Monday, February 6, 2006

This afternoon I was quickly reminded that after a quick, heavy downfall the streets often flood and the drainage sewers get backed up. It was about 7:45 pm and I had just run to the church to quickly call my home teaching companion. As I arrived, a HUGE bolt of lightening struck and the proceeding thunder blasted my ears. And then the rain started… and wouldn’t stop… Dave and I were invited to a family home evening at 8, so I had to get back to the hotel. I decided to make a run for it, since our hotel is a mere block away. As I ran out the church and shut the electric, sliding gate behind me I began crossing the street… and unknowingly, decided I would go for a little swim. Shin-deep in water, my momentum helped me wade through the water to the sidewalk on the other side. Soaked were my sandals, feet, legs, and lower part of my shorts. Oh well.

We sat in the hotel for a few minutes, waiting for the rain to lessen – I was trying to dry off. A good show was on the movie channel, something with Tom Hanks and he’s a foreigner who just arrived to the US and his country had been taken over. Anyone know what that movie’s called? I didn’t get to see more than 20 minutes because we were on our way to FHE, but I would really like to watch the rest.

So FHE was fun. It was at the home of Irmá Valdmiria – the sister who invited us over for lunch on Sunday. It was her, her 2 sons and her sister who was visiting. Their tradition is to start with food, and end w/ the message, so we sat down at a table with a pot of boiled hotdogs, buns, corn, potato sticks, mayonnaise, ketchup and guaraná.

When Irmá Valdmiria called us at 7 pm, inviting us to come, she made it clear that the message and the game were our department. She wanted our help to get her family back in the habit of having FHE. Ha… so I was in charge of the message while Dave took care of the game. My message took longer than anticipated – I guess it’s been a few years since I’ve done it on the mission. Together we read 1 Nephi 8 and drew the Tree of Life from Lehi’s vision. They enjoyed it. Dave’s game was kind of a magic trick with a coin – not too sure how to easily explain it, but the purpose of the trick is to make the person look silly. It worked. Then Rubens and Tiago (the 16 and 18 year old boys) prepared a trick/game for Dave. It was the candle-plate trick where … long story short… Dave gets his face dark with soot from the candle.

Earlier in the day Dave and I traveled to the island (Florianópolis) to visit Irmão Perrotti, the Institute director. We had a nice talk w/ him and we swapped ideas about how to best teach CASP to those in need. We came to the conclusion that he would talk with his secretary and get back to us with some more specific numbers, dates, and contact information. It’s a nice Institute facility. They bought a nice sized house and turned it into the Institute building. Classes there should be fun.

After eating lunch at a new, good and cheap restaurant we went to the church and made phone calls for a few hours. Humberto, from Porto Alegre, asked us to call all of the participants from 2005, J-Z, and see how their job searches are going. That was an interesting few hours of phone calls. Kinda discouraging ‘cause most of the numbers didn’t work.

The rest of the day was spent studying, sleeping, or something productive like that.