Day 105

The big news this week is the current crisis in all of Brasil. Something involving Petrobras, the state-owned oil company.

My companion:

"O unica vez vai realmente ver 'ladrões' é na televisão."

Or "the only time you'll ever see thieves is on TV", especially in reference to the government meeting that was being shown at that moment.

But in a literal sense I was able to see a police car chase from a following motorcycle camera, live. So that's different. Also saw a military police raid from helicopters on some hideout in the jungle (I assume the Amazons). Weird to witness this stuff watched so openly and closely by news cameras, but also fascinating.

As far as Itaqui goes, everything is basically normal except that all of the freight has stopped moving. There's a big rice factory in town and the warehouse is always open, we walk through the truckyard as a shortcut sometimes. It's all empty except for some workers, and the holding area is continually filling up more and more with pallets of rice.

Other areas in Brasil are more dicey, but here, as always, is generally calm.

The mission leadership for Santa Maria authorized half of our reserve fund for food. We're all well stocked for the next week-2/3 weeks(?)

Twice this week, there were parade protests in Itaqui just like the ones in major cities that are being shown on Brasilian TV. Seems counterproductive to spend fuel in protest of high fuel prices, especially now that the gas stations here are dry (and in lots of other cities).

We have a missionary here from Columbia, Elder Varela, who says this sort of thing happens regularly in his country. As for Brasil, this is the first crisis of this scale in a few decades.

Thankfully, missionary work goes on like normal.

For an investigator to be baptized, one requirement is that they must have assisted sacrament meetings at least two times. We were able to bring two more investigators for their second time, Aidelene and her daughter Amanda.

They both belong to the Quadrangular church. I mentioned this before but I wasn't entirely correct about the details. That church exists throughout all of South Brasil, but the local (Itaqui) leadership was organized by a former less-active member here. The membership shows up to various chapels by literal busloads here.

Speaking of buses, the reality is different from expectation. There are local lines that run according to what you'd expect, but Brasil is heavy, deep, invested in bus travel intercity. My companion said that maybe more than half of all road travel in Brasil is by long distance buses.

The lines run sort of like airlines, uniforms and all. For longer rides, like from Itaqui to Santa Maria itself for example, the buses focus more on luxury; they have several restrooms, comfortable and well spaced seating, and they have ceiling mounted tv's that play movies constantly. The movies play with Portugues overdubbing. I had to sit through this terrible movie with Ben Stiller and Martin Short and Barbara Streisand and Robert de Niro. Bleh.

Good choice on Hunter's part to get math courses out of the way early. He also should start working *immediately* when he gets the chance. Just my opinion from personal experience.   ;)

Have fun in Byron, send pictures

Until next week,

Elder Hopkinson