Day 406

This week was pretty routine. We were able to bring investigators to church. We're a bit frustrated with some "eternal investigators" here. There's a woman and her daughter who participate probably more regularly that a large part of the active members here, also participates in the Relief Society activities.

She actually is very easy to be mistaken for a member. She's already been taught all the lessons more than once, and has a strong testimony of the church The only problem is that the family is impossible to catch at home. I think she must work something like 80 hours per week. I've been here 5 weeks and we haven't managed a single visit there.

We see some interesting stuff on the street. Here's a strong center for macumba/black magic; etc.

Lots of people leave offerings on corners. Basically they worship "saints", but it’s less like the catholic saints and more like actual demons. The youth seem to really like this sort of stuff. There's no commitments and the reunions are just parties with alcohol and drugs (plus rituals). They always leave lots of trash on the ground, and sometimes dead chickens.

Sometimes these offerings on the corner have money left behind, one time Elder Cardoso found 30 reais. I've found a few 10 cent coins. But the offerings themselves are kind of weird. It's usually stuff like fruits and vegetables, but we've seen almost every sort of item, even bottles of liquor, old clothes. Elder Marques said that in the north, there are these big events where people even leave valuables as offerings. He went to the beach afterwards and found a gold watch, money in cash and some other stuff. So that's something I never witnessed at home.

If you haven't already sent the package, I found some headphones that connect by USB that I think I'll buy here.

Here's lunch from this week:

I'll try to get everything up and running and I'll make the call after