Bear

Bear

Are there a lot of dogs there?  Have you been attacked by dogs? why yes there are a lot of dogs, just the other day me and my comp got chased down at least 100 stairs by a dog that looked like a bear. 

 Do they have hot dogs?  Are they as good as the American version? They do have hot dogs but what they do is chop them up and put them in a tomate sauce kinda like chilly and you put that on a hot dog bun and eat it. Its pretty freakin good haha

So speakin of bearsss... I have a puppy for you guys! Ronald (pronunced honal-g thats a hard g at the end) has a dog that had puppies!!! so he said I could have one and I named him Bear and I will take him to the US when I come home. But maybe not. 

So this week was actually pretty sad. We had a member pass away this week. she had been fighting cancer for a while and was already in recovery when I got here. 

I went to her house my first day in the area to visit her and she was laying in a bed trying to recover from chemo and she saw me and said, ``Oh new Elder! No way he will see me when Im sick, so I will sit up and give you one smile.´´

I could literally see it took all of her energy to sit up in that bed and give me one big smile, shake my hand, and say, ``seja bem-vindo Elder.´´

So we visited her almost every other day and her son Bruno was taking care of her. he has 24 years and she also has a daughter with 11 years who was at her friends house because her mom wanted her to enjoy the end of her vacation.

We were eating lunch sunday and we recieved a call that she had passed away and it kinda killed the mood. Then we recieved another call from Bruno saying that shes still alive and that the person who sent out the message was misinformed so we finish eating and hurry over to the upa or hospital where the nurse tells us that she just passed away and Bruno hadnt known yet. 

So we go over to Bruno's house, which was the longest walk of my life, and we walk in and just see him sitting on her bed looking out the window. I went over to him and was lost for words. I tried to say something like, im sorry, but when I put my hand on his shoulder, he just looked up at me with tears in his eyes and we both just kinda lost it. I dont know who was crying harder, me or him but we hugged and he gave me a kiss on the cheek (which is normal in brazil) and just said, ``its okay Elder, God has a plan.´´ 

The funeral was today and it really registered with him when he saw his mom in the casket. It was really hard seeing her go and him in so much pain but God really does have a plan. And she was in a lot of pain here and I know, where she is right now. I know what shes doing. And I know shes happy. 

So yeah thats it with the sad news. Now with the week!

So we did splits this week and we actually had to do 3 splits because I was the only other American in our district and we have a elder here with 5 weeks in the field who doesnt really wanna learn portuguese or really try to speak the language, and the comp of our DL wasnt confident that he could teach a whole lesson by himself, so I went with him. 

It was good, we taught 4 lessons, 2 inside of houses and even marked a baptismal date! so that was good.

Ill be honest, being with him didnt really make me look forward to training a new missionary who doesnt speak the language but at one point in time that was me so I guess what goes around comes around right? Haha

So yeah thats about it for the week! Ill send you the pictures of the puppy and try to send some others. Im trying to take more pictures because I like pictures but it takes like 5 minutes to load one and I can only send pictures one at a time which is pretty annoying so yeah. Love you guys!!

Elder Hamm