Parasites and Gratitude

I hope my letter last week was not too horrifying!  But this week was for the most part a lot better. After I wrote my letter a week ago we had almoso [mid-day meal] with a member family (Famila de Claudio).  They are really nice we have almoso with them twice a week.  Well, I finished writing my paper letter to the family and we went to the post office to mail it, and when we left I felt a bit of nausea.  Well, I knew it was just a matter of time and while we were waiting for things to start working at the post office, I couldn't hold it back. I set my stuff down on the chair next to me and walked calmly outside to the sidewalk where I doubled over and threw up everything that was in my stomach, right in front of a little girl and her mom.  I could hear everyone in the street going "oooh aaah" like the spectacle was some sort of fireworks show or exotic foreign show at a circus.  funny.  Well, I felt a lot better and a man that works washing motorcycles right next to the post office was kind enough to clean it up (wash it into the street) with a few buckets of water.  The bummer was the computers at the post office were not working so I didn't get to mail my letter.  Hopefully, I will have better luck this afternoon ; )

Well the day after Tuesday we spent all day in Neucleo, a city about 45-ish minutes away by bus at the hospital there.  We waited for the whole day and finally talked to a doctor that said in Portuguese that I probably had some sort of parasite and that I needed to give them a stool sample to figure out what it was for sure.  Unfortunately, I had not eaten much for the last week and I had thrown up most of what I had eaten recently so it took me a few days to come up with this sample.  (Mom, Dad, see other letter for more details). Well that's pretty much it.  They said that I need to go back and talk to them again before I get some medication.

We had a meeting in Belem Wednesday, a mission tour thing with a member of the 70 for Brazil.  Did you know last year in Brazil 37,000 people were baptized and only 3,800 are active of those converts?  That number is pretty bad.  I hope we can do better with that.  I wonder if we baptize too quickly or if we just need to work harder with the members to keep people active.  

Well, this week we didn't do a lot of proselyting.  Hopefully this week will be better.   

I hope you all had a better Thanksgiving than I did.  Mine wasn't bad, it just wasn't Thanksgiving.  But, I did give a pretty good talk on gratitude in church on Sunday. I used two scriptures: the story about the ten lepers in Luke 17, I think; and a part of King Benjamin's speech about how we can do everything in our power to be grateful to God but compared to what he has given us, it really isn't much.  At least that's how I interpret the scripture.  Like the widow giving tithes and the rich man, sometimes it's not what we give, but what we sacrifice to give what we do.  I think God knows that, and is still super grateful for our gratitude.

Well, I haven't had time to read your emails yet.  I'll do that after I send this but I hope all of you are doing great and feel free to write more emails.  I read them after I use my hour to write!

love you all

Ben