I'm now a vampire!

October 23rd

I have officially completed my first transfer in the field! That went by very quickly. Also Elder Alcantara is staying! I'm so happy you have no idea!

We also got another baptism! This week was Paulo. He works a lot so it was hard to teach him sometimes but other than that we didn't really have any other problems. He was really receptive. The people here are crazy. They get baptized within 2 weeks most of the time. After watching The District videos, I know that my mission is very different from other missions, especially stateside missions. Brazil is awesome!

One thing that I was thinking about this week that is a bit scary is life after the mission relating to the gospel. During the mission, you learn to truly love the scriptures and really strive to be more like Christ. And you think that you are going to continue on this path when you get home. While many missionaries continue to be good and do good, it's also scary to see how many missionaries fall away from the church after the mission. I was talking with one of the members and he said the mission was the best time of his life. He said that he just wishes he could go back to that time and change the things he did after the mission. I guess whatever he did changed his life for the worse in a big way. He told me to be careful because it is so easy to make bad So I'm just hoping that I'll continue to do the things that I'm doing now after the mission. Satan is sure a pain.

I had some pretty interesting experiences this week. The first was with this old lady on the street. She started saying something to me holding up money but I had no idea what she was saying so I started to try to get past her cause she was obviously a bit off. Then out of nowhere she starts hugging me and I start freaking out a little bit cause I'm a missionary and you can't hug girls so I tried to break out of the hug and she somehow managed to get a kiss right on my cheek. Then she turns around and spanks my companion as we start walking off. It was pretty strange. We also had a nice experience with a bat. We came home one day to find a bat just chillin upside down on the stairs. We got a funny video of me removing the bat. It turned out to be a baby bat that couldn't fly yet so it wasn't too difficult. Still scary though, those things look real creepy crawling on the ground. Also i'm about 80% sure that I am now a vampire because I keep finding blood on my bed. At first I assumed it was the mosquitos that I murder in my sleep but now I am almost positive that bat was sucking out my life through my blood.

Anyways pretty great week for me. Hope you guys are still killin it too.

Elder Odom

I'm gonna have to buy a new set of legs!

October 16th

Another week has already gone by! I've already almost completed my first transfer in the field. And I'm really hoping I get to stay with Elder Alcantara! We did a bunch of splits this week which was lame. I really don't like splits. The elders that I went on splits on aren't bad or anything- I actually really like one of the elders. I just enjoy teaching my own investigators and being in my own area. But it is interesting to see the different ways the elders teach and contact. One of the elders, Elder Grossi, has an area with lots of apartments. So we started at the top of the building and just went down. It was very different because Elder Alcantara doesn't like knocking on doors so we never do it. It was also different because Elder Grossi told me to start knocking on other doors at the same time he was. I didn't like this too much. 1-because I still can't understand what the people here are saying so I need the help of my comp to respond lots of the time. I definitely continued to invite people to church or ask if they wanted us to teach them more after they had already made up an excuse more than once. And 2- because the scriptures pretty much say that it's wrong: "Ye shall go forth in the power of my Spirit, preaching my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up your voices as with the sound of a trump, declaring my word like unto angels of God" (D&C 42Ç6). And the missionary handbook says "...the testimonies of two companions support each other in proclaiming the truth and bearing witness of it". So I feel like we should be making contacts as a companionship.

The big thing this week was when Elder Aidukaitis came. We got to meet with all the other missionaries and hear him speak. He based his talk around the talk "Teach repentance and baptize converts" by Elder Neil L. Anderson and it was really good. He made a list of all the things that we need to do according to the talk and a list of the things we are promised in return by the lord. Because he enuciates his words a lot and speaks more slowly, I could actually understand what he was saying, so that was really nice.

This week has been a bit tougher in terms of investigators. We are really struggling right now trying to find someone who will keep commitments. We are getting, however, very good at getting fake addresses. And the problem is we don't have enough investigators to have very many backup lessons so we are stuck just making more contacts which is lame. I'm gonna have to buy a new set of legs this pday because my legs right now are just about to stop working.

But good news! I finally received my package this week! Thank you for all the stuff in it. Now I can finally wear my black shoes and get even more fat with all the cookies and pringles you sent.

I've been thinking again how important it is to read our scriptures everyday. Like our prophet said, it's important to read every day. It makes a real difference. I know it's sometimes not easy to read (I sure struggled before the mission) but if you manage to not just read, but study the scriptures, I think it will increase our desire to do the things we're ask to. For me, my testimony grows every time I read. And a stronger testimony means a stronger desire. If there is one thing I could change about what I did before my mission, I would change the amount I read each day. There are so many scriptures I never knew and stories I never truly understood until I read with real desire to learn. So just do everything you can to read. Even if it's just a little bit per day.

