Wooo Brazil

Dad's questions: 

Did you get some new shoes?  haha ummmmm......no.  But! I am trying to find a repair shop to repair my shoes...

How do you get around mostly – walking or bus?  walking, unless its to leave our area to go to church in corrêas or to go to centro to buy stuff or use internet.

Where do you get your hair cut? I cut my own hair cause the first hair cut I got in Brazil was literally the worst hair cut Ive ever had. he cut my side burn off entairly.... like my hair line started at my ear.... you best believe I walked away from that hair cut with the exact ammout of money I arrived with.

Sooo yeah this week was pretty strange. Yesterday we had stake confrence and the president went to our house to visit! And much to his suprise, when he walked in, the other missionaries were in the house grabbing their suits before the meeting! So yeah, Misses Cascardi wasnt too happy.... In fact she said shed call later to talk to us. So today we spent 3 hours straight cleaning and moving things around and throwing things in the trash. But now our house is more clean and Im not afraid to look under the beds and under the wardrobe. Haha

Also! We were on our way to lunch on like, Tuesday and Im in the back taking my time walking up this hugggee hill and I hear some dude saying ´´psstttt. pshsshshh!´´ So I look to my left and in the trees I see some shirtless old man with a big knife and mango all over his hands and I'm thinking, great this is how I'm gonna die, some old psycho is gonna kill me. And hes like ´´shhhhh`` with this goofy grin and points up into the trees. I look up and see like 8 or 9 little monkeys that are decending to eat mango from this dude's hand!!! I'm like ``NOOO WAAAYYY!" I drop my bag on the side of the road and whip out my camera and start taking pictures and hes like, here take some mango! So I put a litle mango in my hands and the monkeys are climbing down from above and are eating mango from my hand. I'm like, this is unreal. 

But yeah This week was pretty suave. Work as usual. Sooo heres a story that kinda describes Brazil...

So me and my comp are takin 5 eating açai watchin some guys skate around (cause my comp is obsessed with skating) and we see a cop car full of 4 cops show up. the two in front you can tell are well trained but the two in the back get out of the car and one of their huge automatic guns kinda fumble out of his hands and falls on the ground. instantly all the skaters start to laugh and the cops walk over there, ```WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHIN AT!!`` and the skaters are like, ´´nothing nothin, it was some other thing we were laughin at`` hahaha so the cop just slaps him outside the head. haha, long story short the kids didnt have any weed or any drugs so the cops left but they did hit every single one of those kids at least twice. Hahaa

Love you guys!!

Elder Hamm

Just another week na missão

Questions: Have you done any singing on your mission – like with a choir or quartet or anything? eh we did something in the CTM but other than that, nothing.

Does anyone speak English there? not really... everyone is trying to learn english and people who do speak it pretty well are embarressed because of their accent and dont really speak it to me. 

What do you eat for breakfast?  eggs. fried, boiled, omlet style with onion and cheese, fried and stuck between bread with cheese is good. but normally its eggs and some fruit I bought the night before... if I didnt eat all the fruit the night before. haha

Do they have “kings cake” for Carnival (and did you get the baby)? no, just a lot of alochol and beer. 

 

Sooooo something the church didnt know when they bought our house, is that the road Quisama is the main road for carnaval! So yeah for 4 nights straight starting at like 7 we had a party out side our house with music blasting and girls dancing and people drinking till like 4 in the morning. they closed off the road and everything. it was crazy! we had to go home at like 7 every day cause when festivites start we have drunks tuanting us and girls touching us and its just ugly and not safe for all the people taunting us, So for their own safty we were trapped inside our house evey night starting at 7. which kinda stunk but whatever. haha

 

But yeah Bruno is good hes recovering well, hes now left our area to go to his dads house :( but I think well leave to visit him some time. its like in the are of our zone leaders. 

 

but yeah we got a new elder in our house! Elder J!  My comp is still Elder C and I freakin love him.  It's a love hate like relationship, you know?  

