January 13, 2014 Things in Marica

Yo yo yo família e amigos! Hope all is going great with y'all! Everything is crazy here, but I'm happy and looking upward. This week was a bit of a challenge for us here in Maricá. Both monday and tuesday we had to go to Niterói, the nearest big city. It's the one right on the other side of the bay and the sugarloaf mountain, or pão de açúcar. Because my comp needed to get a tomografia, which I believe is an cat scan or mri on his brain to figure out what has been giving him this headache that he has been talking about since november. He is always complaining about it and every word out of his mouth is a complaint about how something hurts. It reminds of me of Madi, "I don't feel good, I can't go to school today, or the rest of the year." ;) jk but really I think he's just stressed and won't admit it to anybody because he's a tough guy, so there's a lot of time that we can't do anything because he needs to rest his head.Wednesday we went to Arsenal, the stake center, for Zone meeting. It was supposed to start at 2pm but our zls didn't show up until 4:30. So we we didn't get back to Maricá until 8:45. Thursday was a more normal day. We walked, contacted, clapped at peoples gates, taught lessons and got more sunburnt.

The rest of the week was normal until sunday. We had the first ward council meeting ever here in the smallest branch of the church in the world, and it just showed us exactly how disorganized this branch is and this area is, and basically the branch leaders don't want to hear what our mission president has to say about how we work and where we should work, they just made it super frustrating for us missionaries and we got a bunch of stuff dumped on us to do for the branch that is contrary to the counsel that we got from pres lima. So we are just figuring everything out here.

This area is great. I love the members and the city and everything, but it is one of the most strange places to do missionary work. It's like a bermuda triangle. You put a lot of work into it, you try different things all the time to try to get results, you fight and fight, and you kinda just have to get lucky to make it out, or blessed. There have been a couple RMs that had served in Maricá several years ago that visited and they talked with us and were like, this area is the strangest area ever, I got here near the end of my mission and the whole time I was here, I was just lost on how to work here. Every where else we could figure it out, but here was just too different.

We're working on figuring it out. 

Also, my package hasn't arrived yet. We have interviews on the 21st so maybe I'll get it then. But I did get the letter from Grandma and Grandpa and a letter from the relief society. Thanks!

Love yall,

Elder Evans