Anyways that's it for me this week.

Elder Odom Jr.

Food is my Hobby

October 9th

I know I always talk about this but time is really weird on the mission. There are days that seem to go on forever but I feel like I just barely wrote you guys yesterday at the same time. I've almost got a month out in the field already and that's crazy to me. The days are long and the weeks are short. Waking up has been real difficult some days because I've been real tired from all the walking we've been doing. The ideal day consists of one lesson right after the other but that hasn't happened yet. Keeping commitments is a problem here just like every other mission. Every time someone isn't home when they said they would be or decides that they don't actually want the missionaries to come we get around 40 minutes of contacting. We try to have backup plans but it's tough right now. Everyone here is Catholic. Our contacting consists of only talking to people on the streets. No door clapping for us (people clap; yell the name of the person they are looking for, not knock here). And during each encounter we invite them to church at some point. It really threw me off the first time we talked to someone because my companion just said, "Hi good day. Can I extend an invitation to you:"then "What are you doing sunday morning?"then "Would you like to come to church with us?". We had just barely met them and were already inviting them to church. It's really normal to me now though.

I performed my first confirmation on sunday! I was very nervous for obvious reasons and I know I said some things that probably made no sense to everyone but it wasn't too bad. Luckily the confirmations are really short here. And just a quick update on the language... I still can't understand anything! I think the people here are actually speaking another language other than portugese because I swear when we are reading the scriptures they are saying completely different words. I'm studying vocab cards every day by cutting up paper and writing the english and portugese words on it so I have something to do while we're just walking, and I study grammer during language study time. I also have a little book I keep in my shirt pocket of new phrases and vocab. I try to write down  words that I think I hear during conversations and lessons that I don't know but most of the time the things I write down aren't actually words and I just wrote down a combination of 2 words or something. And there are definitely a lot of baptisms here. The mission goal is 1 per week. Sadly the guy we wanted to Baptize just couldn't give up smoking so we couldn't baptize him. But we have another that came to church on sunday and really liked it so I hope things go well with him!

I think I found my new favorite drink this week. There's this herb mixture thing called tereré that you put into a cup and pour juice into it then drink it through a filtered straw. It's really really good. But because my comp and I are professional cooks we took it up a notch. We carved out a pineapple and used the pineapple to make some juice and used the outside of the pineapple as the cup. Man that was a good drink. We also upped our game on the pancakes. Now we have coconut pancakes with banana and chocolate cooked inside. It's delightful. My companion continues to be surprised by the amount that I am eating here. I don't know what's happening. I'm gonna get fat. He always tells everyone that I love bananas (because I do, we buy like 4 bunches per week) so now all the members bring me bananas during lunch. It's awesome. And more recipes please! Food is my hobby here and I need to make more!

But i'll be able to listen to conference in english i think. I'll try to download it onto my comps usb stick. And that is pretty gross that I had sandwiches in my backpack... I'm sure they smelled great. Not that smells effect me anymore. The streets smell like poop here because there's poop water everywhere (and it definitely effects me still i was kidding). I already emailed paul and gabe and corb and kaden so don't worry about that. Sorry I don't have as much this week. Sometimes I just want to take a little break at the end of the day and forget to update the ol' AlphaSmart. 

Elder Odom

Some good news and some bad news

October 2nd

I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. The bad news is that Mr. President says no more Google Hangouts. This means that I'm going to have to be a bit more detailed in my emails. Yeah I know its lame. But hey it'll make having a real conversation with you guys when I can skype and when I come home that much better.

The good news is that we got another baptism this week! Her name is Leidiane and she is awesome. She was a bit tricky at first, not going to church and saying she didn't receive an answer after praying for the first time. But everything changed after she finally went to church. She said she felt like she was in heaven surrounded by angels while at church. When she read the Book of Mormon soon after, she got another strong feeling. Now she is in love with her BoM and has a strong testimony. And now her husband is interested so he may be next!