 

we are teaching the Craziest lady this week and she literally is.... just freakin crazy. we already taught her 2 lesssons and one lesson was all about authoridade. authority to baptise and stuff. and I got to hand it to my comp cause normally when someone doesnt understand the first time he just saids, alright, can we pray before we leave? hha but we tried to explain this to her for like an hour and at the end I invited her to be baptised by someone who has the authority of god and shes like, ``be baptised in my church or your church?´´ and I just kinda look at my comp and he tries to explane it reallllllyyyyy slooowowwww for her and shes just like, i dont think im understanding very well... and im like WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU SPEAK!? CAUSE WERE BOTH SPEAKING PORTUGUESE!  

 

Oh this week we´ve been doing visits with S whos 15 and hes super sick. I ll send you a pic. he really doesnt say anything to anyone but me and Elder C and his mom and bro.Then this week we were going up this montian with literally 1,000 stairs to visit R whos a RC and hes awesome but hes already a less active. So its kinda the fevellas. or like the hood. so were climbing the stairs and a dude covered in tattoos smoking, heaven knows what, saids ``I like you guys, you guys arent (insert swear word in portugues here) like those other two who are too scared to take a bullet so they dont come up here.´´ I get this kinda puzzled look on my face and look at my comp who has the same look and we look at S who immediately does a 180 and starts to descend... hahaha we´re like, ``Is someone up here shooting off rounds that we should know about?´´ hahah but we literally know everyone in this mountion. everyone shouting elders! elder hamm! and they call elder c, Caio (kyle) cause thats his first name and he hatessss it. haha but all the little kids know us and all the moms and old guys so its pretty chill. they always run up and down the stairs with us yelling, ``when are we gonna fly a kite with us?! or play soccer!? haha its preetty cool. 

 

But yeah I love you guys!! miss you all so much! stay warm, I hear its freezing ahaha love you guys!

 

Elder Hamm

Carnival

Jacob had a crazy week, mostly because of transfers and Carnival in Brazil.  He was unable to email until Wednesday.  Then he just emailed family and just asked us to piece together some information for you all! 

TO JOSH:

haha man sorry this week was sooo crazy. the amount of mission work we did this week was an all time low. bro, the street we live on is the main street for carnaval so every freaking night there was a party out side our house man.
but we couldnt work cause we couldnt pass through carnaval without being spit on or mocked and me and my comp are both kinda itchin to fight someone. haha so we tried but the assistantes called and told us to stay in our house. haha so we watched some movies about the bible and some about the church 

TO DAD:

What is this?  A walk like Jacob contest?  (Nathan was clearly the winner.)  Tell nate hes lucky i wasnt there. 

I have some videos i want to pass to you guys, ask josh to make a family drop box. I think that'll work... yeah i warned Levi to stay away from family councils.... unless you have 4 hours of you life you don't mind wasting on stupid quotes from movies and inside jokes. haha

man this week was carnaval and transfers and this week was freakin crazyyyy man. I wish I could tell you guys all about it but I dont have alot of time.   I love you guys all is well and  I think ill have time to send you a long email next time. but man.... carnaval..... hahaha CRAZYYY

love you dad so much. miss you guys.

TO MOM: 

thats so awsome. good to know everything is well in home and im not fogotten hahaha 

yeah B isnt doin so good mom. he got in a fight at carnaval and someone stabbed him 8 times and beat on his head like a drum. we ran to the hospital when we found out and gave him a blessing.  for the most part the stab wounds were in the arm but he had one right below his jaw and one right next to his spine. he is one blessed guy. 

awww.. I love bro thomas. 

so I stopped eating so much candy and i am flossing and brushing EVEN THOUGH FLOSS COST ME 8 REAIS.

love you so much mom so much happened this week and im so sad that i dont have time to tell you all about carnaval and the craziness that happened but  I love you. i think this will be it. i sent a part to dad ask him for it and maybe you can post a little something on the blog. haha love you sooo much mom im so glad youre all doing well love you so much

Elder Hamm

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

It's the fruit

So yeah, Dads questions. I do like your questions because they remind  me of funny expierences that have happened and give me a chance to tell a story or to show you guys a little insite to my life as a missionary.

what is the best thing about summer in Brazil? The fruit. Hands down. There are so many mango trees that have little mangos the size of my fist and we just pick them and eat them as we go. There is so much fruit trees here and just things to eat while youre walking. Its pretty sweet. 

