LV trip: Joseph Returns from his Mission!

The reason we came down this time was to see my brother Joe come home from his 2-year church mission in Santa Maria, Brazil. Picking up missionaries at the airport is such a fun experience, and I missed Peter's but I have gone to Erick's and Rychen's brother Whitney's. I have to say Joe is my special brother because he is the only person in the family who looks like me. Without Joe, I would be an orphan basically. So I am so glad he is back. haha!

Emily wasn't even there, but she got the first five minutes of his time. (What, resentment? No, you read too far into that.)

He brought us all back souveneirs so here is a funny picture of my Dad wearing the Brazilian hat and using his straw as a spoon for this little mug to which I affectionately refer as a coffee maker. The families got coffee makers and the boys got an authentic cowboy knife or something which they must promise to use to slaughter their own pigs (and then eat the hooves, skins, and innards apparently...more on this later)
Rychen P. was excited to wear his Brasil shirt which we just found at Wal-mart, but it happened to match Joe's t-shirt too. Awesome!

Okay so having a foreign missionary come home is the most hilarious thing ever. It's a total culture shock, and it takes some time for them to snap back into the English language, idioms, pronounciations, etc. There is this funny story about when Erick came home. When he first got off the plane he couldn't speak any English, he kept muttering and stuttering and he just ended up laughing and hugging everybody. It took him at least five minutes to say anything intelligible. Then a few hours later or even the next day, he was telling my mom a story in a broken accent with certain spanglish words. He mentioned something called "A-hen-da" and we were like, What?? We don't know that, say it in English. And he says "A-hen-da! A-hen-da! It's an ENGLISH WORD!!" and we're like, "Nope, that is not English, sorry..." but then we figured out he was saying "agenda" but with the Spanish pronounciation!

So here's what we will remember about Joe. Well of course he has a his cute little Portuguese accent. I'm sure that will get him lots of dates at BYU. But he lost a few vocabulary words, for things that aren't used in Brazil. The first thing he did was walk into the kitchen and turn on the stove and remark on how incredible that is, that it makes fire without having to light anything! He proceeded to tell us how nobody in Brazil has a drying machine, or a thing that warms up your bread, or that thing that sucks up dirt. We just busted up laughing. I said, Nobody tell him what those things are actually called, let's see how long it takes him to remember. Maybe for his chore today we'll ask him to suck up all the dirt off the carpets :)

The other thing everybody should know is that he came back with a taste for some really disgusting things. Things that belong in a grave or in a toilet and not on anybody's dinner plates. He is telling us "HOLY COW, tripe is SOOOO GOOD" and we are just shaking our heads in wonder. He wanted to go shopping to get some pork skin to cook our beans in, and my mom refused! But then we had to go to the Mexican store anyway and I saw they had tripe (cow intestines) at their deli - and clearly a popular enough menu item to keep in rotation! So I tell Joe to eat some, and I told my mom if she ate it, I would pay for the groceries. And she chows down on this rubbery intestine right in front of me. I have never been so happy and relieved to be a vegetarian. heehee :)

But in all seriousness, we are so happy to have Joe back with us. I especially loved hearing his testimony when he got his release interview and the things he shared about how his mission wasn't so much about doing what he was supposed to do, but becoming who he was suppose to be. It has hard for him to leave Brazil but he got an answer to prayer, a strong feeling that he has done well but the best is ahead of him and he must press forward in life. I couldn't help but to think of Rychen, who served an honorable mission and then came home ready to move on to the next big goal in his eternal progression (me, of course) even though the thought of dating and marriage scared the living daylights out of him. Now Joseph is a grown man and moving forward with his education and the rest of his life. I'm so proud of him. It's wonderful to see my little brother who I remember being born, grown up and spiritually mature, and an amazing example to myself of righteousness and Christ-like living. Congratulations Joseph! :)