Also I have been working on my chef skills. It would be awesome if you could send me some recipes so I could make some new food. Like brownies. I make a smoothie almost every day because fruit is cheap and the smoothies are dang good. I also make this toast egg combo where I make a hole in a piece of bread and put an egg in the hole and cook the whole thing. I know it has to have been done before but it looks fancy and its good so I'm proud of myself. Elder Alcantara also cheffed up some syrup and he makes some great pancakes. Sometimes he'll make pancakes with oatmeal and its real delish. You could say that we've pretty much mastered the breakfast category. But the only problem with that is now I'm eating a lot every meal. The first week I didn't eat much for breakfast so I had some balance but now i'm just packing down the food. The food is too good here. The members always have rice, beans, and some chicken. But this stuff is much higher quality than the food at the CTM. They also always have juice that they make straight from the fruit and its always amazing. Don't laugh if I'm a bit overweight in my future pictures. I also had my first strange food this week! One member gave us some soup and it smelled real good and so I dished myself up a ladle full and there was a chicken foot in there. My comp said that chicken foot is actually a more fancy food here. I'm not sure why because it tasted like a soggy piece of chicken with an awful texture. I was definitely biased when eating it but still. People eat some crazy stuff.

Speaking of crazy, I think i'm going crazy because Elder Alcantara has a speaker and music but we only have about 10 songs. We've been listening to the same 10 songs on a loop and I cant handle it too much longer. At least the music we do have is good for the most part. I had no idea how much i'd miss music while on the mission. And I feel like I forget the lyrics to more songs every week.

Some other good news is that I found a member that is willing to cut my sleeves shorter! Having my sleeves go to my elbow is really annoying so I'm real excited about this. Plus I'll be doing slightly better in the tan line category. I've gotten pretty dang lucky with my mission so far. My district during the CTM was awesome, my mission president is awesome, my district now is awesome, my comp is awesome, and my area is awesome. Apparently there are a lot of more experienced missionaries leaving soon and we are already running low on missionaries right now so there's a chance that my comp will be a district or zone leader or something else next transfer which means my training will be completed by another missionary. I really hope that's not the case because Elder Alcantara is really great. Chances are my next comp will not be quite as good. But I guess well see.

Like I've already said, The mission president is really awesome. And his wife, too. I got a chance to get to know them a little bit better because we had an interview this week. E. Alcantara said the last mission president was amazing also, but president chamberlain is more friendly than he was. And its true he is super friendly. Its also nice that he is from the states because I can understand him when he speaks Portuguese and we do our interviews in english. I just enjoy any break I can get from Portuguese right now because having to constantly focus on what people are saying is really tiring. A good example of this was conference. I hope conference was good cause I couldn't tell you. At first I was really trying to understand what was being said- and I could pick out a few words here and there and kinda guess what was being said but it was really tiring so I would start to fall asleep. I don't want to be a bad example for the ward though so I was fighting it like crazy... and lost. I really wanted to listen to conference but I just couldn't focus that long without dozing off. Waking up early and working until you go to sleep every day does that to you. So for general conference on Sunday I just worked on memorizing more words in Portuguese and drew random objects. I figured I might as well use the time for something because trying to listen to conference like everyone else obviously wasn't working for me.

Well that's this weeks summary. Gotta say i'm living the good life right now. Its actually kind of scary cause I cant imagine the mission ALWAYS being real great like this so I feel like God might turn up the difficulty. I know you get more rewards when you have it on a harder setting but I'm quite content here. Anyways that's all from me folks, I talk to you next week.

xxooXoOx

First Baptism!

September 25th

Guess I expected time to be going a lot slower than it is because it feels like I just had pday. I got my first baptisms on Saturday and Sunday! On Saturday we baptized a man named Jose. He's real awesome even if I cant understand most of what is coming out of his mouth. He had no problems with any of the lessons so it was pretty easy to get him baptized. His wife is Catholic though so she didn't want to be baptized which is too bad. The second one was a kid named Jhorran. He is really fun to be around and likes to try to speak English to me. It's always nice to be the one with the superior knowledge of the language. But he was real easy because his parents are already membros. So it isn't like we had to convert him or anything. I feel real good after these baptisms though. It's awesome being able learn and grow as our investigators are learning and growing too. When they are baptized it feels so fulfilling.

Im really loving everything about the mission so far. Being constantly soaked in sweat and not knowing the language is tough, but I am working hard and I know it'll come slowly. I am really grateful that I have a great companion and awesome members to help me through my trials. And most importantly, the lord. I find it really helpful to not pray for my trials to end, but to instead pray for comfort and peace and strength as I work through them. I know he is helping me with this language even if I have to remind myself of that sometimes. This mission isn't about whether or not I can. It's not about me at all when it comes down to it.

I love and miss you guys! Talk to you next week!

Elder Odom