Home "Improvement?": March 26, 2013

Dear Everyone,

Sorry I didn't email yesterday. We were in Foz do Iguaçu having a zone conference with President T. from 6 in the morning until 10 at night. I was thinking about that yesterday and thought to myself, “Wow, Mom is going to freak out when she doesn't see an email from me on Monday,” so I am glad that Sis. T. let everyone know. This week and this week only, today (Tuesday) is our p-day. It will/should be all back to normal for next week.

1. Do you live right in the city? Is Cascavel bigger or smaller than Bauru? We live in the suburbs, just outside of downtown Cascavel. Now all three of my areas have been in the suburbs. Yes, Cascavel is bigger than Bauru, which is bigger than Apucarana!! I have gone from Apucarana to Bauru to Cascavel—ABC—so the next zone that I should visit to keep up the pattern would be Foz do Iguaçu.
2. Do you walk everywhere or do you also use buses? We walk everywhere and we rarely ever take the bus, only for zone meetings.
3. Are all transfers 5 weeks now? Sis. R. seemed to be under that impression. Transfers are still 6 weeks, but right now they are all messed up to get transfers to line up with when the new missions will open, because some missionaries will be transferring missions. By the way, the official report is that the Brasil Londrina mission boundaries will stay the same.

 (Comments from the pictures in the e-mail:) 

• I dig Jason’s yellow and black shirt, it is pretty dope!!
• Lucky snow!! It’s actually been nice and cool here lately!
• Thanks for delivering the Books of Mormon!!!

As far as emails are concerned I was also thinking of replying by hand if I don’t have time when I am online, so feel free to give my email out to people if they want to write me!

Here is my now much-larger coin collection. Brasil has had so many different coins, it is nuts. My oldest coin is from 1922!!

This photo was taken shortly after our sink exploded and we patched it up really quick. We installed a new sink this past week, so it is all good now, but when it broke, a water geyser shot out and was hitting the wall on the other side of the kitchen. So, that was an adventure!

After the sink exploded, I tried to go up in the attic to turn off our giant water tank (which is up high in the attic in order to generate water pressure). Elder R. boosted me through the access portal to get into the attic and I immediately fell through the ceiling (Elder R. caught me). I don’t know why they have a door to get up there and then no supports to keep you from falling through!!

Oh yeah, all the ceiling pieces fell on Elder R.’s bed!! hehe!! 

Me in some sweet shades I got from a member kid.

We found and caught a snake in a bottle (we didn’t drink the Coca Cola, a member gave us the bottle [it is a mission rule that you can’t drink Coke], but, yeah, he was fun! 

This week was kind of a tough week, we literally had zero investigators up until Sunday night when we found a newlywed couple who are kind of interested. She loves to read so we left them a Book of Mormon and we will teach them again tomorrow so we will see how it goes! Our goal for this week is to find tons of people to teach so we are going to knock on a ton of doors. Our goal is to knock 1,000 doors this week, pray for us so that we can choose to knock in areas where the people will be more receptive to hear our messages!!

There really isn’t much to talk about because this week was kind of slow. We went to this really good pizza restaurant (where a member in the ward works) like 3 times this week ahhhhh... yeah!!! I didn’t eat much else than that pizza this week, so at least I’m not getting fat, but I’m gonna have to be careful and get back on top of doing my exercises every day (great job, Dad, getting to the gym 6 times this week)!

But, yeah, that’s about it! Thanks for the great letter as always!

Ate mais!

Com amor,

Elder Cummings

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

Two Weeks in a Row: January 28, 2013

Dear Everyone,

Wow. Izzy is super big now!!!

               

1. Have you gotten a Princess Leia towel head picture with Elder F. yet? No, but that’s on today’s to-do list
2. When are transfers? They are coming up soon, right? Do you think you and Elder F. will stay together in this transfer? Transfers are the 5th of February so we have one more Sunday to baptize before transfers. I hope that we stay together because we are working really well together and we are catching the baptism fever!! And, he is a good friend but this is already the 4th transfer for him in this area so it is pretty slim that we will stay together. But I hope we do!!

Here is a photo of the birthday feast I made for Elder F. (I found a New York Knicks hat!!!!) I’m getting a little fat... I'll have to watch out for gaining too much weight on the mission...

Yeah I know that Elder S. was transferred. I missed seeing him in person by 5 minutes L but since he is in the same zone I got to call him on the phone and talk to him a little bit!! I was so happy to see that he was in Bauru!!!

BAPTISM!!!!  2 weeks in a row!! My new record! This week we baptized D., the daughter of a less-active lady, who always went to church with her aunt but we didn’t know that she wasn’t baptized. We ran into the mom on the street and got her address to pass by (we didn’t even know she was a member at that point) and then we were surprised to get to her house and find out that that we see her kids at church every week!! So we got D. prepped for baptism and her mom went to church for the first time in 6 years to watch it, and she now wants to become active again to help her kids out!!!!! No one had passed by to visit her for 6 years before we stopped by... And, we will baptize her brother P. next week, because he wasn’t going to church regularly, but he went yesterday so he can be baptized next week!! Baptizing weekly is super good but really tiring (but it’s a good tired)!!! By the way M. was confirmed yesterday too!!!!! It was a good day.

