Guten Morgen!

I just remembered that I tried this week to remember all of the German that I once knew...yeah didn't work. The Portuguese replace all of the words of the words I knew in German (even though I only ever knew a tiny bit). All I know now in German is to count to 19 (I forgot the number 20), good morning, and how to say "and threw the cat on the floor!".

Speaking of Portuguese it's coming pretty well. It's still coming a lot slower than I would like it to be, but it's getting a lot better.

So I received a new companion named Elder Almeida last week. He is from Florianopollis... which I hear is a very beautiful city. I have been trying to grow accustomed to him this week...which at times has been difficult. He is really cool and I like him, but just like a lot of Brazilians he is very prideful and arrogant. I also found out that he not only fought with his companion 3 weeks ago...but tried to hit him with his metal chin up bar, but luckily the ZL's stopped him before that happened ha ha. It was a bit unnerving to see him unpack it after knowing what he already tried to do with it... ha ha. But really, he is pretty cool and he just has a hard time listening to others tell him what to do... which is why I'll happily take the role as junior companion for the time being.

Elder Almeida is a very good teacher and I have already learned some things about how I should be teaching from him. It has been pretty hard this week to pretty much start over in my area...but we did visit some old investigators that have been really receptive, so hopefully that continues to go well. As of now we just need a larger teaching pool of investigators.

One of our investigators named Lurdes was supposed to get baptized this Saturday but she can't quit smoking. She was smoking 40 cigarettes a day when L. Sousa and I met her, but she is now smoking only 2 a day. She cuts the cigarettes in half to make them last longer haha. She is really cool and has a really strong desire to quit so I think she will stop sometime this week so we can baptize her pretty soon.

For Brazil our mission has a really low baptisms number. Not because we are a weak mission or anything (at least I don't think so) but because of a lot of reasons like we are in a city that is known as a city of business, a city where everyone is working ALL THE TIME. They don't stop...especially for our lessons haha. It's crazy when you hear that missions like Fortaleza are baptizing like 250 people a week when our mission is getting somewhere around 15-20 right now. Just a little point of information I thought you guys might like. Freak, you know it's bad when all you have to talk about in your emails is your mission's baptism numbers...

This drunk grabbed my arm out in the street yesterday. He grabbed it really hard so I threw it off and then he started yelling at me. There were a bunch of black guys standing off to the side and they were like "Punch him in the face, German!" (that's what everyone thinks I am... German). It was so funny. I obviously didn't punch him and Elder Almeida and I just walked away laughing.

Sorry I don't have tons to write. The week was pretty normal and we are just trying to get back into the groove of things in the area. Hopefully someone punches me or something so I have something good to write next week (just kidding mom!).

Thanks for the emails, love you guys! Peace!

-Elder Brent Parsons