Week Ten

Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 7:22 AM




Hi Mom!

I hope that all´s well. I´ve got my address for you, so here it is:

Elder Eric Dohrman
Praça Joseph Smith 15
Portão
Caixa Postal 80610-210
Curitiba-PR
Brasil


Prudentópolis is an interesting city; it´s pretty big (well probably not but when you walk everywhere it seems that way) and there are a lot of people that live here. On the weekends, the street we live on, São João, is full of people partying. It kinda reminds me of Pullman, only there are a lot more young people. It´s kind of weird seeing girls that would still be in 8th or 9th grade walking around with the adults at night, but I guess that´s how the culture is.


The people here are really willing to talk to you, though, even if they don´t agree. I talked to a Jehova´s Witness yesterday! She declined to have us visit.


We have people on date for baptism! 3! Well, four, but I don´t know when the fourth will be baptized because she has to get married and her husband isn´t exactly the most receptive. He struggles with some of the commandments and I think he doesn´t want to change. Their daughter will get baptized this weekend, though. I´m praying for it.


The other two, Elder Barbosa invited on our first visit! It was crazy; we were talking about the Restoration, and after he talked about the First Vision he invited them and they both said yes! I didn´t think it was possible, but the Spirit was so strong, it was incredible. I´m excited to see how that happens in other situations, too.


Our Mission President´s really new. He’s American and he served in Argentina, but his wife served in Portugal! They´re super awesome, and it´s funny because they speak Portuguese really well but in kind of a strange accent. Not that I have any room to talk.



I hope all´s well, and you´re staying comfortably busy. I love you and I`m doing some pretty interesting things here! I love you Mom.



Love, Eric








Hi Dad!

I don´t know what time it is there, but we may or may not need to change our watches for summer at some point, and I don´t know when daylight savings time is but that could put a huge gap in time between us. Either way, it´ll be good.

It´s so weird to hear that it´s winter there! The only really crazy thing we´ve had is rain. And by rain, I mean torrential downpour. We´ve spent a lot of the last week jumping from town to town, because Elder Barbosa is the District Leader and has to go to leadership meetings and baptismal interviews and stuff. I did my first Divisão last week! That´s a split, exchange whatever you want to call it. It was pretty cool, and I´ve been teaching big parts of lessons too! It´s tough at times to understand people, but I try really hard, and not hearing English at all is helping. I just have to reprogram my brain, I guess.

My schedule´s nothing particularly insane: Wake up at 6:30, stretch and do some pushups and situps and stuff, shower, shave, eat, get dressed and, when we´re not going to catch the bus to Irati or Guarapuava (the other cities in the Zone), we get to do personal study and companionship study. Today, we even had time for language study, which was me reading aloud with a pen inbetween my teeth. Apparently, this helps remove my sotaque, or accent. English is in the front of your mouth, and Portuguese is in the throat, so having the pen makes me keep my tongue toward the back and speak more like a Braslieiro.

Then we go to lunch with a member, typically, and teach for the rest of the day. We have a goal as a mission for 15 contacts and 5 addresses each day, which I haven´t hit yet, but I´m trying really hard. We´re teaching a lot of people, so we don´t spend a lot of time on the street doing contacts. That isn´t any excuse, though. I did a few contacts by myself, too! It was scary, but I did what I could and got a couple addresses out of it, too.

I´m not sure if I´ll have time to do a big email, but we have three people on date for baptism! We had four, but the mom of one of them isn´t actually married to her husband, which is a big problem here, so we need to get it all taken care of beforehand. I think that we can get the daughter baptized this weekend though. I´m definitely praying for it.


Our church building used to be a school, so it´s kinda weirdly set up and isn´t very big. We only had about 30 people in Sacrament meeting, which was tough, but we already have people committed to come this week. I´ll be praying!

I hope you´re not too busy, but I´m glad you do have things to do! I love you and I´ll keep in touch with everything!

Love Eric