Into the Amazon

 Monday, January 6, 2025; Iranduba Branch, Iranduba, Amazonas, Brazil: Olá a todos!  As last pday and this pday are only a few days apart, I wanted to be brief.  For pday, my companion and I walked down to the river. So, basically there are two rivers kind of close by. One of them, Rio Negro (Black River) is between us and Manaus. The other, Rio Solimões, is where my current city is built off of.  Iranduba is basically on a península, or Island, with one river below and another above. But later thise two rivers come together. Many of you may have heard of it, but there's an interesting thing that happens. The rivers are actually different colors, temperatures, and different speeds. But when they come together to form the official Amazon River, they flow next to each other without mixing for a distance. [It is calling the Meeting of the Waters. You can Google it and see pictures of the two rivers flowing side by side!] Today, we went to see Rio Solimões. Its color is ...

 Friday, January 3, 2025; Iranduba Branch, Iranduba, Amazonas, Brazil: This week my p-day was moved to Friday so that we could go to the temple!  My day was super busy, as we took a taxi to Manaus, and then an Uber to the temple, and then another taxi and Uber back to my city, Iranduba. I will talk about the temple first; it was super awesome! I guess I didn't realize how much I miss worshipping in the temple, being that I have been serving in other states for several months and haven't been to go to the temple. Made me realize how lucky I am and how blessed those are who live in or near a city with a temple.  Also, I gotta say, the temple is super beautiful. They used native plants and designs like that to make decor in the temple. Usually, I love looking at that the most. But this time I enjoyed all of the paintings, of Jesus, of other prophets and Scripture stories. It made me wonder how I can make artwork that inspires people to come unto Christ to that level. Maybe I...

 Monday, December 23, 2024; Iranduba Branch, Iranduba, Amazonas, Brazil: Olá como vai pessoal? Minha semana foi boa. Feliz Natal para todos vocês, espero que vocês estão bem! Hello one and all! This week has been pretty good, but a little frustrating.  -We helped someone build their house so they can move in before they get kicked out of their rental. -We had our Branch Christmas party; it went really well. There was a bunch of food, it was great. -We ate lunch at one of the Branch member's houses. It was nice that he gave us a ride because otherwise that would have literally been a 4-hour walk.  -We saw another Iguana this week. -I saw more vultures, and some other small cool black birds, along with another small green bird. -It rained a bunch this week too, and there are lots of dirt roads, so I have to constantly clean the bottom of my shoes. My companion, Elder Gale and I had a talk about some of the fruits and veggies that they have here that we are less familiar wit...

 Monday, December 16, 2024; Iranduba Branch, Iranduba, Amazonas, Brazil: This week was pretty packed full, with a little bit of everything. To start the week, we had Zone Conference. In my Mission, we are divide into 4 Zones. The states of Rondonia and Acre each have their own Zones for the missionaries serving there. The missionaries in the city of Manaus are another Zone. And the other missionaries serving in the state of the Amazon but outside of Manaus, like me, are in the last Zone.  My Zone in Portuguese is called Vulture River Zone (Zona Rio Urubu). I guess we do have a bunch of Urubu here.  . Normally all of the zones but mine have an in-person Zone Conference every transfer (6 weeks). But being that this Zone Conference was Christmas-themed, they decided to do an in-person conference for us as well, so we all got to travel to Manaus and had Zone Conference with the Manus Zone.  Zone Conference was awesome! We heard some inspiring messages and got to share with e...