Oh, and I forgot to say this last week but thank Aunt Paula for the package!! I am behind on my letter-writing so I will try to get a letter sent out to her either this week or next.

Mom, last week in the house of a member I saw a cross stitch of the São Paulo temple which was pretty cool.

I have a new hobby, because a lot of times at houses the people have really annoying dogs that bark and bark and bark from the other side of the gate so I like to poke at them with my shoe keeping it just out of reach but it is really funny to see them try and stretch through the gate to bite it!!! But once you enter, they run away scared. They are only brave when they have a gate protecting them!!! haha

A little more info about my area for you now. My area has 5 different climates, almost. It feels like 5 different areas. We have:

1. the desert area with tons of sand
2. the industrial district which is foggy and has almost zero houses
3. the concrete jungle which is only houses and roads and sidewalks and gates, no green
4. the favela (shanty town) which we can’t go into at night because it is too dangerous
5. the jungle (this is where we work the most) which is dirt roads and lots of trees and lots of tropical bird noises everywhere (that is when we don’t have loud blasting music, Brasilians love putting giant speakers in the back of their trucks!).

I think that’s about it for this week!!

Lots of love!

Elder Cummings

Regret for the Lost: January 13, 2013

Dear Everyone,

1. What do you do for exercising or working out?  We do pushups, sit-ups, lunges, lots of knee exercises. I am having a little bit of knee problems but I am doing all the workouts that the mission has missionaries do for these problems and I bought a knee brace sleeve thingy today so all should be good. Working out in the morning, we really can’t do a whole ton because it is only 30 minutes and we don’t have anything to use so it is kind of what we feel like doing that day, really.
2. Do you have anything you want me to share with the ward on Sunday when I speak in Sacrament meeting? This kind of meshes with the conference address you have been assigned as your topic. It is a regret that I have after listening again to the conference address by David A. Bednar in the April 2012 priesthood session, about the rights and power of the priesthood. One of the things that I regret now that I am on the mission is that I didn’t help missionary efforts enough in the ward. We worked for 4 hours this week and 4 hours last week with our stake mission leader trying to find members that have fallen away from the church. I spent a ton of time calling old telephone numbers and finding out that people moved 20 years ago, died, changed telephone numbers 15 years ago, the number was disconnected, etc. It is really sad that these people moved to different stakes and no one in the Church knew about it for over 20 years, and now they are completely lost. I wish I had gone up to the Bishop and asked him: “How can I help?” or that I went up the missionaries and said: “Monday we will have a Family Home Evening, bring an investigator over!!” I wish I had been proactive in the church. I wish I had done more. (hope that helps)

I finally got my name tag for my suit!

Now, back to Bauru:

Me in front of a big hole in the middle of the street in our area
that was made after two days of rain

Awesome letter as always. It’s good to see the Ravens continue on!!

Squidward!

Can I have a photo of the front of our house, taken from the street? I want to show Elder F. that we don’t have a gate or wall or anything, or bars on our windows!

Some weird fruit that they have here.* It is really big.

* The world's largest edible fruit, the jackfruit (jaca in Portuguese), although not native to Brazil, is one of Brazil's most characteristic fruits, and is cultivated throughout the tropical regions of the country. This gigantic fruit has been known to reach a length of up to 3 ft (90 cm) weighing 80 lb (36 kg) or more. (http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2012/01/fruits-of-brazil-jackfruit-jaca.html)

Can you send me a recipe for pancakes and, if you can, how to make your own maple syrup? It is Elder Faustino’s birthday next week and I want to make him an American breakfast!!!

Things are going great here in our area. Hopefully next week we can have a baptism and break the almost 4-month dry spell in our area!! We cut about 25 investigators who haven’t been progressing, so now it is time to get a ton of references and contact everyone!! It will be almost a fresh start (we only have about 10 people left that we are teaching). But, at least we have M.!! He is about 65 and he wants to change his life around. He had met with the missionaries in a different area of Brasil a few years back, but he had rejected visits from other missionaries in the more recent past. But, for some reason he let us talk with him. We invited him to be baptized on the 20th and he accepted, and cancelled his baptism at another church, because (and I quote) “I felt impressed by the Spirit to be baptized in the Mormons instead of (the other Church)!!!” He is progressing really fast, and really changing a lot! After reading the pamphlet on the Word of Wisdom (without us specifically asking him to), when we came back the next day he had thrown out his coffee!! We hope he is able to be baptized this Sunday; he is really special to us!!

