Elder Devin Harris' Mission in Natal Brazil: Two months...it's gone by super fast and super slow!

Well I´m writing to you guys on the two month mark of my mission. It has seemed to go by super fast and super slow at the same time. So this week was pretty good. We lost electricity in our apartment for a day because no one paid the bills haha so we had to go pay some people and call some people and they got it taken care of. But for that one day it was tough... I even had to take a... wait for it.... Cold shower! Man, the kind of problems you face being out here! The struggle is real! So I´ve never even told you guys about the water here. So the water straight out of the tap is absolutely disgusting. When we fill up the baptismal font you can´t see the bottom because it´s so green. But the good thing about the water being so gross is that even the locals would probably die if they drank it so everyone has the mineral water dispenser things like they used to have in class rooms back in the day in the elementary school. So the odds of accidentally drinking bad water is pretty slim.

So this week we had a Zone Conference in Caicó which was pretty good. It´s cool to see the American missionaries that have been out for a while talking in fluent Portguese, it brings hope haha. So Currais Novos where I´m serving hasn´t received any rain in 4 years now. It´s kind of ridiculous if you ask me. Their reservoir has dried up completely. So now rather than being a fun and enjoyable place for water activities it just serves as a short cut for me and my comp to walk out to the bairros through haha. I feel like Moses walking through the Red Sea... except it´s kind of not as cool because there isn´t water all around or people chasing us. But other than that it´s exactly the same right? We had a mission wide fast for rain this yesterday so we´ll see what happens. Haha so I feel compelled to tell you guys about one of the best things about my mission. Every night we walk past this pretty ghetto food shack thing but they have these meat shishkabobs that are absolutely unreal. They´re so good! And they´re only $1 Real each so they´re way cheap. They´re literally the best thing that has happened so far on the mission and quite possibly in my life. Except for like baptizing people and bringing eternal salvation to them. But the meat shishkabobs are definitely a close second!

So me and my comp were walking and we saw a guy having car troubles on the side of the road so we offered to help and we tried push starting it like 5 times but it wouldn´t start so he popped the hood and started sucking on the tube that goes to the carburetor to try to get gas to it but didn´t realize that she should stop when the gas gets close to the end so he ended up with a mouth full of gas which then led to him throwing up.. So here me and my companion are nonchalantly watching this guy throwing up and acting like nothing is happening. Then he finished and we all laughed about it. We ended up pushing his car to his house. And we´ve been teaching him a little bit. His wife died and he doesn´t believe in God but believes that he´ll be able to see his wife again someday. So we´ve been teaching him about the Plan of Salvation and hopefully we can get through to him.

So in our mission we try to do at least 20 contacts per day. Which just means we find people and tell them who we are and invite them to church and whatnot. So that gets kind of boring so we figure out new techniques to do it. The people here absolutely love the English language. They think it´s one of the most pure and beautiful languages there are. It´s kind of like how when a British person talks to an American girl her heart just melts. Well it´s kind of a similar effect when you speak English to a Brazilian girl even though they can´t understand you. So to get people´s attention I´ll start out and go full on English and pretend like I can´t speak Portuguese at all and then the people will just like start to laugh and I progressively get better and better at Portuguese as the conversation goes on. It´s hilarious. It´s gets people´s attention more and they´re more friendly that way haha. Then they all have taken their English classes in school so they´ll ask me what my name is and how old I am and then some other random phrase they´ve learned in English. There´s nothing better than speaking a whole conversation with someone and not having to stop and ask what something means. You walk away like... That´s what´s up! And you feel like you´re the champion of the world. That doesn´t happen very often though haha.

So I found out that we had a ping pong set up in our apartment so I got everything out and we now have a ping pong table haha. We didn´t have a ball at first but Elder Chagas has a roll on deodorant so we took the ball out of that and played with it until we bought real ones haha. Don´t worry we still get work done haha. I´m just keeping my skills in check so when I get home I can keep dominating Taggart, Trey, and Dad in ping pong. I would say Kierstin but she never really had a chance against me ;) JK haha I love you guys! Especially you Kierstin ;) Have a great week! The Church is true!

Elder Devin Harris