Preaching in the Rain: February 17, 2014

Dear Everyone:

1. Did you get your Valentines package? No, not yet. I will probably get it at the beginning of the next transfer here in a month
2. Who are the other missionaries in your house? The other 2 missionaries that live with us are Elder B. from Utah and a new Elder B. who is also from Utah
3. How do you & Elder P. get along? Do you speak in English or Portuguese when it is just the two of you? Elder P. and I are good buds!! We end up talking English a lot but we are trying to talk more and more Portuguese.

We fell back this week!!! An extra hour of sleep was super good!!

About time you read Ender’s Game, Jason!!!! (Wait…Jason got his wisdom teeth taken out???) You have got to give me an update on how the date goes, little bro, and if possible send a photo. J

 My second night with Elder P. we bought pizza for his 1 year 2 month and 1 day anniversary.

 The man that the sisters baptized last week.

Our Standard of Liberty that we made to get the zone animated during zone meeting this week.

 This cool building close by our house.

 Because dad said last week that he likes hills better than stairs I thought I would send a photo of one of the little hills that we walk up and down all day every day. 

Preaching in the rain.

This week was actually nice and cool and this coming week should be a little chilly with highs in the mid to upper 80s, but that is way better than 94 every day, I’m so glad that Apucarana is the coolest city in the whole mission!!!!

This week we had a city holiday which was in commemoration of Nossa Senhor de Lurdes (some Catholic saint) they had a giant parade through the city with candles and everything at night while the "padre" read all of the miracles that had supposedly been done in name of this saint!! To us, it was actually pretty darn funny!!

We have this ice cream place close to our house that has the closest thing to a Dairy Queen dipped cone!!! Let’s just say I am a frequent customer!!! J

Oh, and last Monday, I got a little bit of a "trunky" phone call (don’t worry, I’m not trunky yet, I’m still focused and good to go). They were calling to ask me what airport I want to land in when I go home so they can ALREADY buy my tickets...CRAZY!!! I didn’t think to ask what day I am going home, but I guess I will find that out in the next transfer or two.

And, that’s it for another week!

Love you guys!!

Elder Cummings

Three Days of Winter: July 29, 2013

29 July 2013

Dear Family and Everyone,

1. Did you really get SNOW in Cascavel this week?? Yes, this week we did get the weakest snow flurry in the history of the world and some hail showers but now it is right back up into the mid 70´s. It was nice to have a full 3 days of winter!!
2. What are your thoughts and feelings on the mission at the halfway point? Are you planning a celebration? (take pictures, of course) I will probably buy a pizza, yes I’ll be sure to take pictures but probably it will be just a regular day. I plan on celebrating more on Sunday with BAPTISM!!! At this one year point on the mission, my thoughts are that it will be really strange to go back to civilian life! This time next year I will already have a week or so at home already!! I’m thinking a little bit more about home now that I have 1 year and because Elder W. is almost “dying” (going home) so on P-day we talk about college and girls and stuff and it is weird that my “son” (Elder I.) won’t go home until 2015!!! It is kind of surreal that the mission is halfway over already, I’ve got a lot of work to do still, that´s for sure!!

This week was a pretty normal week, the only abnormal thing was that the work here is abnormally slow. We did get 2 new bishopric counselors, we finally have a ward secretary, and finally have a Gospel Principles teacher and assistant ward mission leader!!! So thing are looking up with the ward, but the missionary work here in Ward 3B is really slow. 3A is doing amazing right now and we are going to try and catch that wave and also try and help Palotina catch fire as well, we are trying to get the whole district to baptize this week!!!

President Genaro called me Saturday night to see how things are going and if we were going to baptize, I never felt so bad in my life, because we are trying hard, we are being obedient, but I’m not sure that I am giving my 100%, so this week we are really going to bring the hammer down and baptize everyone!! We just need to get these 3 kids to stop smoking, so pray for J., W., and L. so that they can keep the Word of Wisdom and be baptized this week, also pray for another J. so that he can baptize this week also!!

Last Monday night, we didn’t have any toilet paper in the house so we used the bathroom at the super mufatto and I told Elder I. to get a little extra to use in the house, as you can see our ideas of what is a little extra are very different!!! HAHA

Thanks for the great letter. Yes, I am totally shocked at the news that they dissolved the ward!!! And that all the wards will have names now!! HOLY COW!!!

This week was Festa Julina on Saturday. Translated, it is July Festival, to commemorate all the Catholic saints, but at the Church it is more of a harvest festival. I ate a lot of sweets and a non-alcoholic version of a drink called quentão, which was pretty good!!

So I’m running out of time this week, lots of thing to do and such little time!!

love you lots!!

Elder Cummings

SNOW???!???

One of the ward members in Elder Cummings' ward sent me this link with a news story about snow flurries in Cascavel.  From what I understand, snow is completely unheard of in Brazil.

