Secrets Of The Forest

Whattup korok kids,
Using skills I developed from my many long years of being a DM, I have "artistically adapted" a new format for my emails with is completely original and has never been done before. Thus it is with pride and eager anticipation that I present this new format, which I have named the "just writing about every day of the week individually because I don't have patience, time, or creative kindling to do a fancy summarized and digestible thesis paper on P-day" format. 

Ghost of P Day Past
We just played D&D again haha. D&D is an absolutely incredible language study by the way. All sorts of fun words like "hidra", "afogar", "polimorfa", "relâmpago", and fun phrases like "Todos nós morreremos porque estamos presos entre um kraken e dois navios piratas rivais". It's a blast.

Weekly planning day
Today we had our weekly planning where we part all of our stuff on the calendar and make goals and plans. During our companionship counsel I was like "ok elder what can I do to help train you better" and he was like "nothing". And I was like "Elder thats not very helpful what am I doing wrong that you want me to change" and he was like "nothing" and I was like "ELDER I KNOW YOU'RE LYING TELL ME HOW TO HELP YOU PLEASE I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING" and then he was like "no you know portuguese so you're doing everything right" and then I gave up haha.

Also we visited this lady who sent us a media reference named Maria do Espirito Santo and she's actually an inactive member of the church who wants to come back. So we were talking about the restoration and whatnot and then afterwards she was like "no stay a little bit I'll make you some food" and then she made a whole fetching dinner of hot dogs. Then afterwards she told us "Elders I'm gonna go shopping today what do you want?" and I was like "Uhhh what do you mean we can buy our own stuff haha" and then she said "well I had already decided that I was going to buy you stuff so you have no agency tell me what you want at the store". And so I was trying to be nice because we actually can buy our own stuff so I just wrote down flour and butter and then she took the list and asked "oh do you like chocolate milk?" And look. I'm not bouta lie and say I don't like chocolate milk. So I answered yes and she was like "ok I'll buy you chocolate milk then" and I was like "ma'am you seriously don't need to buy us stuff its ok" and she looked me dead in the eye and said "Elder I consider you both representatives of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ was at my doorstep, do you think I would want to buy and serve him food?" And then I was like 
So anyways she interrogated me about all the foods we like and put them on a list to buy for us kkk

Egypt???
All I wrote about this day was "hard work' lol. We got home and collapsed.

Ok actually also I managed to, through completely inconspicuous and legal means, acquire like literally all of Hugh Nibley's books and lectures and WOW I love this man. Special shoutout goes to the BYU Speeches "Leaders and Managers", "The Book of Mormon As a Record of Military Strategy" and the book One Eternal Round. Reading that bad boy feels like injecting creatine into my brain it's crazy.

The Word as a Seed
So on thursday we had Zone Conference and while we were traveling we got onto the Sao Paulo metro system and I noticed that there was this girl in an extremely elaborate cosplay which I assume was from an anime next to us. It was some kind of oriental pink haired elf character. And for a moment I thought about being a normal, brazilian sao paulo resident and you're going to work and you hop on the subway and the very first thing you see is a japanese elf woman seated next to two gringo missionaries and I just thought that mental image was pretty awesome. I had half a mind to contact her on the subway and try and give her a book of mormon because 1: the comedy factor and 2: I'm 100% enough of a weeb to Chapter 14 my way into a second appointment, but in the end we only parted ways.

Zone conference was pretty awesome, got to speak with a bunch of the old CTM folks and learn a lot about Alma 31-34, which are some fantastic chapters and give a lot of insights into missionary work. Elder Medeiros also bore his parting testimony because he's going home which was super powerful. After the conference I watched Elder Medeiros talk with president and sister rollings and he was all teary eyed and everything and president gave him a hug and then sister rollings came too and gave him like a half hug and he got stunlocked. Then a minute later we were organizing for photos and he came up to me, tears in his eyes, and said "Elder... Sister Rollings gave me a hug." 

salute to a fallen soldier. I guess even the best of us turn fubeca in the end 

Finding Cain out in the woods
On friday we took the wrong road and ended up reaching this path that went straight through the jungle. So we wandered around in the jungle for like 10 minutes before we figured out that the path ended :( so then we wandered back. But something very spooky happened.... I guess you would have to watch the video in my google photos album to find out what it is though >:)

Also we got pizza at night im officially dependent on sao paulo pizza

Maria part 2
Saturday we had a family home evening at Maria's house once again featuring an entire meal and a lesson about Joseph Smith and let me tell you guys this woman's conversion story is INSANE, involving more than 20 years worth of searching, praying, dreams, passports, and even crazier experiences. Nuts. We also met her nephew who is an RM and works for this travel agency and he gave us a whole bunch of tips on the best places to go in Brazil and also said he could get me a flight discount if we still had contact at the end of the mission 👀👀

Psych Animals
People came to church!! Including Maria and her niece who isn't baptized!!! And her niece loves the Book of mormon!!!

We were originally in the adults sunday school class but it was boring so we went to check on the other classes (and also to bug everybody about doing the weekly correlation meeting with the missionaries) and we get to the Young Single Adults class and as soon as we entered they asked "Elders if you were an animal what animal would you be". So needless to say we spent the whole rest of church in their class participating in this activity which involved picking what animal, object, and character you would be and then analysing the strengths and weaknesses of those things to uncover repressed psychological secrets about yourself. Not sure exactly how that related to this week's bible study but it was awesome, so who's counting.

I chose a Narwhal, a Keyboard, and Lindon from Cradle for those of you interested in scraping the recesses of my mind and learning my deepest psychological secrets. Why would he choose to be a narwhal...?

We also met this lovely old couple that afternoon and we were talking to them about gospel stuff and whatnot when their daughter comes down and the dad invited her to stay and participate but she was like "no I have to go" and then she left. Then her dad explained to us that she's a member of a 'christian' denomination here in brasil called the "Santo Daime". He also explained to us that a long time ago there was this christian dude living in a super poor area with a bunch of drug addicts but one day he went into the amazon and met indigenous peoples who showed him how to make a hallucinogenic tea that "alters your state of mind" and then he started using this tea to cure people of their drug addictions and it became a religion. Now they hold these meetings every four months where everybody goes into the jungle and drinks this tea and then sings hymns and worships while tripping out of their minds. And they've got this meeting happening in the area right next to ours, the huge jungle area Sao Lourenco.

So anyways I'm telling president that I wanna go to Sao Lourenco when I finish training-

P-day P-day
And back to today. Hopefully we're gonna get a haircut cuz I'm starting to go Samson style and also hopefully we don't all go to a watery grave in D&D. But that's all the report for this week, I hope you all have a wonderful week and until the next one!

God is Good,
Elder Ebbert

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