Week 85: Festa de Iemanjá!

Hey everyone! How are things going? Here is great. This week we have had some interesting experiences. An Elder from Lauro de Freitas had a hernia surgery and is staying at our house. He can´t do anything and just needs to rest. So we Elder Prince, Elder Cantuário, and I have been taking turns staying at home (or the office) with him. One stays with him and the other two work in our area. Things are pretty slow in our area because Carnaval is arriving and people are already beginning to party or travel.  So this week was pretty normal. We did what was possible in our area. We are still having a hard time finding people to teach; new people who are interested. I did a contact with a woman who seemed to be really interested, but she lives in a different area.

On Monday Elder Prince and I had a family night with Romilda. It was supposed to be with a friend of hers but she never showed up, so we just had it with Romilda´s family.
Tuesday was a normal day of work. Wednesday was pretty cool and funny. We had district meeting in the morning. I was just finishing up my training and President Bangerter showed up out of nowhere and got up and gave another 30 min training on exactly what I had just trained. It was pretty funny. The scripture cases and bags came in too and we got that all organized. Thursday was my day to stay with Elder Dos Santos, so nothing super productive happened. I just did a little project for President Bangerter that he asked me to do, print out lots of paper cards, and cut them out for his stake conference meetings.

I was so excited for Friday to come around. Here in Bahia, every year on February 2nd  there is a faith/culture/tradition of a different religion. It is actually a tradition from two different religions mixed together, Catholic and Candomblê. It started out with only 25 fisherman, but now it is one of the biggest traditions / parties other than Carnaval. In the morning everyone dresses in white and goes to Rio Vermelho (a part of our area). They put various "offerings/presents" in the water for the Ocean queen / water goddess. It is generally flowers that they put in the water. Then at night there are CROWDS of people in Rio Vermelho for parties and music in the street.

So this was our day. You ready?? We changed our day to work in our area all day without going to the office from Wednesday to Friday. Since we are taking care of Elder Dos Santos who had the hernia surgery, it was Elder Cantuário´s turn to stay home. So Elder Prince and I left to work. We had TERRIBLE luck. At 10 am we walked through the crowds to get to our area. It took 40 minutes to get there. Everyone was putting their flowers in the water. As we got to our area Elder Cantuário called and needed us to go back to the office to open it up. He did not have the keys. We had only done a few contacts and hadn´t even taught a single lesson, but we walked back and opened the office so he could pay some rental bills and other bills that needed to be send to president for their approval to be paid. Elder Cantuário paid and then left.  Then after a bit, we went to lunch. We walked all the way to the other Elder´s area for lunch. We were towards the end of Vale das Pedrinhas and guess who called? Elder Cantuário. Now we got frustrated. Elder Cantuário needed us to go back to the office to resend and email to some missionaries concerning light bills. So we turned around and walked back to where we just were at. We missed our lunch appointment so we stopped at Subway on the way to the office. We did that favor for Elder Cantuário and had the Elders that made it to the lunch appointment bring us lunch that we missed in tupperwares. While we were waiting for them to arrive President showed up in the office o grab some material (awkward... because we weren´t supposed to be there). We explained why we were there on the day we weren´t supposed to go to the office. More bad news.... He told us that he forgot to approve the payments on IMOS so nothing was paid for. So all we did was in vain. All that running around and losing time to work in our area for nothing. After we ate, we went back to our area. Everything fell through. No one was home that we marked with. Luana´s friends that we were going to visit with her were not home. So we knocked a few doors and we were able to teach 2 new people. Then we had dinner at Romilda´s house and left a message. It was about 8:45 pm when we left.

Here was the interesting part of Friday. HOLY SMOKES. There were so many people on the coast in Rio Vermelho!! It was NUTS!!! I have never seen so many concentrated crowds of people in one area. It was pretty much like carnaval. Tons of people, loud live music, dancing, and drinking. The crowds came in waves.

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To get through / enter the main part with the most people (which also happened to be how we walk home every night) we had to pass through a gate where the police scanned down every person with a metal detector like thing. We passed through and we were in! SO MANY PEOPLE. I wanted to record it, but i didn´t even take my camera out because it was too crazy. The glass tattoo shop was turned into a club and we had to hop down off the borders of the sidewalks onto the grass next to the beach just to get through some parts that were so full of people that it was all stopped. We finally made it through the worst part and headed to the Praça de Maraquita. It was PACKED!

We were getting through and one guy with a pretty woman at his side stopped us and asked Elder Prince in English, "Where are you from?" He responded, the United States. Then the dude told Elder Prince that he is pretty and asked him for a kiss. We just looked away and took off. hahaha. We quickly walked home. We were the only people walking the opposite direction away from the party in Rio Vermelho. Everyone was flocking towards the party there. It was only 9:15 pm when we got home. Imagine that place at 11:00 pm or after midnight. Must be pretty crazy. It was quite the experience that I won´t forget. There is more to come just in a week with Carnaval just around the corner.

For P-Day today, I am staying in the office to email my family and plan a few things. I want to say congratulations to my little brother for getting his Eagle Scout award. I am so proud of him and everyone that sacrificed time and effort in helping him. That is a huge achievement that requires lots of dedication. I also want to say congratulations to Anderson Reded. This young man is incredible. I had the privelege to meet him, teach, and baptize him one year ago. Since then, he ha been active in the church and qualified to enter the holy temple. He went for his first time this week. Nice job Anderson!!

Thanks to everyone who reads these emails and supports me. I appreciate your prayers for the missionaries and your love. I know that Christ loves us and is our greatest advocate. I am grateful for everything that he has done for us and everything he still does. He is our greatest example! I love you all!

-Elder Hilton