Monday, 23, 23:11 hours

They say it’s not the rainy season. Well today was another rainy day. Luckily, it started off pouring. After waking up at 7:30, getting ready, eating a breakfast of pineapples, mango, watermelon, a croissant and orange juice, I made it to the SRE office. Today I learned more from the volunteers how to answer people’s questions more directly and I did a few other things to help around the office. It was a full office today, I think at least 80 people came in to use the computers and look for jobs. I guess the beginning of the week usually brings more people.

12:30 was lunchtime; so we went out w/ the missionary couple, the Burrups, to a nice all you can eat place. That’s all they have here in brazil… you can either pay by the kilo, or pay a little more and get to go back as many times as you wish. This was one of the best meals I’ve had since arriving here. At the restaurant we met the elders and ate w/ them.

After lunch Elder Burrup took me to the Bank of Brazil and showed me how to take money out w/ my credit card. It was still pouring rain. I then went and visited Jefferson’s mother’s jewelry store that she has downtown. I burned a cd of all the pictures Jefferson and I have together from the mission and I was bringing it to him, but he wasn’t. I left it w/ his mother instead. While I was there, one of his mother’s friends/customers started talking to me about how life will be after we die. Brazilians are pretty open with religious matters. He knew I had been a missionary with Jefferson, so I guess that’s why he felt comfortable. His wife had recently died, so we had a brief discussion about our points of view and then I gave him the ‘Finding Faith in Christ’ pass along card and invited him to talk w/ the missionaries if he wanted to learn more. Nice guy. I was glad I could talk w/ him a bit.

I went back to the office for a few minutes… ended up being a few hours. Then I went back to the hotel. The dilemma of the day was that our safe in our room was busted! The night before I heard a weird noise when I shut the safe (it’s an electric safe). So we called the front desk and they sent up a few people to work on it. They would only work on it while I was in the room. They couldn’t fix it, so they told me they had to drill it open! I was like… uh, I have my camera and a big lens in there. I made sure before they started anything that they would replace any damaged items.

It was scary hearing them drill and bang on the safe. I recorded it on my audacity program… I’ll see if scott can help me put a link to my blog. I try to make my blog as much of an interactive experience as I can. J . But luckily, they succeeded (after about 20 minutes) and nothing was damaged.

I then returned to the SRE for a quick meeting w/ Humberto, Pierre, Dave, and the Burrups. After which Humberto invited us to his house for supper. His family has been out of town all week and he’s been lonely, so we ordered Chinese (not bad actually) and watched some music DVDs he had. He’s a funny guy.

Oh, I forgot to add that about 6:30 pm I called to Luciano Ribeiro’s house in Colatina, Espirito Santo. Elder Beck has finished his mission and was to be at Luciano’s house tonight. So I called to try to talk to him and other friends I made while I was there on my mission. I quickly talked w/ Eliana (Luciano’s wife) and Luciano, and then said I’d call back later. At 9:15 I called back. It was great getting to talk to everyone. I talked w/ Rutielly, Marcos, Karol, Marina, and Elder Beck. Man I miss those guys. Luckily I’ll be going back there in April to say hello J.

Alright, well I’m beat. Batman just got over on TV and now we’re getting ready for bed.
First I’ll read, then I’m out.