Transfers

A friendly 'hello" to my subscribers,

So my "Pai" (Dad/First companion on your mission/Trainer) L. Sousa got transferred today. We had been together for 3 months and our time together finally ran out. I am grateful he was my companion. Even though sometimes he had a tough time motivating himself to work...I still owe a lot to him for my Portuguese abilities. I was just used to having him around and now it will be weird to grow accustomed to another companion. So yeah, I am going to "return" although I was only gone for 2 weeks to Limão/Casa Verde and am going to have to start all over again pretty much...hooray! Back to the same old...

Speaking of my new companion his name is Elder Almeida. He is a Brazilian from Florianopolis and speaks actually pretty good English. He was actually the companion of Elder Perry who was in my district in the CTM last transfer. I have heard a few shady things about him and L. Sousa told me to "be careful" when he saw that we would be companions. Apparently he has somewhat of a temper and doesn't have a problem with punching his companions...but you know, that's how it is here so I'll just have to find stuff we have in common and work that...but if he starts giving crap it might be hard not to give it back...we'll see though. I have only been with him about 3 hours so I'll let you know how it is with him next week.

So something crazy happened this Sunday at church. I was sitting there...you know just minding my own business, when the self-appointed church usher came over to me and said that some Americans from California just showed up and that I should go sit next to them and find out who they were. I saw a good opportunity to speak some english so I headed over there and sat next to them. I started talking to them and they told me that all three of them were brothers and that the two younger ones (one was about 28 years old and the other mid-30's) were professional tennis players and the other is their "coach", he was the older one. I think he just wanted to travel around and have fun with them though.

The two younger ones both served in Rio de Janeiro so they both were fluent in Portuguese and the other was fluent and Spanish and had taken some Portuguese lessons so all three could understand pretty much everything. Oh and they were here in São Paulo because they had a tennis tournament. The two players play doubles together and are apparently top 10 in the U.S. in it. The youngest one also plays singles and he is top 20 and is living in LA playing and coaching full time...so yeah they are pretty good I think.

Anyway so I got to talking to the younger one and he asked me where I was from. I told him Orem, UT and he asked me what school I went to. I said Timpanogos and he said "Are you serious, I went there for a year!" We both got pretty excited and he started asking me if I knew some people, most of which I didn't. He said "OK I'll try to think of someone your age...uh...do you happen to know Jenny Rife?" I stared at him in shock for a second and then said "Are you being serious right now dude?" He said yes and then I said "Dude, that's my cousin!"

He got all excited and said "Dude, I was Mary Rife's boyfriend for like 3 years!"

So it turns out his name is Brian Battistone (I think that is how you spell it, I am sure Mary will know him) and he has actually been to my house before for Christmas or something. He told me that when he was there he remembers my dad telling him something about my sister Karrissa doing this "no-candy" thing for a year in order to get 100 dollars...do you remember that dad? I do. Anyway it was way cool to talk to all three of these guys and they invited us to there game that they have today over in an area close to ours but we couldn't go because of transfers. Would have been cool though. I didn't have my camera with me but Brian did and he took a picture and said he was going to email Janet and Rich, who knows though. It was crazy though.

Other than that our week was pretty normal. It was still tough to find people in their houses.

We had a sweet BBQ last night at my house with our whole zone, it was really fun actually and extremely delicious.

It was really good to hear my mom's surgery went well and that she feels even better after the surgery than she felt before (...not sure how that works) but yeah, hooray for my mother's health!

Love you all and I will write next week...keep them letters and emails comin'...please!

-Elder Brent Parsons