6 Months Of Contacting Monkeys

Whattup nordestinos,

So I went almost a whole transfer without writing an email. That's pretty sweet. 

And as of last Monday, I have 6 months left on the mission! Halfway through the halfway, and I'm living on lots and lots of prayers. Fun Elder Ebbert fact: about 7.5% of my mortal life has been spent in brasil. And about 100% of my remembered life. I don't remember how to speak English good, the names of all the pokemon, the taste of food, the sound of water, the touch of grass... 

But anyways, this transfer has been pretty lit

Best transfer ever?

My new comp (I guess not so new anymore but whatever) is Elder Nielson, or "Oliver" as my mom calls him. Just to show you guys how awesome things our, here's a little snippet of our daily schedule:

6h30: wake up to dual alarms of "gymnopedie" and "nocturne in eb major"

6h35: get out of bed and plan. 

7h: do 100 burpees and handstand for 3 minutes

7h30: shower and listen to 'uplifting hymns' 

8h: eat raw eggs, raw sausage, and drink whole milk mixed with protein powder and creatine.

8h15: feel extremely masculine 

8h30: personal study. Book of Mormon and general conference talks 

9h30: comp study. Deep doctrine debate

(gift of seership, nature of intelligences, temple symbolism, ancient Hebrew wedding traditions, hot girls, star wars the clone wars tv show)

10ish: working hard or hardly working 

13h: lunch. Be racist to Elder Oliveira the whole time

14ish: back to thu grind 

21h: get home. Buy pizza. Talk about music and rizz up the sisters in the nightly reports

22h30: conk out 

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what life will look like in the millennium. 

Japan time

We went to this dope fetching sushi restaurant two times this transfer it was sooooo good. I love eating raw fish. The first time Elder Nielson's recent converts from another ward came and picked us up and the second time we accidentally met up with Elders from like 2 other zones and hit up the sushi place it was so tasty. And also super cheap because dollars convert very well into reals rn 

Piriguetes

OK so just a funny experience that went down this week: me and Elder Nielson were walking down the road in a sketcher part of our area and we were talkin English because, yknow, we speak English. And these three girls from the favela are passing by us on the other side of the street. They're probably like 14-16 years old. And they hear us speaking English and just start to stare at us and give us the longest "oiiiiiiiiii" that I've ever heard. So me and Elder Nielson are already clued in and we're just like "oh hey, boa tarde" and then we dip. 

And then they started following us. 

Like, following us following us. We even took a wrong turn and we had to decide whether or not to double back and go through them and look stupid because we turned around or take this long contrived road back and try to lose them, and we chose the second option but they literally just stalk us all the way there. We got stuck talking to an old lady who just keeps talking and talking and they literally just stand on the other side of the street waiting for us. 

So we're thinking this is pretty crazy at this point and once the old lady finishes talking we go over to them and are like "hey how's it goin" and they're like "heyyyyyyy do u guys speak English??" and we're like "yeah actually there's a bunch on missionaries like us who teach and English class every week yall should come" and they were like "yeah sure... wow your eyes are so beautiful" and we were like "thanks, you guys should come to church on Sunda" 

And anyways in the middle of this situation this guy in his 40s, super high, walks up and is like "do you have any money?" and we're like "your crazy dawg we don't got no bread" and he's like "oh yeah... well I got money right here" and he grabs his shorts and shows us the outline of a pistol he has in his shorts. Except that the way that he's got it stored in his shorts, it really didn't look like he was grabbing a gun. So we're like "wow.... that's so cool dude" and the girls all freak out and are like "ohmygosh ur so gross get out of here" and they start to hit him with a newspaper. So he wanders off and then we're like "anyways girls yall should come to church ok bye" and we leave while they start freaking out about how they talked to real live white people. 

It was wild. 

Spiritual thought? 

Don't really have a spiritual though this transfer, probably the coolest thing that happened is that I got to do a district council where we really just focused on Christ and our relationship with him, which was great. I was listening to a podcast of a philosopher talking about the existence of God and he said that debating the existence of god with a person of faith is like trying to debate the existence of your spouse: it's obvious that they exist because you know them personally, no matter what else you rationalize or debate. The greatest blessing of my mission has been getting to know God- in the same way I'd get to know anybody else. Having a constant, unfailing companion to guide me iluminates existence itself, and I'm so happy to see the evolution of my own faith and the faith of others. The gospel is a constant source of joy to me and I'm so glad to have it in my life. 

into the unknown

Well I'm getting transfered unfortunately, this transfer was awesome with Elder Nielson but unfortunately it's over now. And I'm off to the middle of the jungle, no more hanging out in the hood. Gonna be converting and baptizing exclusively monkeys and capybara from now on. So here's to hoping its a good transfer. 

Love you all! Have a great week!

God is Good, 

Elder Ebbert