Soccer Champs

12/10/2008

Hey Family
 
IMPORTANT!!!: SPFC won the brasilian national cup this past week.  I´m not 

sure that made the news up north but it made a holiday down here.  How am i 

suppose to sleep with fireworks all night long? answer: i didn´t
 
Interesting: A Brasilian kid will find just about any excuse to take his shirt 

off, which isn´t a problem outside of church activities. ´´Aw man i missed that 

goal....let me take my shirt off´´ haha i love this place
 
....i fell in front of a motorcycle this week...
 
The only reason you havn´t heard about this yet is because well... it wasn´t 

moving lol.  What happened was me Kartchner and Martins were all buying delicious 

pizza pastels and it was like 8 so as a missionary i was already getting a little 

tired.  As many of you know i rarely pick up my feet and so i´d kinda been 

stumbling around do to uneven roads.  Well curbs here are simalar to utah if 

not bigger in stature and the pastel place we were at (run by some memebers in 

our ward) was exepsionally high.  As some random Brasilian caught me off gaurd 

by asking me if i was american in english, i confirmed this obvious fact by 

taking a step backward where the curb was not.  Kartchner turned around just 

in time to watch me do almost a full backwards summer sault into the front 

wheel of some man´s parked motorcycle.  Wow gotta love akward moments.
  Gotta- wow there´s an english slang.  Fun fact i bet you could go a whole 

week only using the verbs get and do.  Doing dunno done don´t does did. 

Blah blah you can discribe feelings and actions with both of those verbs. 

There maybe like on time you need the verbs is/are or go but most of the 99% 

time (..it works all the time) you can find away around having to use them.
 
  Ok so about my week (let me get out my handy dandy planner as i ajust my 

specticales)  I havn´t slept at home pretty mu ch this intire week.  Monday 

night was the first time sense last sunday.  The reason being (as you may 

have already guessed) Elder Guerra decided to make history in being the only 

missionary in all 27 missions in brazil to ever get a heart attack at 20 years 

old.  I think that may be a medical record breaker as well.  Apparently a vein 

feeding his heart closed up for a little bit and caused it.  He never passed 

out or went into shock tho.  And upon my visits to the hospital he seemed 110% 

as he typically did in the feild too.  But apparently theres some rule in the 

church that if  missionary has a heart attack they halfta go home for a little 

bit for further testing.  Rediculas, if you ask me, i cut myself shaving the 

other day and you don´t see me going anywhere!  But their shooting to have him 

back up here from São Paulo in about to weeks (convinitly after christmas) In 

fact as we were packing with him he kept telling us to leave stuff because he 

would be back before we knew it.  He has an excellent spirit!
  So for the majority of the week i´ve been in a threesome with the addition of 

elder Kartchner, which was excellent, then fun, then a little over bearing. 

Its a ton of fun when your jus tin the apartment together but its a little 

´´redonculas´´ to shack someones hand in the street three times, especially 

when the first person is still trying to talk to them while the other two are 

trying to shake their hand.  
   It went well all in all though and we got alot done.  The first day together 

while headed to our lunch appointment we randomly started helping someone (whom 

we did not know) move.  I can´t say o completely agreed with the maner in which 

we packed an entire house´s worth of stuff into the back of a Tucoma (danny 

gessel) but i hope it all made it saftely to its new home.
  Werrica and her husband are now officially married after sitting in the 

Casamento office for an eternity (ironic) and listening to Kartchner complain 

about saduku.  We´ve been able to visit their house a few other time this week 

and share a message and even had lunch with them the other day.  Their nine year 

old daughter is always smiling and pulled a side by side english portuguese 

bible the other night.  Alot of people in brasil can´t read all that well, in 

fact when talking to people we almost always ask, kindly, if they LIKE to read. 