 

You said you eat lots of beans and rice – are they always the same or is there a variety? So its like this. In Rio most people use Black beans which is thick and have a really strong flavor. I like the Menas type of beans which is like a brown beans and I think its less strong more flavorful. 

But yeah so every Sunday we have the sacrament where they break the bread and we eat it to renew our covenanats of baptism and take part of the atonemnt of Jesus Christ. So last sunday the pieces of bread they gave us where... well lets just say Ive eaten dounuts smaller than that bread. I was passing it out to the congragation and at one point I was lost as to who had gotten it and who still needed it, but as I glanced around the 50 people congragation I noticed the first person I gave the bread to, was still trying to chew and swallow so that was kinda a nice clue as to who still needed it. Im serious! they were like the size of dinner rolls! Im not gonna complaine it was great bread but seriously!! They were hugeeee!

So you guys cant even fathom how exausted I was this week. So we have this investigator who is a sister of a recent convert we love and go to her house at most 4-5 times a week (when i get on the computer during the week its because im at her house). So her sister was moving to live in the house next to her... only her house is on top of a hill with about 400 meters of stairs. With a incline of about every 10 steps your at head level. So yeah we had to hall ALL OF HER STUFF UP THAT FREAK STAIR CASE. Then because she wants to do some work on her house, we hauled all the freakin cement and all the sand and tile and bricks up those stairs as well. with us 4 missionaries and her son, it took about 3-4 hours. Yeah needless to say that service project stopped our missionary work for at least the rest of the day. haha

But yeah im doin good. The internet was down in all of petropolis and I wasnt sure if i was gonna have time to get on and email...but dont worry. haha Love you guys so much miss you guys. 

Elder Hamm

And then there was one....

Everytime I look at this freakin dog I laugh so hard.  haha  We knocked this door and this dog came runnin over and he just sat there smiling at us.  not growling or anything just smiling.  it almost looked painful. hahaha me and my comp laughed for a good 10 minutes at this dog smiling.

So yeah My brother Josh is home now from his mission and its pretty tough being the lone wolf in the fam bam now still out here serving God and stuff but you know what they say... *insert cheesey quote here* How inspiriational. 

So this week I was pretty freaking sick for a day. I was up all night throwing up and dry heaving and such but luckily it was slightly drizzling and in a part of our house, where we hang our clothes, we don't have a roof so I sat in the rain for a while just kinda laying there dead till my comp got up to go to the bathroom and started freakin out cause I wasnt in my bed. Haha so yeah that great but in the morning it was work as usual. 

Work as usual... not really sure why because NO ONE HERE IN PETROPOLIS IS LOOKING FOR JESUS! We knock doors all week long and ask for references and work with the area book and everything and NO ONE wants to listen to us. 

So we got a call from the President yesterday saying that we need to kinda change up our game plan. Funny how God works cause we had already had a plan to change things up we just didnt know how. 

So the presidente said that we need to only knock doors for like 2-3 hours a day and the rest of the time work with members. we need to try to stop working so much with our own force and start getting the members to bring people to church, get them to hand out Book of Mormons (or Books of Mormon ;) ) 

So you guys remember Freddi the dog? He spent the night in our house the other day. Haha we were visiting a lady wayyyy on top of a mountain and Freddi followed us all the way home which is like a 30 minute walk. 

We kept trying to get him to go home but he kept on running ahead then waiting for us then running ahead again. Im not even gonna try to hide the fact that I loved it and it was awesome. 

this is a spider I had a bad dream about right after I took the picture 

So we get home and Freddi is wagging his tail next to us and all 4 of us needed to go to Bramil (the grocery store thats super big in Rio, also right next to our house) so we try to enter but Freddi just walks right in following us like he's some human. Haha so we try to ditch him outside and we think it works untill we're in the milk section and we see Freddi with those crazy eyes come screetching around the corner with 3 workers chasing him. All four of us just bust out laughing and explain that we'll wait outside with him while the other 2 missionaries buy some stuff. 

