Last Letter of 2012: December 31, 2012

Dear Everyone,

Last photo with Elder W. 

(one of the other missionaries
in my apartment) back in Apucarana

Q and A time:

1. What is Bauru like? Is it a bigger city than Apucarana? Bauru is much bigger than Apucarana. It is almost like it you took parts of Brooklyn and put walls around every house, stuck it in the outskirts of Nevada, and planted lots of Brasilian trees, and have humidity. It’s pretty cool.
2. What is your apartment like/the neighborhood where the apartment is located? We have a really tiny house. Actually it is 2 super tiny houses, but one of them is just our kitchen. It is just us 2 that live there and it is located in back of a wireless cafe and right across the street from the supermarket so the location is perfect!!! It was super dirty when I got there because no one was living there for a week but we got it all cleaned up.
3. What is your mailing address? Still the mission office, or can you receive mail directly there? I would still use the mission office because 2 days after the old elder left for Maringa we got 2 packages for him and it will probably be another week or 2 before he can get them.
4. How are you and Elder F. getting along? Elder F. and I are doing great!! He is really cool!
5. Where did you stay the night you were in Londrina? I stayed the night in Londrina in the apartment of the zone leaders for the zone Tiradentes. I got picked up at the bus terminal by President Tavares because the zone leaders didn’t come and pick me up, so after my 1-hour bus to Londrina (I was by myself for all of this), I waited in the terminal for 3 and a half hours before President Tavares called to check in on me and realized that they didn’t pick me up so he rushed over and picked me up. I met up with Elder F. at their house and we bussed together to Bauru. He was stuck in Londrina for a week because you can’t take the 5-hour bus to Bauru by yourself. 

Me and Elder F. doing some service at a member’s house.

So the city is really good, I like it a lot. Our house is great, our ward is great, our ward mission leader is great, but the work has been slow here for a while. They haven’t baptized here in about 2 and a half months...but we just started working in a new area which should produce a lot of fruit here pretty soon!!!!

I don’t really know what to report on, I still don’t know the area really well so it is hard to talk about the work. We have a super hopeful for a baptism but he didn’t go to church Sunday because he started smoking again and was ashamed, so pray for him. His name is A.

Elder F. hard at work being District leader!!

Elder F. is super good and it is really good to be able to talk in Portuguese the whole day! I am learning a lot from him and he is learning English from me, too, which is good. I am only his second American companion so he is excited to be able to practice English with me. I will get a photo of the 2 of us in our shirts and ties for next week’s email.

I’m really glad that Jason likes the shirt, and that everyone wrote this week!!!! YAY!! New Year’s will be pretty chill here, bed by 10:30 like always and no one at home just like Christmas, but at least it is p-day so most of our day is used up doing other things besides trying to find people at home, and luckily everything is open today so we can get everything we need done!!

Don’t really have much else to say, sorry it is kind of short!

Happy new year!

And say hi to everyone for me!!

Lots of love!

Elder Cummings

December Zone Conference while still in Apucarana.
Elder Cummings is 5th from the right on the second row.