Ipe Semana 4

This is going to be a wonderful week! We are preparing the marriage and baptism of a young couple Ricardo and Mahára. The whole ward is excited and anxiously preparing the food, salgadinhos (literally `little salty things` but more like mini two-bite pastries) and clothing for the celebration.

The Ala Jardim Ipê is a great area to be in. The population of this area generally is a little more well off than the part of Colombo I was in, but it is still rather poor compared with the actual city of Curitiba. The streets are about 80% paved, and there are NO hills. It is flatter than Nebraska here, but walking the area still takes a while. The members here generally work with construction and things like installing security systems across Curitiba... and a large percentage of the ward works in the enormous Electrolux factory here in São José dos Pinhais. There are also many many lakes and rivers in our area so at some point, we plan on going fishing with some members for a p-day activity. Everybody here fishes :)

Writing email in a Lan-house in Brasíl is an interesting experience. The keyboard I am using only responds to every other keystroke on a couple of key letters and the backspace, so it takes a little while to write anything. My companion and I are currently surrounded by a bunch of 11 year old boys playing a video game called cross-fire and they are making quite a hullabaloo yelling and screaming to one another about how they just shot the brains out of someone and how the other needs to cover his back... plus, the one who was hovering over my shoulder looking on the screen of his comrade to my left has quite the cough, but when I asked him to please stop messing with my chair he magically stopped coughing and yelling :) I suppose every place has its `bagunceiros` but São José has `bastante`...

My companion made a mango mousse for breakfast on my birthday and put candles in it too :) We were starving and ate the whole thing in no time flat. 

Recepie for Brazilian mousse:

1 part sweetened condensed milk,

1 part cream,

1 package of instant juice (usually tang, which in Brasíl comes in about 30 flavors including but not limited to, orange, passion fruit, watermelon, mango, grape, coconut, tangerine, strawberry, kiwi, and a bunch of fruits that don´t exist in the states such as goiaba, caju, etc.)

Mix in blender, stick in pan, stick in fridge or freezer for 15 minutes, enjoy!

This week, I was thinking a bit about what the Savior meant when he called his disciples `the salt of the earth.` I don´t want to be salty... I´d rather be the sugar of the earth, or the chocolate chips of the earth, or something along those lines. Then I thought about one time that mom was making chili. She had put in a few peppers, but it didn´t get spicy. So she added more. And still no heat. More and more peppers, and just a marginal rise in spicy-ness. Then she started adding salt. Just a little salt and you could start to feel the heat kick in. More and more salt and the chili became very spicy. It was after this that I began to understand the importance of salt. Even though the salt accounted for just a few grams in the huge pot of chili, it had a profound effect in making it as it ought to be. As disciples of Christ, we might not be many in the huge population of our world, or our country, or our town, or our school... but by doing as we ought to, our influence can help all the other flavors present themselves more fully... or, help those around us understand, by our examples, what they should be doing... how to be a better student, member of the community, citizen, and human being. 

Christ followed his comment about salt with instructions:

`Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.` (Matthew 5:16)

Be a good example.

Love,

Elder House