One thing though, that I can't seem to escape out here is being swarmed by children, a fairly recently occurring phenomenon. It's kinda a good thing, but kinda not, since it's good that people (if only of a 3-4 foot tall nature)(excluding midgets) are enjoying the missionaries being around, but kinda bad since every once in a while things kind of "change ownership"... someone's (missionary's) pen gets stolen, a child here and a child there can be seen running away with a couple bucks in their hands that were in your pocket a moment before, or your backpack is all of a sudden on some 10 year-old's back that's now trying to sell it to his friend... or your shoes are now tied together, someone's just wrapped your tie around your eyes, and the swarm of children have started a game of, "Who Can Throw the Most Rocks at the American without Him Getting You." I guess I shouldn't make it sound like I'm complaining, because they're not too bad at the game. They usually give me a head start to run away, and stay at least 5 feet away. Also, they've got a limit on the rock size. I think it's like, only 10 Kilos, which I think is something like 10 ounces in American standard, so it's not like they're throwing boulders at me or anything painful like that. The only thing I don't like though, is that this happens quite a lot at church, where my backpack or nametag somehow end up with some little kid, who's managed to find my camera, too, and is outside taking photos of members of the church that I have to go through and delete (they're AWFUL photographers). So yeah! I guess you could say I'm learning what it's like to run an orphanage.
GUESS WHAT?? This week I took a turn as SENIOR comp! Elder Marques went on splits in another area, so Elder Coon (trained with me in the MTC) and I covered mine and Elder Marques's area. And I learned that day that I have some mad dependency on Elder Marques's sense of direction. Thing about being Junior comp, is that you really don't have to sweat where you're going, because the Senior is guiding, generally. And so it turns out that I had almost NO idea where we were going, most of the day. So, we ended up walking about 15 miles that day, and it was intense! After that day, back with Elder Marques, a few friends from different parts of the city told us they saw me walking around with another Elder (we were lost-ish). I'm not gonna lie though, after that day, I felt a lot more comfortable in my area, I knew where everything was, and we had actually ended up teaching some people.
We taught a family whom Elder Marques and I had visited before that day. They ended up pulling us into their house, and we started talking. Only, the problem was, it was kinda a trap. Thing is, in this mission, all the missionaries know magic tricks, maybe one or two, just to get people to talk to them here and there, and this family wanted some MAGIC. Only, a lot of missionaries do magic tricks TOO well, and the people start to spread the word everywhere that missionaries are ACTUALLY foreign magicians. Which, I mean, I'll be honest, I'm a good magician. I can tie my shoes in like, 30 seconds, I can do a somersault, I can cross my eyes, and I can burp really loudly too, basically all the skills I need to eventually attract a wife, or impress large groups of people, or win fights. In fact, I think President Washington once said, "If it wasn't for my ability to do somersaults during the battle at Valley Forge, the enemies would have been utterly unimpressed, unintimidated, and would have thought we were just a bunch of incapable idiots. I am convinced that the British forces would have undoubtedly considered us like they consider wool undergarments. Just itchy, smelly, and unimpressive." So, like George Washington with the Brits, the people here won't leave us alone unless we do some sweet magic for them. I'm just grateful they don't shoot us here for not being impressive like George.
OKAY BYE NOW. Be good! Love you all!
LOVE YOU AGAIN.
AND AGAIN.
Um abraço (hugs),
Elder Daniel Reneer
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