So it funny to see some kids who attend school out read their parents.  As i 

sat there with her she had me read in english as i listened to her pronounce 

portuguese.  She was astonished at how fast you can read English. Then she 

handed me the book our mormon i had just let her borrow (cause both her 

parents had one and she felt left out) and i told her she could keep it but 

i had a few scriptures i wanted to mark and have her read.  It was pretty fun 

i mark a few here and there all throughout the BOM and handed it back to her 

and told her to find them as she read.  She was pretty excited and told me of 

course she would read.  That family will be baptismed the 20th, MERRY CHRISTMAS
  Speaking of which i love your creche and run idea dad, but...living conditions 

don´t really comply with a clap and run scenario.  Alot of people live on the 

other side of a gate or upstairs and don´t come to the door if the don´t see 

heads when they look out the window.  Not to mention the sticky fingeres of 

some kids lol, its hard enough to hold on to my name tag at church =)
  How do you make banana chips...?  that´s important, quickly someone respond. 

Also (directed towards Nana) what a reciepe for a delicious pound cake?
  Our district meeting this week was fun, about half the people in our district 

our new with sudden transfers and getting kartchner a new comp even though 

transfers arn´t truely for like 2 weeks.  It consisted of soloie making a 

skit for our chirstmas party on friday (way early i know, thats because an 

area athority is touring our mission next week).  I don´t wanna sound biased 

but our skit is pretty much as good as something you would see on ´´Who´s line 

is it Anyway´´ no wait, its better lol.  It was fun to watch E Youngberg pester 

Kartchner for his none church cd´s that we had stole early that week while we 

were at there house to give baptisimal interviews, they had 3 baptims last week.
  Side note: sleeping under the stars in Brasil, IN A HAMMOCK, is amazing.
  Also:  I love how High School Musical 3 makes it on the radio here haha to 

bad i don´t know the words to this one yet
  Sorry this entire email is out of order in relations to time and date of 

the things that happened this week.  I went on a split with Kartchner and 

Whitehead at some point and we shared the word of wisdom with to different 

people from Kartch´s area that have baptisamal dates.  One of the kids i 

 had had the oppurtunity to teach the 1st lesson with early that week kinda 

speratically, it was only through pray i was able to make enough portueuge 

words come out of my mouth to form my parts of the lesson.  My favorite part 

however was definantly when we helped him through a pray that pretty much went 

´´Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for soccer...Amen´´
  The other person we visited is a 33? maybe? year old women who´s tried out 

many other churchs before but is always worried about keeping to the ´´rules´´ 

as she says.  As we taught the word of wisdom its interesting to see how people 

certainly know whats right ( i actually taught this lesson three times this week) 

and agree that certain things are most definantly harmful for their body.  What 

is mind blowing is their willingness to stop and to find an altervative.  Its 

truely amazing to see the light of christ shine through someone as they accept 

your message instead of throwing you out of there house.
  But i think the most powerful moment this week was during church.  We had 

brought one of our new investigators to church and the meeting had started, 

infact i think we were about halfway through when me and my companion look 

over at the door to see someone we´d met much earlier on that week walk through 

the door, someone i hadn´t excpected would ever actually come to church when we 

talked to him.  I was over joyed.  Unfortunetly we didn´t have any space left 

on our pew so he had to sit behind us.  We talked to him afterwards tho and he 

even came to gospel principles! (of which our teacher is amazing and very 

interactive)  The next day we visited his house, which is set up like a ....

i don´t even know but the room we taught in must be communal because we had 

about 3 different people sit in and listen to different parts of our lesson. 

(plant the seed?) He took on to everything with a giant smile, including the 

word of wisdom.  His name is Neil btw, and hopes to be baptized the 20th as well!
  My companion definantly wasn´t kidding when he said always be prepared to 

teach any lesson because we give everyone a booklet and never keep track of 

which ones we give to which people so when we arrive at their place we ask 

them which one we gave them and then teach that lesson.  Makes it hard to 

study it that morning lol
  Well thats pretty much all this week
 
I miss all of you
Elder Neuberger
 
ps i totally watched a lizard, i accidentaly scared, run off a ledge and do a 

complete 360 before smothly sticking the landing and scampering off....man...i 

miss snowboarding =( haha