Email - 4/21/09

From: Bryan Barney
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:54 AM

Hold on just a sec, looks like I have ten minutes left, and just enough time to mess with some pictures.

Okay, I bought some more time, so now I should be able to write.

Okay, so we had to go and pick up the macina de lavar roupa lá em Bairro Granada, then we got it home, and burned it out because of a problem with voltage. Now it works because of a simple part exchange and a very sketchy taping job with an extension cord. I think I have included some photos of this.

I'm of the mind that the house in Tibery is unusual in terms of the equipment it lacked, as you will see from the photos included, the house is a little better set now. And if Colin asks who the attractive Brasileira is in one of these photos, inform him the names read, from left to right, Sister Da Silva, Sister Judd (with whom I believe you are somewhat acquainted?) Sister Chaves, and Sister J. Lima. You have my written permission to apply this information in a way to excite him to go on his mission, haha.

As it happens, yes, kissing on the cheek is a rather normal thing to do here (although one man kissing another remains a little strange, even here), however Sisters may kiss the cheeks of other women. Élders, on the other hand, remain above the law of the land, haha.

I'm glad you included this story about working with inactive members. We have been doing so for a few weeks, and well, at times it's just a bit rough, really. There are people here putting up a good fight to keep there testimonies intact, and there are others who let all manners of vices- yes, even something as frustratingly stupid as the time of the meetings- destroy their exaltation.

I'm glad to hear they got the steeple up on the Stake Center. Sounds like people must be paying a worthy tithe if everything is moving along. Here we're basically trying to build a ward. We have a bishop, now we just need to organize everything below the Bishopric. Especially activity oriented organizations, like the Young Men's, Young Women's, and Seminary. If we can get these things off the ground, this ward.'l really start cooking.

As for the Gospel Arts Book, I'm kinda without means to buy one. Er, well, not without money, but without a way to get a hold of someone going to the Temple to buy one. I'll give it a shot for a bit longer. But I'm also kinda looking for a few photos more abstract, like of stars, the moon, and the sun, to portray the Kingdoms of Glory, and a shot of the Seattle Temple would be nice, too.

Speaking of photos, I have a pen drive now. You may e-mail me photos and I can thereafter print them out. The 2 Gig card Matt sent does not work with the camera, and I don't know why outside of the camera is too old to read her, but the Pen-drive is a good storage bucket.

I received a letter from the Bishopric this week, and it sounds as though all runs well there in Spanaway Ward. That's good news. Please send my love to them, and to the Primary, and if Brent shows up, let him know I said hi. Likewise tell Brian Van Duyn that I am absolutely impressed with his decision to serve. In a short time our ward will finally have a good number of Elders out of it. Oh, but let Brian know they sent him to Peru because he misspelled his name. Had he placed a Y on the page, he'd have been called to Brazil, too.

Hahaha.

Please inform my friends that I recently received a package for, um, Valentine's Day from them, and am very thankful for it. Someone needs to Noogie Sharelle for foubecando and not writing, but at the same time, it's been a while since I sent a fair number of letters out. Likewise I send a request to them, through this e-mail, for photos from the ferris-wheel ride, and remind them, as I remind all within the reach of this e-mail, that I readily accept photos that happen DURING these two years. My ugly face doesn't have to be in them people, I want to see what you're all doing too!

Speaking of which, I sent a letter out to them, which contains a letter for Jess, Kelsey, and Sharelle. I believe Matt and Miranda are on the schedule for this week.

As you know, Transfer will fall Dia 5 de Maio, which is also the day I turn 6 months old on the mission, and 4 months old in the field, more or less. This Transfer was only 5 weeks long, and I am not sure why, but because of Transfers of this type, I am led to understand that it's possible my Mission ends 2 weeks before the 2 Year Mark. I hope that's not true, however, as I have a great pile of work to accomplish before I finish here, and I cannot stomach the idea of it coming to an end before I am ready.

I should also say that my portuguese has allegedly improved. Eu não tenho certeza disso, vendo que Presidente ainda me colocou com um americano. Porém, estou falando bém. Não muito bém, nem exellente, mas acho que vou continuar.

This week we had an awesome opportunity. Elder Tobias, the brother of President Tobias, came to visit us. Elder Tobias is a member of the Quorum of the Seventy. So you can imagine, we had some sibling rivalry, we had to show off for the brass and, well, all the district and zone leaders were sweating bullets. But it was a lot of fun. We received some good training on Retention, Reactivation, and Conversion, and discussed Christ's gentle rebuke to Peter about when he would convert. Some deep doctrine fell about our heads, and we received our training on the New and Eternal Covenant, too, which, eh, dunno how to even explain it, outside of that Elder Tobias, who is, by the way, a Brasilian, told us that the training wasn't to make us "Trunkie", but to knock our heads around a bit so we can get off the mission and not slack off.

So stake conference here was at once awesome and horrible. Awesome because Elder Tobias was here, horrible because, as per usual, screaming children were required. Awesome, people are fighting at the computer next to me. I will send this now, so as not to lose it.