Email - 12/30/08

From: Bryan Barney
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 7:16 AM

Well, I did it again. I left my weeks worth of notes on all my activities back up in the room, so well, I..ll be winging it again. Since I..m winging it, I thought I should get this out of the way first:

I am not homesick. I am happy here in Brazil, and as long as I can exhert power to do so, I will remain here until the end of my assigned time. I have no intention whatsoever of giving up. Not in the slightest, nor in the least. I love you all, and miss each and every one of you, but this is the single most meaningful thing I have done with my life thus far, and I would never be able to look myself in the eye if I turned away from it.
That said, let..s move on to the weekly update, shall we?
WEDNESDAY/CHRISTMAS EVE
There actually isn..t too much to say about this. The day proceeded fairly normal until the afternoon, but we did however receive some e-mails from home! What a surprise that was. Irmã Vanessa really caught us off guard with that. So how was e-mailing a Brazilian? I can..t vouch for anyone..s English, but that..s because we rarely speak English in class. Well, we do, but far less than we did when I got here.
Christmas Eve night we had a Nativity play conducted by members of the MTC and presided over by a one President Ellis, who, it so happens, is the father of a one Elder Ellis, whom I met in the Provo MTC. So we talked for a little bit about that and, at this time, unbeknownst to us, our Branch Presidency was hooking our AP up with our presents.
I got a letter from Bro. Smith, too. Please pass on to him that I was extremely grateful, and momentarilly perplexed by his letter. I thought I..d got some weird cat-hospital ad until I flipped it over and found the letter. I hope his holidays have gone far better than the story he related me would indicate, which painted a dark, stormy picture of man vs. beast in a vicious battle to the death, haha.
CHRISTMAS
Here is the big one. My alarm was set for 730, but what Christmas would be complete without being woken up early? In my case 8 minutes early! GAH! We went and took some district photos around our Christmas tree, then opened presents. There were small packages of candy for everyone.
Breakfast was great, we had frootloops and some manner of bread with chocolate in it. Beyond that I don..t remember. It was Christmas breakfast, it tends not to be the biggest meal of the day. That..s dinner, right? Well I..ll get to that later.
So afterward we went and played some volleyball in the gym- did I mention we could wear P-Day clothes all day? It was incredible! Anyway, we played volleyball in the gym for an hour, and then it was off to practice for the Talent Show- my companions are singers, of course.
So after hearing We Three Kings for the eight hundredth time, we went and grabbed the whole district and headed off to THE PAPER AIRPLANE CONTEST. At first, we sucked. Then, remembering the papery weapons created the week before, we managed to lob airplanes from one side of the building to the other, causing the leaders present to have to duck. Needless to say, we set the record and won the contest, earning more candy.
Then was lunch, which was undoubtedly the best meal of the day. I can..t quite remember lunch itself, save that I think there was things other than beans and rice, but I know that there was an abundance of ice cream and other unhealthy delights, making us believe Christmas Dinner would be the biggest and best part of the day.
After lunch was the Tie raffel, where you drew a piece of candy, removed the tape on it, read the number, and were given the corrosponding tie. You could trade ties with others, but only so long as you were in the room. I had my eye set on the checkerboard racing flag tie, but wound up with one that was a decent consolation prize: It is essentially the color of a bad acid trip, reminiscent of the Pink Elephant Parade scene from Dumbo, the movie. So just go rewatch that, then look at The Green and Pink Tie in my room, and that is the new tie I recieved for Christmas.
Then we went and you got it, watched It..s a Wonderful Life. I..m not complaining, no, in fact, it made the day perfect. That in place my normal Christmas experience had been utterly fullfilled, and I knew the day was going to be just fine.
Afterward we went to go and have our glorious dinner, only to be reminded of a truth we had endeavored to forget: It was Thursday, and that meant it was Pizza Night. A bit of back-ground information here. CTM Pizza is not like other Pizza. Pizza Night in Provo was good. Pizza in Brazil IS good, but CTM Pizza Nightmare Pizza is awful. Generally it will be topped with olive and egg and chopped ham, or chocolate, cheese, and bannana, oh, or the jelly made to resemble pepperoni. Understand that Thanksgiving did not stop this terrible thing from happening, and it so turned out that not even Christmas could defeat Pizza Night.
That said, the last thing of the night was the Talent Show, which was a lot of fun. I enjoyed watching all the different bizarre and funny performances that you only see at Mormon Talent Shows, ranging from poetry about cucumbers to a ton of white Elders rapping about CTM life.
We were supposed to see the Christmas Devotional that night, but it would not play on the big screens, so it was put off. Afterward we got big huge bags of candy and are to this day endeavoring to finish them.
FRIDAY
We went proselyting in Rua Paulista again. It rained, and it was the day after Christmas (Which was sparkling and sunny, mind you), and well, as you might guess, it appeared that the busiest people in the busiest street in the whole of the 3rd largest city in the world wanted nothing to do with some silly Americans handing out cards.
That is, until we met Alvoro Franco. Álvoro, some 30 years old, we met at a bus stop, just getting out of the rain. He wanted to know more about us, because he had seen that this church was just growing all over the place. He knew of us, but nothing about us, just that there was a church of ours near his house which he passed every day. So we talked and taught him about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon, and for whatever reason I felt prompted to ask that awesome question, "Do you have a Book of Mormon?" "No." "Do you want one?" "Sure!" And so I took our last one and handed it off to him, and as soon as I did, he asked "Can you tell me more about this Book?" And so we launched into a talk about the Book of Mormon, it..s story, contents, and teachings. We told him about how if he prayed to know, Heavenly Father would answer his prayers. And, on his own he asked us when we normally had meetings, and said he..d like to check out our church this Sunday. We asked just for his name so we could remember how to write it, and out of nowhere we had a referral. He wrote his number, unasked for, for us! My companions and I had been praying for this very thing all week, had worked so hard, and the Lord blessed us with that. It was truly an awesome experience.
SATURDAY
Not much, just a brief and humorous story to relate quickly, as I..m running low on time. I sat sitting at a table at lunch, and looked over to where one of my companions was at the next table, with some Brazilians. I did it just in time to see this Brazillian Asian (Brazasian?) Sister named Sis. Flores blow a kiss in what looked like my direction.
Of course, I turned around to make sure, and saw that she was blowing it to one of her fellow sisters, but the humor was not lost on Elder Ulbrich, nor unnoticed by poor Sis. Flores. So I quipped, "Eu precisa fechir meu coração," "I need to lock my heart", and nearly killed the sister with embarassment. Later that night I waved to her in the hall and she lowered her head and dashed off with her companion. It was very, very funny. She is fine now, by the way, so I didn..t scar her forever. We all had a great laugh, though.

SUNDAY

Again, not much I can relate off the top of my head except this: The newest member of our branch presidency was converted to the church and baptized by an Elder Barney, from Arizona. Dunno if we have family there, but it makes for a nice anecdote.

MONDAY

I got your letter from home, and am extremely grateful that you and Dad had the chance to write to me. I..d love to know more about Dad..s mission, about if he baptized anyone, and, if you have time, Mom, I..d like to hear how you joined the Church.
I am afraid I have to go now, and am so sorry I have not more time to respond to everything. I hope you all enjoy your Christmas gifts, as I do mine, and hope you all have fun-- oh, we saw the Devotional Sunday, did I remember to say that?
Anyway, I must stop now, because any more and I..ll owe more than 2 R$, which is an unwanted situation. I love you all and I am so happy to be here, and happy you all had a wonderful Christmas. One more till I..m home, right? Hahha?
21 payments more Mom!
Love,
Bryan Barney.