Gravatai

Gravatai is a bit bigger than Feitoria, for certain. All the references here are by bus stop and our ward seems to go for a lot of bus stops. We´re working in the 5 stops closest to the church, so it isn´t that bad. We started with nothing this past week, and tried alot and ended up teaching a decent amount of people.  However none of them went to church this Sunday, so a bit good, a bit bad. The ward has a good amount of older people.  Their voices are very calming so it is very difficult to not fall asleep 😊. Second hour was rather odd for us as a missionary; we don´t have the manual to study at home or in the class, so we just sat there for an hour. I´m worried about how the classes second hour will be for investigators who don´t have the manual as well, but at least this year is the New Testament so things are good with that when investigators come. We do indeed study the Bible.

The lunches this past week have fallen through a decent amount, so I´ve bought a lot of Xis Baicons- a hamburger that is a bit wider, with egg, cheese, and bacon.  I have them make it without the salad, tomato, green peas, and corn. Yeah, it is a weird thing, they put a lot of salad stuff on it.

We played basketball and stuff with some YM this morning. Living with 5 others is very different, living with English speakers is weird. With Elder Banda, we only slipped a word or two in English when I didn´t understand or if it wouldn´t make sense in Portuguese, so it was like I was living with a Brazilian who knew English. I already slip into Portuguese when I try to speak English, so I don´t think I´ll get used to speaking English until after a bit at home. I hope my accent gets better.

There have not been any further elevator issues, and we´ve already started using it again. I have splits on Thursday and I´ll go to their area and teach with an American who is almost done with his training, Elder Owens. We are also going to have a FHE with an RM who has a reference for us who he´ll bring. 
Looking forward to a great week!

Love y'all,
Elder Trevor Mangum

Surprise - I've Been Transferred!

So much has happened over the past week  since we talked on Christmas.  After lunch, we visited with each other, ate watermelon, then went to go pass dinner in the house of another member.  Dinner ended up getting cancelled so we passed the night of Christmas at home eating pizza. Then Thursday, the 27th, we had interviews with President for Zone Conference. Long story short, emergency transfer for me to Gravatai to switch with an American with 3 weeks on the mission who is having health problems with the sun and could only work an hour a day (and with a Brazilian companion who wants to work hard but can´t as much as he´d like and doesn´t fully understand). Thursday night we had an FHE with Pedro and the Cunha family where Elder Banda made tacos. Then we went home and I packed up. 

We woke up the next morning, went to Zone Conference, ate lunch, then went to Porto Alegre to switch companionships, then to Gravatai with Elder Souza from Sao Paulo Capital. We arrived in time for me to only unpack my backs and hit the super market really quick. We live with 2 other companionships, Elder Pereira (Brazilian) and Elder Glasgow (the one American in my group who went to the Provo MTC, from Arkansas), Elder Burobano (from Ecuador, and our DL) and Elder Owens (in his 2nd transfer, from Arizona), which is a bit wild. The same night that I arrived, December 28, was the birthday of Elder Owens, so we made a cake and had terere, and was able to bond with everyone my first night here.

On Saturday we visited a lot of people, or rather tried to, but everyone travels to the beach because it is so hot here and only ended up entering into the homes of recent converts.  There we taught a super spiritual lesson to someone nonactive with a RC. Now Elder Souza tells everyone I´m fluent and a spiritual powerhouse. He is funny, a bit wild, but likes to work hard. We ended up eating lunch in the house of Bishop Andre Saturday and Sunday because of so many people travelling.  A t the end of Saturday, I shared apparently a rather powerful message using the first verse of the BoM about how we learn about the kindness of God during our many afflictions. I learned that their story is similar to the story of Lehi, that two years back, they were doing great in a strong ward, strongest in the stake, and stake president comes up and says the Lord needs you to move to Parque Dos Anjos (our area) and only that. They do so and about a month or two later he was called as Bishop.

Anyways, Sunday, we had church at 8:30, but sacrament meeting is the last hour. Bishop during lunch the day before told me not to worry about a talk this week, but that next week I´d be giving one. Fine by me. Mid way through second hour, with about half an hour left until sacrament meeting, secretary comes in and says we need you to give a 10 minute talk today, thanks. People said it was good, but I´m not so sure. A recently returned missionary, Vagner gave a great talk, and in part of it he talked about how when we don´t use the Lord´s name to talk about his church, we are taking his name in vain. Bishop also gave a great talk on forgiveness and not judging.

P-Day was on the 31^st and we had a P-Day with the whole zone of Gravatai, a churrasco for Novo Ano. Then we get back and we go to Bishop´s for dinner and a meeting on missionary work which was great, took a picture with his family that I´ll send later. Then as we´re leaving and Bishop is giving us a ride home, the other elders call us and invite us to come over to their bishop´s house for a churrasco and stuff so Bishop Andre takes us over there. We eat more, use basically sparklers, and then go home. We´re joking around, using the elevator and only the 3 Americans are inside, I feel an urge to hit to close door button and Elder Owen laughs and says ‘Only Americans’ and as the door is closing by itself, Souza sticks his leg through and it opens back up and all six of us get inside, hit the button, starts to go and breaks and begins to move down in chunks. People freaked out, hit buttons, elevator stopped, we said a prayer, tried to call emergency number but it didn´t go through but somehow managed to call their bishop for him to call the people and somehow we use a Book of Mormon and brute strength to open the elevator door, but we were in between floors and somehow Elder Pereira knew how to open the doors on the floors from the inside so we managed to get out and we took happy celebration pictures. We called President and told him because we weren´t sure if we broke the elevator door and if it would cause problems and he laughed and said if it caused problems with stuff, he´d call us.

New Year´s Day was an impossible day of work, same with the 31st, everything closed and no one answers because everyone is either on the beach or with a bunch of family, but today we finally were able to go to a LAN House and send email and after this we can finally get to work, working hard. It will be a bit difficult because we are essentially starting from scratch, but we´re gonna get things done.

Fireworks are always crazy here. Between that and the fact the fan in our room is broken made it near impossible to sleep the first night of the New Year. It feels like it has been forever since Skype.

Love y’all,

Elder Mangum