 Me herding some geese/bird-like things.**

** Guinea Hens. In Brazil they are known as galinha d'Angola (Angolan hen), galinha-do-mato (forest hen), capote (caped), guiné (Guinea) or pintada (dotted). In NE Brazil, the capote is often used much as a turkey is used in North America. It can be substituted for chicken in almost any recipe. Some people consider it to have a slightly gamy taste, although others don't notice this at all. (http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2010/09/poultry-guinea-fowl-from-africa-to.html)

I think that is about it for this week,

Lots of Love,

Elder Eldon Ray Cummings

Getting in the Mood to Baptize: October 29, 2012

Hi Everyone!!

To answer your questions:

• Where do you meet for church?  We meet for church in this really big really new church building in the center of town. It is really nice!!
• How do you do your laundry?  Does your apartment have a washer and dryer, do you use a Laundromat, or do you hand-wash?  We have a laundry machine which is actually pretty nice and then we have lots of clothes lines to dry everything (no one in Brasil has a dryer, they just don´t exist here).
• What types of jobs are there in Apucarana?  Is it an agricultural town?  Industrial?  Apucarana itself is almost like Bellevue but smaller, and less tech, the people do a lot of construction and various other things. In Vila Reis, however, everyone either farms or does construction.  It is pretty agricultural here.

The packages you have sent/are sending sound perfect. I will be the envy of every missionary in Brasil!! J And the water bottles sound like a great idea! Thank you!

On the whole apartment thing, it actually isn't bad at all (it is a real eye opener though). We live in a really nice apartment but it is hard to explain.

Thanks for the sports update!! YAY!! Keep it coming please! Also let me know how the storms turn out and things like that. Thanks for keeping an eye on my account! Yeah, I took a little money out this past week.

There is a calendar sent around the ward every month but it is for lunch appointments since that is the big meal down here in Brasil. We have a lunch appointment for every day this month!! J Speaking of food you would be proud of me for buying healthy food and getting Elder W. to eat more and healthier as well. We bought things like yogurt and fruits and veggies and milk this past week! Fruit and veggies are super cheap here, 1R for a kilo of carrots and between 2 and 3R for a kilo of fruit depending on the fruit. And we have a goal of not drinking soda except on Sundays from now on which will help us be healthier as well.

The mission application news is CRAZY!!! Wow! (By the way I hit 3 months this week or 1/8 of the mission already! CRAZY!!!)

On an investigator note. For the third week in a row we had a baptism lined up but then it fell through. At least this time we are still teaching him, just he couldn't make it to church yesterday. But we did have 2 other investigators come with us and they loved church and are planning on being baptized this next week. So (I know I have said this every week so far) but we have 4 baptisms planned for this Sunday with really good potential, and these baptisms would open up the floodgates with family and friends that we could baptize too. So keep your fingers crossed for us this week.

We always find great families—for example we found 2 pretty big families where everyone except one person is over the age of 8—now comes the hard part of getting them to come to church. That is one of the hardest things to do because church starts at 9 in the morning, it is hard to get people to show up. Luckily our two investigators that went last week and want to get baptized this next week were ready and waiting by the time we got to their house, and normally we have to clap and bang to try and wake people up, so that is encouraging.

This past p-day we went to a lake which was really fun.  Today will probably be an arts and crafts day with a nap thrown in there for good measure!! Elder W. and I have been working so hard this past week with getting up early to get people to come to church and just in general doing work! It will be good to get a nap in.

 Some graffiti that means: Calm in the soul, it was pretty funny.

 4 roommates at the park next to the lake in our area. Elder D., Elder W., Elder S., and me.

Getting in the mood to baptize with Elder W., his face is priceless!

  

 Playing on the swing father-son style!

 Getting up close and personal with some capybaras.

My new tradition to always get a photo with my comp with Princess Leia towel hats!

In other news I had my first division/split (my first division longer than 1 hour, that is) this week with an elder from California named Elder D. (not the Elder D. in the picture above.) It was a blast! We worked in his area and got rained on A LOT (in 24 hours I got soaked 2 times all the way through). Waterproof shoes don’t help when you are walking through water past your ankles! But it was fun to finally get some real Brasil rain. Anyway for this division I worked with Elder D. all day in his area and then stayed at his apartment for the night. It was really good to be able to learn from someone else for a day, but it was also really great to be back in my own apartment the next day (our apartment is like the biggest, nicest, and cleanest apartment in the whole zone—maybe the whole mission). But, yeah, divisions are fun!

I think that is all for this week. The mission is already passing by so fast! I love learning every day! I love being able to speak Portuguese better all the time! I love my comp and the other elders in our apartment! I love your letters they are perfect, except for Jason not writing anything...Life is good! J

Love,

Elder Cummings

P.S. Jason BETTER write me this coming week!

P.P.S. We got a bunk bed today for me and Elder W. so now we don’t have to put our mattresses on the floor!! So pumped!