It's Hard to Type With Frozen Fingers: July 22, 2013

Dear Everyone:

1. Do you teach the new member lessons or is that handled by the ward mission leader? New member lessons are handled by the ward mission leader or the ward missionaries. We teach the Gospel Principles Sunday School class, so we do a little of the new member lessons that way.
2. Do you have to pay to use the LAN house? How much does it cost? It is about 3R a week when we print out 1 sheet of paper.
3. What do you do for so many hours on a bus (going from Cascavel to Londrina, for example)? Do you just talk to your companion, do you talk to other people on the bus? On the bus we talked and slept, or at least tried to sleep, during the trip!
4. How is Elder I.’s training going? Has he had an easier time picking up Portuguese? Does he speak any English? He is going great, he speaks some tiny words of English here and there, his Portuguese is coming slowly but steadily. He uses a ton of Spanish so I understand him really well but others have difficulty understanding him! Because he is training, we have extra study time each day! It is kind of nice to not have to leave the house until lunch time but at the same time it is kind of annoying.

Already planning for my apartment... I’ve still got a year (and I haven´t decided if I will go back to school right away or not...)

Way to go on the Eagle project little bro, I’ll send you a snail mail letter to answer your questions about the pros of going right away on a mission vs. the pros of going to school for a year.

On to the week’s news...this week was pretty normal, I am loving the cold weather. After a full year of summer it is good to be cold again!!  It is also getting rainy, as you can see from this picture.

We ate pizza 2 times this week which was good!! (stroganoff pizza is really good!!!) I thought I’d send you a picture of the way to the bathroom of a tiny mercado (market)!! It was a pretty cool tunnel to get there, so I thought it would be a good picture!! It reminded me of the Seattle Underground tour we went on with Aunt Paula a few years ago.

Sorry for the super short letter, 1) there isn’t much news to share and 2) my fingers are frozen and it is hard to type (no one in Brasil has heating...not even the LAN House).

Love You!!

Com amor,

Elder Cummings

Flu Shots: May 6, 2013

6 May 2013

Dear Everyone,

Tell M. and K. congratulations for me!!! She’s a cutie pie. That’s awesome. I can’t believe “big sister” C. is 2 already.

1. Have you gotten our package with the basketball shorts yet (I haven’t been able to track it since it left the US)? Any other packages besides ours and P.’s? No, I haven´t gotten the basketball shorts yet, just the stuff from P.! I’ll be sure to write her a letter this week.
2. How long does Elder M. have left on his mission? Elder M. has this transfer right now and then one more and then he is going home. It is so crazy that the transfer is already almost half way over (it is only a 5-week transfer!)
3. What is “LMA” from last week’s letter? About all I could guess was less-active members? LMA means leader da missão da ala, and in English it means the ward mission leader.
4. What has strengthened your testimony this week? (In honor of Fast Sunday) What has strengthened my testimony this week is that we had 8 investigators at church this week!! We have been really needing new people to teach, and right now we are teaching a ton of couples, just some of them are not married... L Also, a member brought 2 friends to church. So, my testimony is really being strengthened that when you work hard, the ward helps you out a lot. I have never gotten so many member references up until now!! I have never had a baptism up until now that has come from a member referral, so it would be nice to be able to baptize these two that a member brought to church for us.
5.  Are you thinking about swimming for BYU when you get back? Yes! I am really considering swimming for BYU when I get back. It is something that I really want to do,and I want to start talking with the coaches now because I know that they have a training programs for missionaries to help them out when they get back! So, yeah, I really want to. I think I have a better than good shot of making it now because I am actually gaining muscle out here, which is what the old coach wanted me to do…strange, I am now up to 165...whoa! Also this probably means that I will go back to school right away instead of waiting, but I don´t know for sure yet! I’m glad that H. is really excited!!! Can you ask her what she thinks I could do to be in tip- top shape when I get back, keeping in mind I get about 30 to 45 minutes of workout time per day?

BTW, we have an elder who is in need of a heart transplant, so pray that they can find a heart that will match with his body, please!!

So thank you for the letter! It was really great! The letter really helped me out, not that I was depressed or anything just that it was for some reason an extra good letter! I’m sorry to hear that Uncle M. and Brother B. died this week. I hope Grandma and Grandpa are ok. How is Grandpa anyway, I hear a little from Grandma, but how is he doing? Do you think he will make it to see me get back home?

(I got a quick little thank you email from the L.’s, are they reading? interested? not really?) Probably how I am going to write Grammie and Aunt P. and S.G. and everyone, is to hand-write a letter on p-day, take a photo of it, and send them the photo of my letter, otherwise I will not have time at all to write everyone. :-)

Me with great hair, a great tie and a great backdrop!!

I got a present from D. and C.!! It is super sweet!!
It is a Brasil national team jersey for my favorite Brasilian player, Neymar!!

