singing.

Eating cake with the Birthday Boy- Yum!

Love you all and have an awesome week!

Elder Pierce

Reunião de Zona

Bovinu´s (Churrasco Heaven!) and Crazy Weather for the 4th of July

7/7/14 

So last P-day was our last with Elder Dos Santos which was a bit of a bummer but we did some cool stuff to make up for the short time. First off for lunch we went to Bovinu´s (pronounced how it looks with a Brasilian accent) which is a Churrascuria (Brasilian Steak House) (shoo-ha-skoo-ree-uh) in Centro (like down town) Santa Maria. And oh my goodness! It was churrasco heaven! The way that it works at a churrascuria is that there’s a buffet line of normal food, can’t forget the beans and rice, and then the servers come around with all different sorts of meat on swords that they serve to you. And since we were one of the first ones there in the restaurant it was non-stop meat- too good! And then after a lunch of "exceeding joy!" (a joke that we have where we say exceeding joy and spaz out like we are falling to the ground with exceeding joy as they say in the scriptures) 

Yummm- churrasco

We did a little secret Santa tie exchange and everyone drew the name of another elder and we bought ties for one another as a commemoration of our awesome household brothership, and because ties are very useful. 

Tie Exchange -everyone is holding up the tie they got for the other Elder

Last day with a good friend- I'm wearing the tie he got me :)

And this week we had some crazy weather! It’s been cold and super rainy as of late. And now the weather is deciding to switch between raining really hard then the sun coming out and getting really hot, crazy. A side note Elder Usieda was sick all Thursday and so we stayed in our house, and so I had a lovely study the scriptures all day session saving me from a good dousing of rain then hot sun back to rain again (tender mercies sort of). And the weather was no different on Friday for the 4th of July. But rain or shine that didn’t stop the Brasilian people from shooting off a bunch of fireworks and honking horns and yelling in the streets when Brasil beat Colombia in the world cup. So I celebrated a little bit on the inside too for ´Merica! And in honor of our family cookout I ate a xis for lunch (shees, a Brasilian burger). And the weather that night was doing some crazy lightning so I even got some of nature’s fireworks. 

Love you all and I hope you enjoy the pictures and another of week of summer!

Elder Pierce

I ate a xis (shees) for the 4th of July, yeah!!

My awesome doodle in my planner- "Merica!!

Lunch at Irma Iara's with our new District Leader (from Washington State and he has a super deep voice)