Update

this is presidente d who is the second counsler in the stake presidência who lives up the street from us and we have family night in their house evey sunday cause we love them. 

What do you wear most days when you go out working – long sleeves or short?  Are you crazy? Sister cascardi made a new rule that you cant roll up your sleeves so I almost always work with short sleeves. I only wear long sleeves sunday cause it looks better with a suit

How do you pick out which tie to wear?  Its basicly how im feelin that day. But I try to wear them all before repeating. You know how it is.

What is something that many people have on the walls in their homes? hmmm I dont really understand the question but some people have those statues of saints to worship? or photos? Haha

Soooo Elder Costa!! We got to hear him and I really learned a lot about how I can better myself and better my teaching abilites. I got a really strong testimony that despite our falts and our weaknesses, God will still call us to do his work because we have things that other people need, be it, knowledge, teaching ability, a good atidude, ext...

This week was pretty good. It was hard to work and have some good results cause really we only worked thursday friday and saturday because we had to travel to Petropolis and then the LZ´s had to do some interview in Itatia so I went with Matos to do the interview so Cruz could work in our area and Jardime in their area. It was cool. 

buttt yeah sadly I have to go but I llove you guys!! miss you guys so much!!

Love, 

Elder hamm

Hump Day

Questions: 
How did the nail wounds in your hand heal up?  Suppppper sick. Haha but really it healed up nicely. 

Where do people go on vacation there? cabo frio, Angra dos Reis (man that place is sick just to look at the pictures of crystal clear beach waters)  

How often do you eat at members homes?  Here we eat lunch amost every day at a members house. Only like 3 times por week we receive money to buy things and eat in our house. 

Do you burn shirts at your hump day? I dont burn anything... actually thats a lie. But I dont burn anything of value because I am my fathers son and my dad doesnt like anything to go to waste. haha BUUTTT I do have some shirts that have permanant stains and one has a hole that I stitched shut so it looks like a bullet hit me and so yeah I might just burn a shirt at 1 year. Haha speaking of shirts I might have to buy some more because they are all stained with literally all sorts of stuff. 

You know cause in the moment I always try to help people like I see some old lady trying to cut down bananas and im like, "oh can I help?" (mainly because it looks super cool and kinda a challenge to cut them down) and theyll say "no youre in such nice clothes, youll get all dirty!" and thats when I say something I probably shouldn't like "senhora If I go home clean I feel like I didnt even leave the house to work that day." or "Do you think that Jesus went home every day, without a speak of dirt on his shoes?" and thats why all my shirts have stains. And another thing, Im not even ashamed of my stains! but really I think im gonna buy some more clean shirts. haha especially since on wednesday ill be seeing a member of the quorum of 70.

So yeah this week was good, you guys remember that green parrot from my last email? So we went over to their house again this week (they live wayyy in the boonies but we had someone to teach) and I was messing around with this parrot. So I put my finger on the edge of the cage and this dude sneakly comes over and pecks it. so I was kinda startled so I let out a "woooah" and whipped my finger back. So this parrot literally starts laughing like one of the most cynical laughs ever. Haha so I start playing with him and every time that he pecked my finger I would let out a little scream. So the dad calls my name and I look over and right when Im not looking this parrot bites my finger and hunks a chunk off! And then starts laughing!!! Hahaha so now I have a little hole in my finger from a parrot. 

So monday we played ball at O's house and her husband who passed away was a soccer player for flemango and then a famous doctor here in Barra Mansa so she has lets just say money to blow. So we get there and shes not even home. but we see this guy bbqing some food and hes like if you guys wanna eat now you can or you guys can play ball first. haha She payed some guys to cook food for us. Then we played some soccer and invited him to play. it was super sick. she had a pool too and it was SO freakin hard not to jump into that pool. but we played with water balloons so that was cool. 

So wednesday at night I will go back to my old area Cascatinha to sleep there for one night!! Then on Thursday I will listen to elder Claudio R.M. Silva give a talk to us about missionary work in Correas. so that should be sick. 

We also had a ward party for Junina! its basically like a country fest. haha its super awesome and we had a booth that was all about missionary work and we handed out 7 books of mormon and like 8 packages of the pass along cards. its freakin sweet Ill send you guys some photos. but I love you guys!! miss you guys lots!!! 

Also O and L are the two super nice kinda old ladies who keep putting photos of us on Facebook! we have a family night with them every sunday at like 5ish then they make us a dinner ish thing and dessert cause they live all alone and their granddaughters who live near them like the missionaries and arent members. Haha so basicly their freakin sweet and I love them ahha

so on the 23rd we have plans to stop working around 7ish and to go celebrate my 1 year. haha we have like 5 people from the ward and 2 of our investigators who will be baptized hopefully next saturday who are gonna party with us. hahah love you guys!! 

Elder Hamm

Missing Peanut Butter

What do you find that you don’t miss at all that you thought you would miss before you went on your mission?  hmm well theirs a lot of things I thought I wouldNT miss that Im missing...? Like peanutbutter. 