So what new happened this week?...umm...well, we got the swine flu shots this past week like you already know, so we don’t have enough money to go eat schawarma this week like we had planned, I think we are going to just sleep all day today. It is finally starting to get cold here, and on Saturday we all got soaking wet because all of our appointments fell through so we were in the street the whole day! At night now (because I didn’t bring like any cold weather gear, and by “cold here” I mean like 70 or 65 degrees during the day), I sleep in my towel shorts, a sweatshirt, a beanie, gloves, and socks. Yeah, I feel like a pansy. It’s going to be rough when I go back to Provo. Elder W. and I run almost every morning, and this morning it was so cold (for us at least) that it felt like what could normally be a normal fall day, and we are almost in the middle of winter... let’s just say that my new sweater will be getting a lot of use here pretty soon!

We had to get swine flu shots this week!! 80R later and in 3 weeks, we will be immune to swine flu!!!

Here is my leg after I fell last p-day, it is already almost completely healed up now.

Umm... what else? I left my cheat sheet with notes from the week in our house today so I’ll just tell you guys about some more stuff when we Skype on Sunday (which probably means that this next week’s email will be really tiny because I’ll have shared it all on Sunday).

Com amor,

Elder Cummings

Raining Like Crazy: January 7, 2013

Dear Everyone,

Answer time!

1. Where is Elder F. from? He is from São Vincente which is in São Paulo next to the beach.
2. What are his duties as District Leader, and does it change what the two of you do during the day compared to what you did when you were with Elder W.? His duties are mainly a lot of calling during the evening so it doesn’t affect our days at all, except on Saturday because he has to interview all the baptisms for our district. But really it doesn’t mess up our schedule at all.
3. What time does your ward meet? Do you have to go round up the members like you did in Vila Reis? Our ward meets at the same time as in Apucarana, 9 in the morning. We do a lot of calling to round up investigators and we visit the ones that are close by to the church. (We had 5 investigators at church yesterday!!!)
4. Do you walk as much as you did in Vila Reis? We walk WAY more than we did in Vila Reis. Vila Reis is so tiny that we hardly walked far at all. But here, our area of force is really far away so we walk a lot.

Great email like always. Thank you for the NFL updates!!! RAVENS!!!!!!!! And, thank you for your part, Dad! So now it’s time for the mission update!

This week was a good week—but not a super eventful week—here in Bauru. Portuguese is coming so much easier with a Brasilian companion because I don’t have the crutch to ask a question in English anymore!! And Elder F. is really good! I just need to now gain more confidence and be more active during our street contacts. I am really lacking in this aspect!

No baptisms this week, but we have good potential for next week. We had 5 investigators at sacrament meeting yesterday, which is really good. Now we just need to prep them for baptism which will be hard because a lot of them smoke A LOT!!! Our zone has a goal of 30 baptisms this month, which will break the old zone record of 28 and we have 5 as of yesterday. We have 4 more weeks to go, so we can do it! Elder F. and I have a goal of 6 for our companionship this week! Pray that we will have enough focus and diligence to meet this goal.

Friday night, walking back from Tangaras (our area of force), it was raining like crazy!!! I have stayed drier falling in the pool with my clothes on than I did on this night. While we were walking up hill (the whole way going home is uphill), we were walking literally in a river that used to be the street. At some points, we were walking in water up to our mid-calf!! It was pretty crazy, and there was lots of wind and thunder and lightning that was really loud and really close!!!! It was pretty fun, actually, splashing around in the water, but not so much fun drying off all of our stuff and our house. One of our walls leaks water so we always have big puddles on the floor after it rains, at least all of our floor is tile (tile floors and walls are really popular here).

Elder F. and me after the rainstorm (if you click on the picture, it is easier to see how Elder C.'s shirt is sticking to him because it is soaking wet)

All my stuff drying out after the rain...everything got wet even though I put it in plastic bags...

Me and Elder F. all pretty and dry!

We taught with members on two nights this week and it was amazing!!! The Spirit was so strong when they were with us. Other times that we had members, they never said anything, so it was like a normal visit, but with these two somewhat-recent returned missionaries, the Spirit was amazing!!! They always seemed to be able to relate with the investigator so well and when they taught or bore testimony, it was perfect for what that investigator really needed to hear. My testimony of having members teach with us is a lot stronger now than before. (Dad: challenge everyone in the ward to teach with the missionaries, not just go out with them, but to teach with them! Make a list for teaching with the missionaries like they have for feeding the missionaries, and I would even say have a backup ward member as well for the days and have the missionaries schedule teaching appointments for these times!!! This will help out the work a lot! I know that through member support, that the ward can baptize a lot of people even if it is the worst area in the mission. With member support it can become the best area in the mission!!!)

One more parting shot from Apucarana:
Elder S. and me taking a shortcut to an investigator's house!!

I think that is about it.

Lots of Love,

Elder Cummings