First Week in Cascavel: March 18, 2013

Dear Everyone,

1. Do you have a local address for letters and packages?? With being so far from Londrina, that would be nice. I need to get your birthday package out by the end of the month. I don’t know my local address, just send it to the mission office I will get stuff with the same exact frequency as in all my other areas, because the only time you get mail is after the zone leaders go to Londrina, so just keep sending it to the mission office, please! 
2. Did you get a Princess Leia picture with Elder A.? No, I forgot, the tradition already died! L And, my towel that I liked to use for it is in pretty bad shape anyway.
3. How was your trip to Cascavel? Were you in Londrina on Tuesday night with all the other new and transferring missionaries? I heard it was really packed in the mission home and in the missionary apartments in Londrina that night. Yeah, I was in Londrina Tuesday night and it was jam packed (I never went to the mission home). They ran out of mattresses at the house where I slept. The new missionaries never went to the CTM and because of that they didn’t get a chance to register with the police, so they can’t go to their areas yet. They all went to Apucarana for this week to fill out paperwork and they will go to their areas hopefully this next week. It stinks, because Elder A.’s training one of the new Americans, and they were not able to work in Bauru this whole week. L But, my trip to Cascavel was fine; it was just kind of long and boring.
4. We have heard the Church has come out with a new policy change that allows missionaries to receive and respond to emails from people other than their parents. Have you heard anything about this? Do you want to be able to receive email from other people, and if so, who? I was thinking mainly extended family. I literally just got the email like 10 seconds ago saying that we can send emails to other people outside of the family. I don’t really know what to write really to other people that I don’t already send home in the big weekly letter, but giving it to extended family members and close friends would be fine.

Elder S. is right, it is so hard to not see the old slug bugs here in Brazil!!

It’s good to hear from all three of you guys this week!! Good luck with A.P. U.S. History, Jason, and way to go with the Eagle project so far!!

Now, about Cascavel:

As I already said, my new companion is Elder R. from Spokane, Washington (only the elect live in Washington!) and we live with Elder F. (my old companion from when I first got to Bauru) and Elder R.S. (who will “die”—or go home--at the end of this transfer), and they are our zone leaders. We have a really nice, new house but because the zone leaders live there it is SUPER DIRTY. I don’t know why, but the zone leaders’ houses are always the dirtiest houses in the whole zone…oh, wait…I do know why: they have more duties and in order to have any time to relax on P-day, they skip cleaning anything—ha ha. J So that’s kind of annoying, but with them gone at Londrina today and tomorrow, I will dedicate my entire P-day to cleaning the house really good so hopefully it can stay cleaner a little bit longer. Knowing how to clean is one essential skill for a missionary, because no one does it, except the 3 or 4 missionaries that don’t like dirty houses (me included). I think President T. is just sending me to the dirtiest houses in the mission in order to clean and organize them for other missionaries and then he will send me to a new dirty house to clean that one, too. J

Sorry it is really bad, my camera almost froze when I put it up top on the nice 9 hour bus ride because it was right by the air conditioner!! But here is my comp Elder R., he is pretty crazy but a lot of fun!!

“I’m gonna come at you like a spider monkey!”

Cascavel is really sweet! It almost reminds me of Salem, Oregon. It is so weird seeing so much grass after 7 months of nothing but dirt and concrete!! I am loving the cooler temperatures and overcast skies every day. It is like being back in beautiful Bellevue, weather-wise. 

Elder R. preaching to some capybaras!!!

We went to the tiny Cascavel Zoo.

Cascavel means rattlesnake and really this city is appropriately named, that’s for sure because there are a lot of women here who are “snakes” (like to flirt with the missionaries), but it doesn't affect me because I’m not here to get a date! But, yeah, seriously, there are so many more women than men in this city!!

The ward here is really strong. We average between 100 to 140 that come every week with a lot of Young Men and Young Women and a pretty big Primary (it might be bigger than Bellevue 2nd’s Primary) and they have 3 missionaries from the ward out in the field and one more waiting to get his call.

The work here right now is pretty slow, we have one investigator and we can baptize him this next Sunday if he stops drinking coffee, but other than that we have no one, so this week will be focusing on continuing to reorganize the very disorganized area book and working way smarter and finding a lot more investigators. Wish us luck!!

Oh yeah, almost forgot: my last night at Bauru I slept in the zone leaders’ house and Elder S. (CTM companion) did, too, because his companion Elder D.B. was leaving on the same bus as the rest of us. I got to have a good long talk with him, so that was great. We laid awake talking for a while after lights out, and it was so good to get to just talk with him again!! He is such a great friend!!

So I think that is about it for this week!! (I should get snail mail letters tomorrow when the zone leaders come back!!)

Lots of love!

Com Amor,

Elder Cummings