Burger King…I walked in and it smelled like America!

January 27, 2014

I know how Jordan (boy in our branch serving in Brazil) feels! haha I’m always scared the cars are going to hit me too.. but I was more scared in the US right after I got hit by that car at BYU.. but I hope all will be well with him. 

So we took a video of us trying to get the rat out of my bag with our brooms.. I’ll see if I can send it, haha. He’s a monster.. he’s smart too. This week we placed this industrial rat trap in our kitchen. Elder Ricks had it. So we put some of my peanut butter on the trap and I guess the rat set off the trap and moved out of the way before it killed him... and after that he ate the peanut butter.. we’re still working out the kinks, but our house is almost rat free. 

Sounds like it feels like death there.. Sometimes here people say “oh its cold out today...” but it’s still like at least 90 degrees, haha. If there’s a cloud in front of the sun people feel cold here. 

Shane’s mission sounds pretty crazy (Paris, France)... but I laugh every time I read his stories, haha. On the bright side, I’m sure he’s starting to understand people pretty well by now. 

So this week we had our interviews in the office in downtown Fortaleza. I took some pictures I’ll try to send. The highlight was going to Burger King after... I walked in and it smelled like America. The only down side was everything is double the price at Burger King in Brazil, but I’m not complaining because the closet thing we have to Burger King in our area is the guy that grills on the sidewalk and sells meat on a stick.. which is actually really good. 

Mmmmm!  Burger King!

 
O also this week the elders quorum had an activity on Friday. Nothin like a good traditional Brazilian activity. On the table next to the grill there was at least 50 gigantic steaks and like 50 sausages. There was so much meat haha. It was so good. And after that everyone (except us) played soccer (the missionaries aren't allowed to play soccer due to the possibility of injury). It was fun to watch... They put all the Americans to shame. They are so good haha, It’s crazy. The kids here play like all day every day.... either playing football or flying kites.. I’m still not sure when they have school, but it seems like the kids are always running around in the streets here. 

I hope May and Jackson figure out there plans... but if not, maybe I’ll get back before the wedding haha. I’ll try to send some pictures today...try.. we’ll see how it goes, haha. Have a good week. Don´t forget to give the missionaries references ;) até mais!  - Com Amor, Élder Udy

We added a new animal to the house...

January 20, 2014

So this week we had our very first baptisms... They grow up so fast, and before you know it, you have to find new people to teach haha.. It was a good day though.. I’ll try to send pictures one of these days but today I have like no time cuz we had to fill out a questionaire too. And after doing that and writing the mission pres. in Portuguese (boa sorte) the time goes quick, haha.  

So this week we added a new animal to the house. His name is Stewart, probably weighing about 7 pounds. He’s a monster rat. The first time we saw him was when Elder Chaves was walking in the bathroom. he opens the door and screams, and then we see this rat that’s the size of a guinea pig climb into the toilet and swim away down the toilet.. ya weird ik... but don’t worry, he came back. We found him again today... when I opened my suitcase to get a shirt he was just chillin there on top of my peanut butter... so then we tried to get him to leave the suitcase by hitting it with our brooms... because no one wants to get close to a rat that’s the size of a loaf of bread.. but eventually we got him to leave and Elder Ricks was going to try and kick him and kill him, but he’s a fast little guy, and he got the best of us when he ran away.  But don’t worry.. We have rat traps. 

Also we had a mega p-day at the church today. The youth from our ward invited like all the youth from the stake.. or at least that’s what it felt like... there were like 30 people there and we played water ballon volley ball and brazillian dodge ball and basketball and other stuff. It was a good time. 

Water Balloon Volleyball

Pizza dinner

     I can’t believe that Carlino isn’t starting. It seemed like Coach Rose never liked him.. I still think he’s one of their best players though. I cant believe I’m hearing so much talk about marriages, it’s pretty wild. Im gonna try to watch the videos that Jackson sent me, hopefully if I have time. We’re excited for the package. :))))))) Dont forget to send letter ;) ok I gotta go, tenha um boa semana! I’ll try to write more next week!  
     O one more thing.. remember that lady that wears the plastic bags and had all the writting on her arms... she came into the church during our baptismal meeting and I think she was trying to tell me something about the bottle she had in her hands, but i dont know.. I was really confused.. Sorry if that didn’t make much sense, but I don’t have much time.  Ate próxima semana! -

Elder Udy

Peter (the bird)... flew away

Jan, 13, 2014

Hahahaha I laughed pretty hard at Shane’s story.. reminds me of this week I was walking down the sidewalk talking with Elder Lima, you know trying to be spiritually uplifted and all, and as we were talking part of the sidewalk broke under my foot and my leg fell in this like 1 and 1/2 foot hole in the side walk. I guess apparently in Brazil they don’t have septic tanks, they just have hidden streams under the sidewalks filled with... ya anyway it was a rough walk back to the apartment.. good thing I have more than one pair of shoes haha. 