So we let him into our house and he just kinda collapsed on the floor and when we got up the next morning he was still there so when we left at 10:30 we opend the gate that leads to our house and he took off on the path towards home. 

but yeah that was my week hopefully next week will be more fun. This week we have plans to fly a kite with some less active kids in our ward. Everyone flies kites here its crazy and just like in the book ``The Kite Runner`` they all are battling with their kites trying to cut others and its super sick cause you can always look up and see at least 10 kites battling it out. so yeah

I love you all so much and Im kinda sad I cant be home for Josh to welcome him home but its all good. thats life right? Love you guys,

The only current,

Elder Hamm

Pretty Sweet

this is me and freddi.  He's super sick and has super cool eyes. 

So this week was pretty sweet. so we're living in a house with 4 missionaries thats really meant for 2 so its pretty cozy to say the least.

To start as always, Questions from my dad,

what is your favorite hymn? Hmmm dont really have one they are all pretty sweet

Do you eat meals with members?  What do they feed you? Is it dinner or lunch? Weeelllll its like this, most days they sit us infront of a television and us 4 missionaries just eat and joke and laugh and its a gay ol time. Sundays we always eat with the families cause its Sunday and we always have rice, beans, some chicken or beef, and fruit juice to drink. We always have rice and beans but some days when its like 39-40 degrees out side its super hard to eat hot rice and beans. Haha I dont think Ill ever get used to that.

So this week I managed to convince the bishop that I dont speak a LICK of portuguese. we were in the car on the way to church sunday and he was joking with my comp about giving a talk on sunday and my comp (who never hesitates to throw the whole world under the bus) suggested that the other two Elders sing a duet because they love to sing (which is a complete lie). So they laugh and then he saids that Elder Hamm should give a talk because he's more new to the area. So the bishop says ``oh no lets give Elder Hamm some more time, we know that he struggles with portuguese´´ and everyone in the car kinda just looks at me and in the thickest accent I said ``Eu saber como falar muito bem. Eu ter a capacidade para falar muito bom muito bem.´´ and everyone in the car just busts out laughing and the bishops like ``yeah we´ll give him some more time.

So now every time he tries to talk to me I just dont congagate anything and use my american accent. hahah

This week was also kinda interesting and just kinda shows you never know whos counting on you. So we needed to talk to the assistants to the pres this week about something I dont remember, so Elder C calls them up and jokingly the first thing he says is ``Man I cant stand Elder Hamm I need to be transfered this week.´´ And Elder G (assistant to the prez) who I know pretty well cause he was in my last zone and hes super chill was like, ``what?! You have got to be kidding me?? What could you possibly be fighting with Elder Hamm about??´´

 And I was just a little taken back, in a good way, that he knew that I was a pretty chill person and he had confidence that I wouldnt really cause any problems with Elder C.  So that was cool. 

But yeah so this week we were teaching this middle aged lady and shes like you guys dont believe in God and as it says in the bible in Matthew 6:24 ``No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mormón.´´
And both me and my comp exchange glances like, what is this?! My comps like, ``where is this scripture? Geez Senhora if this scripture exists I will rip off my name tag right now and join your church.´´ So we open up the scriptures to this chapter and she reads it and just looks at us. She still doesnt get it, so we're like, read it again. So she does. And im like read it ONE MORE TIME but this time focus on the last word.... So this time she reads it and when she gets to the end shes like ``Mammon.... ohhhhhh´´ and things got really awkward hahah but it was funny.

So yeah the mish is pretty sick, Im gonna be honest out of our district leader and his comp and me and my comp, Im the only one awake at 6:30 untill really like 8-8:30ish. Haha Its not so bad but yeah thats how my week's going. Hope Josh is enjoying being home!! Its crazy to think that hes finishing his mission like Right now but hey thats life. just 2 more years and Ill be home!! haha love you guys

Elder Hamm