You said more people in your new area have cars, how are the drivers there?  They drive like they drive in India.. crazy. Motors swerving in and out of lanes and really with whatever rules they want. haha

 What music is on the radio there – do you hear US music as you walk around? They like Funk here its like super explicit with the same beat but they also like songs in english so I hear a lot of popular music on the streets here. 

Sooo lets start off with last monday, so right after we left the house we went over to the second counselor in the stake presidency and we had bbq! haha it was super good but a little different than the US. I´ll send you a pic. 

Then we went wayyyy out into the boonies for lunch this week and when we got there this family (who thinks im gonna marry their daughter who gets home from her mission in 20ish days) has a bunch of land and a parrot that talks like crazyyy.  its sick so its like 2 hours walking to get there so we take a bus. The only problem is that the only bus that passes there passes at like 11 and then again at 3 in the afternoon so we were there for 3 ish hours. so we visited some of their neighbors and stuff. haha but it was way sick i´ll show you guys a pic.

Then we also Baptized a lady who has 83 years!! Shes super awesome and the missionaries have been working with her for about a year and she just felt like she wasnt ready. So one day we were over there and she was talking to us about something random and I was already feeling like crap cause I was sick and stuff so I just wanted to go in on her and the spirit kinda hit me in the back of the head and was like, listen and you might learn something. So I kinda sat up and started listening to what she was saying and she was talking about a dream she had about a man in white and some big gates and stuff and in that moment I just started explaining that the man in white was my companion waiting to baptize her and that the gates are the gates of heaven and stuff and I just started to interpret
her dream just going off the promptings of the spirit. it was suppper sick and super spiritual. so yeah 

But yeah this week were going over to a hugggge house for pday to play some ball and chill out and stuff. The lady there is like 70 and lives alone in a mansion so this should be fun, well do some exploring and take some pictures. haha love you guys!! miss you all tons

Elder Hamm

Another Sprint

A former missionary visiting the area texted this picture to Mom,
"Just had family night with your son.  He's loving the mission, he's a hard worker,
and I really enjoyed getting know him in the mission!" 

When is the Brazilian independence day?  September 7th is their independence day. But my comp told me they dont really go crazy cause Theres no patriotism like American patriotism!

You said you were on a bus last week – is that how you get around your area most the time?  Do many members have cars? Man we were working like CRAZY last week but we had some really good results. Most of the time we walk cause the busses here are like 3,50 which is just stupid expensive. if were going to an area thats within 40 minutes of walking and want to take a bus, it would be cheaper to take a taxi. But our area is pretty big, the River divides our area, the LZ´s have one side and we have the other, thats slightly smaller but still pretty big. Its goes from Vista Alegre, till Presidente Vargras. 


Sooooo this week was still a dead sprint. But we had some good results. Something funny about this area is that I see some really large people. In Cascatinha there was no one fat cause everyone lived waaayyy up these stairs but here its all flat and i´d say about half the people here have cars (which is a lot).  

But yeah, let me just tell you about my favorite place in my area. Its called Villa Delgado. Its basicilly the most dangerous place here in Volta Redonda. Its next to the main road but theres one street in front, A bunch of houses with narrow hallways to the street behind all the houses, a little dirt then the Rio Paraíba.  So why do I love it so much? Because it started with one person we were teaching there and then we started teaching her brothers and sisters then they all invited their friends to see the American talk about Jesus and then one day we were there and I was talking to my comp and I was like, "C, I´ll give you 20 Reais if you grab one of those chickens." (there were like 20 chickens by the side of the street and the other side was the river) And C is like, "yeah right I´ll give you 40 if you grab one." So we gave our lessons and me and 4 of the kids there started trying to grab a chicken and before I knew it we had like 20 kids all running after chicken trying to grab one! So we became friends with all the little kids there and all the people there so its a neighborhood that I feel welcomed by everyone but the police which enter with guns raised every day, most days they´ll enter 4 or 5 times looking for drugs or money. OH mom I also adopted a dog here that I´m bringing home with me. hes a mix but super sick dog. I´ll send a pic next week.

But yeah this week we were able to Re-activate a mom and baptise her son C! Her other son is 7 but he said that when hes ready to be baptised he wants me to baptize him! Haha The big guy in the photo is my bishop and the guy next to me is Elder M. hes my LZ whos super chill and super awesome. The white elder next to C is J who is also super sick. We got a lotta love in our house. Haha but yeah This week was great and next week will be great too. We have a lady we already prepared for baptism but shes 83 and our water heater is out of gas so if we dont get some gas in the church before saturday shes literally gonna die in the font. So we´ll see how that goes. but yeah I love you guys!! miss you all so freakin much I´ll send some pics but you cant yell at me to cut my hair cause im gonna cut it tomorrow or this weekish. actually one of my investigators will cut my hair. but love you guys!!!

Elder Hamm