What's up?

Good to hear that Thanksgiving went well for everyone. I hope it went well for ALL of my readers, which I am sure the number is skyrocketing by the week. I might just blog the rest of my life and charge a subscription fee. Just kidding, I think I only know of 9 people who actually read this...oh well...I like to think that I am writing to the world right now.

This week went pretty well. We did have something really bad happen though. We had an investigator named Claudia with a baptism date and everything. We thought she was really progressing but we went there on Thursday and something bad had happened. The pastor (spelling?) of her church is also her boss...because she works for him. Anyway, so I guess he heard about us teaching her and he obviously couldn't lose a precious member/source of income of his church so he rescheduled her to work every Sunday at 9 am. We have church every Sunday at 9 am. It was so ridiculous. So she said that she could never come to church with us and said that we should probably just stop teaching her. She tried to give us back the Book of Mormon we gave her and everything. We obviously told her to keep it then just left...probably to never see her again due to the stupid pastor and his greediness. Ridiculous.

We had our every 6-week interviews with our President on Friday. Along with that we talk to his wife about our health and other things. It is kind of cool because she weighs us every transfer to make sure we aren't gaining or losing too much. I am not sure what is too much but I know I lost 12 pounds since I got in the field and she didn't say anything about it so I guess I am still healthy. I am working towards losing another 58 pounds this month so I can keep pace with what Ryan did. I'll keep you posted.

Sousa was sick the other night so we didn't work. I wrote a letter and then had nothing else to do so I got out my sweet chess set that I bought and decided to play a game...against myself. The funny thing is is that black won in a surprise check-mate that I didn't even see coming. It was epic.

On Monday I went with Elder Martinatto to the hospital because he messed up his knee. Turns out he needs surgery tomorrow and will be out for 3 weeks! He has to just sit at the mission office the whole time, sucks. Anyway, the hospital we went to was pretty much the nicest place I have ever seen. It's called Albert Einstein Hospital or something like that in São Paulo. Look it up. They tell me it is in the nicest hospital in all of South America and I believe it. It was really sweet. Martinatto said he slept there for 3 days one time because his companion messed up his knee just like he did and he said it was one of the better experiences of his life. Anyway, thought it was cool so you might want to see it.

So after the hospital we went back to the mission office where he had to do some physical therapy. I was bored and got to talking to a certain Elder Alkmim. He is Brazilian and his family lives in this mission and he often sees them on the street. How weird is that? Anyway, he's a little bit weird, but he happened to know every single one of the members of my district in the CTM that I have been dying to hear about so he told me all he knew about each one of them which was really sweet. He ranked them on how good their Portuguese is and told me about their companions and stuff. It was awesome. I have only seen 2 of the 7 in the past 2 months so it was really good to hear about all of them. Sounds like all of them are doing pretty well...more or less. I miss all those guys.

So yesterday was awesome. Mostly due to us teaching the homosexual guy. And yes, I found out, his "crush" on me is for real I think. Really good story actually. So we went there and he let us in but he was practicing his singing and playing the piano with this other girl so he told us just to watch for a little bit until they finished. I thought it was going to be torment. So we sat down and they started playing and singing and to be completely honest they were freaking amazing. He is one of the better piano players I have ever seen and his voice is even better. She could make a living off singing. It was incredible. So they played and sang for about 20 min and then she left and we began to talk. He happened to sit down right next to me...touching my knee with his. He showed me this book that he was reading that was helping him learn German...then all of the sudden he looked up at me, then looked at my hair and slowly moved his hand to my hair and grabbed a piece of something I guess I had in my hair and slowly pulled it away. Most awkward moment of my life.

So anyway he finally moved and went and sat at the piano and started playing again. He said "come here Elder Parsons" so I went of there and he preceded to sing to me several popular American songs. After the third song I slowly moved back to my spot on the couch where L. Sousa was trying to stifle his laughter without Moisés (gay guy) knowing. Anyway, long story short Moisés is actually pretty cool and extremely smart. He wants to learn English so bad so I used that as bribery to get him to come to church this week. I said I would give him one English class if he comes to church this week and he reluctantly agreed. So that was sweet. I don't know what is going to happen with him being gay and all...but at least he will come to church. (Oh yeah, we have a brazi elder in our district that is fluent in English that offered him lessons...he denied them and said "I want Parsons to teach me"). Really funny.

Well other than that it was just pretty normal this week. Lunches with the members were excellent and our other teaching appointments went fine. I know this was pretty short but I don't have much else to say. Keep me posted on the happity-haps of life in the US. Politics, sports, whatever. Love you guys, thanks for your love and support.

-Elder Brent Parsons