I can’t believe dad sold the truck for $13000! That’s crazy haha all my friends always joked about that truck being overpriced, haha. That’s awesome tho, that’s alot of money. 

And the members here were telling me about how cold it is there, haha. They couldn’t believe it was that cold. They were telling me about how New York set a record for coldest day ever.. well I think they said something like that haha some people are pretty hard to understand still, but I feel like I’m fluent when I talk with the other missionaries haha its quite a difference.

And don’t worry we get fed every day for lunch here.. And they make us eat all their food haha so it’s a good deal and some of the members will unexpectedly bring piles of food to our house at night haha. It’s good stuff. So keep feeding those missionaries haha, They’ll love you for it. A meatlovers pizza sounds pretty good right now. 

Ok so my companion is prob like a medium.. he’s skinnier than me up top, like shoulder area, but he has a missionary belly so... medium should be fine haha and I appreciate the concerns about the cockroaches haha, but I don’t think that spray exists here... we just kill them with our sandals.. I’ve just accepted that they’ll crawl on me when I’m sleeping every now and then, but it’s all good haha it’ll be fine. 

I went on an exchange with the zone leader this week and while I was there I guess the missionaries in our house put Peter (the bird) in a box and moved him outside and he flew away?? I’m still not understanding it tho. Why did he sit on our window sill for 3 days without food or water if he could fly the whole time haha idk but anyways, I’ll try to send some pictures this week. Até mais! Tchau, Com Amor -Elder Udy

This is what happend when my companion asked me to play futbol with him with an orange that the members gave us, haha. 

This week we tried "inspired tracking."

Jan. 6, 2014

Nooossa sounds like an interesting week there.. I laughed really hard at the hunting story haha. I can’t believe Bandit ran off 3 times! haha o Bandit, but at least you got a bird finally! haha that sounds fun.

I had to read the thing about Jackson and May like 4 times, haha. I couldn’t believe it! That’s exciting, haha so romantic on New Year’s Eve... probably about the same time I was trying to sleep, but couldn’t because here on New Year’s Eve everyone likes to be as loud as possible so the missionaries can’t sleep... not literally just for the missionaries.. but its sooooo loud on that night, haha, everybody just blasts music and screams and goes nuts all night.. There were some people in front of our house revving their motorcycles for like an hour... I think they just enjoy being loud on New Year’s Eve,  haha. I still can’t believe they’re getting married though.. tell Jackson I said parabéns, e boa sorte porque depois ele é casado, ele provavelmente não vai ter tempo com amigos, mas ele vai estar com mutio feliz. Eu não posso acreditar nisso.

     It sounds like the basketball team gets worse every year haha. I cant believe the coach doesn’t sit on the end anymore... I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. That’s really weird, haha... only 14 ppl! thats like... half of what there was before... Not quite, but still thats like no one. O man its going downhill, haha. And they have shoes the color of pepto bismal?  I guess that’s better than the shoes we had that made my feet bleed every game. Good to hear you sat by my friends, haha. I hope they’re doing good.

     So Fortaleza is super hot like all the time.. we have  a couple investigators that will be baptized this week, we hope :) We're meeting lots of people... this week me and Elder Lima did this thing to find more people called “inspired tracting.” We started by praying for awhile about what we’re gonna do, for example when we are going to tract like what hours that day, and we asked for direct inspiration where we should go so we could find people that would be present during these hours when we were tracting, so we could find people that are ready to hear about the restored gospel. So after we prayed for a while I took out this map of our area while Elder Lima kept praying for me to be inspired, and I picked like 8 roads in our area that I felt were right and wrote them down, and after that me and Elder Lima looked at the list of 8 roads and prayerfully made a personal list of 4 or 5 each and wrote them down. After this we compared lists and had some of the same roads, so then we prayed some more and we both felt like we should go to this 1 road 23 de Junho. So we went there and we were talking to everyone trying to show our faith to God. We knew that this was the road where he sent us to find someone so we were trying to find that person, and we got some contacts and taught a couple lessons but nothing amazing. So we were kinda wondering why we felt so inspired to go there, if we didn’t find anyone who was really ready to hear our message about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. So the next day we came back to talk with one of the contacts we had, and we discovered that they were the family the Lord sent us to find. They were all just nodding their heads the whole time we were talking about the restoration and something really cool was the mom of the family received a Book of Mormon less than a week ago from one of her friends in a different area. So we were pretty pumped about the inspiration we received.

     So I have a few other stories too, so apparently our house is like the arc becuase animals are just coming in every day.. we had a lizard on our wall the other day.. I had a cockroach climbing on my foot in the middle of the night like 2 nights ago (I still have trouble sleeping becuase I’m afraid another one will climb up my leg), we still have Brucey the bat.. and now we have a parakeet that lives literally inside our window. I’ll send you some pictures.

Elder Chaves named him Peter cuz he looks like Peter Pan haha. So in the package Dad wanted you to send me my pocket knife, and more food wouldn’t hurt :) So that’s about all I got for now.. Tenha um semana boa! Feliz Ano Novo!

Elder Udy

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