Elder Cooper Siebers has been called to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He will serve for 24 months in the Brazil, Rio de Janeiro mission. He enters the Provo, Utah Missionary Training Center on 10 July 2013.

Monday, January 6, 2014

26. Madureira, Rio de Janeiro

6 January 2014

It has been a pretty calm week for us here in Madureira. The first half of the week was really difficult becuase of the new year festivities. Everyone started partying, dancing and drinking at about 5pm on the 31st and all through the 1st and then everyone disappeared off the face of the Earth on the 2nd (in order to recover from 36 hours of partying I'm sure)

We joined Junior, Daniella, Marlene, Octavo. Cosmo. Gabriella, for new years. (the same crew who had us over for Christmas) They are the holiday crew and we had a blast. Junior (our ward mission leader) took us to "Demas e Divas" and or "Dames and Divas" for lunch. It was a super nice restuaraunt that was very American. We order two huge platters of Ribs. Chicken Wings, Fries, Onion rings and Tater Tots... it. was. sooooo. goooooood! (photos to come)

We then went to Jrs for dinner as well and had a nice pig feast!

We spent those first few days contacting a bunch of referrals we had received and we made appointments for them all later in the week. Then they ALL fell though. Its pretty frustrating...

Friday night I'd have to say was the highlight of the week as far as teaching goes. The story begins a few weeks ago when a young woman stopped us on the street and told us that she is a member of the c\Church and the only one in her family. Her father lives really close to us and she's here visiting and studying here for the next month or so. On Friday she invited us over for a lesson with her father, Jesus. The lesson went pretty well, I dont know how much he accepted what was taught but it was still really good. It was a really cool experience though because as the four of us were sitting there I just thought how cool it was that four people from 4 different places with 4 very different accents were all talking about the Restoration of the Gospel. Jesus has lived here in Rio for 23 years, She (Silvia) is from Bolivia and speaks spanish, but she has learned portuguese over the past year, Elder P is from Alacaju where the accent is very different and I'm super Gringo. Yet we were all communicating just fine. Way cool. Silvia even made us dinner for afterwards and it was a swell time.



Saturday went mostly well. Things got a little frustrating when we brought a Sister of the ward with us for a lesson with a member, which we´ve been struggling to have... It was bold for Elder P to invite her because we didn't have anything set in stone but we had a good number of people to visit so I thought it would be ok. We tried 7.. count it 7 different places. 5 homes of investigators and 2 less actives and NO one was home... or just didnt want to answer for us, but I don't think that was the reason. It was really disapointing and we had to send the sister on her way after she walked about a mile to get to the place we were... Yeah that hurts.

Other than that, all is well. Elder Prado has been really occupied with trying to fix our hot night situations. Currently we move our mattresses into the main room where we have ventilation and I plop the Chillydana on my face and all is well. I'm still getting bitten but that's ok I guess. There are several blood stains on my sheets because either the Mosquitos start sucking and then I twitch and the blood oozes out or I roll over them in my sleep and pop them. I dont know which is more likely but it's pretty humorous. We got permission to search for a new home in our area, but I really do like our house. Its in a fundos (I think I explained FUNDOS earlier, it literally means "deep" but here it refers to a house that goes deeper than you see. We have a door on the road that's locked, then we walk into the "fundos" turn the corner and there are six small houses in a small courtyard. Very safe because we have two locked doors and our house isnt visible from the street.)  Also, the Bishop has been trying to hook us up with an AC all week so we'll have to see what happens.

Alrighty, I think this upcoming week is going to be swell, we have some good stuff planned!

Lova ya'll


Elder Siebers

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