What Life is Like in Brazil

October 22, 2008

No haven’t been trampled by anything, there are lots of cats and dogs, horses etc...and yes godzilla lives here as well, but yea lots of lizards and big ones too, oh and like Jeff’s mission they have a lot of really cool birds here and a very common pet is to have and in this city not many but I’ve seen some people with a little pet monkey type thing, but the birds are really cool and pretty and they have the macahs and the country bird which i haven’t seen but I really want to is the tucan, they mainly live up in the amazons so i probley wont see them and to own one costs like 2000 dollars.

Church is at 9 in the morning, we spend from 7-9 waking and getting our investigators to church and then we go to priesthood and then to the class for recent converts and investigators where either the teacher called to that assignment or us the missionaries give the lesson, then last is sacrament meeting where is hard to see the reverence in the meeting but is just nice to be in a ward and have people to get to know, i know just about everyone because we eat lunch with them everyday. After church we go to lunch appointment and then if we have any other appointments after that we go to those and then every Sunday night we go to this awsome lady’s home where we share a message or lesson with her part member family and them we eat dinner, she make really good pastels and doughnuts and cake deserts etc...really good and look forward to that every Sunday night.

Normal day schedule consists of waking up at 6:30 and exercising (somtime), eating breakfast (cookies, cereal, etc), then shower and iron my shirt and get ready to study, i study from 8-11 and study the livro de mórmon for 30 min pmg (preach my gospel book) 30-60min study with comp in pmg lessons etc for 30-60min and then study w/e in the language for the remainder of time. Then for an hour if we have time depending where we eat lunch we go contact and find new investigators until 12 and then go to our lunch appointment from 12-1:30 usually and then take our dinner break to nap and get out of the sun and heat, 2:30 or 3:00 we go back out and go to all our appointments and find new investigators at the same time and any other meeting or appointments we have we go to as well, and do this the rest of the night until 8:30-9ish.

No I hate writing home because it takes forever to get letters home and then to get a response it takes forever, I just got a letter from Mark, but it took over two months to get here. so idk....i’ll try to do better at sending notes or letter w/e, I did send those 2 packages, one to you and the other to my friends 2 weeks ago. they have my photos in it so yeah save the photos for my return and hopefully you will get them. (I asked if he still writes to his friends very often.) The rain has stopped for the most part and summer is rolling in, so it won’t rain as much but it does at least once a week but not much. I wash my cloths in the washer and then i hang them on the string to dry, very simple and easy. Haven’t heard from Jared in a while but he is getting ready, i think he leave in 1 month or less and has been in china with his dad the last few weeks and has been arrested 2 there already hehe so yeah that’s probley why he didn’t email you back yet.P-day today was very boreing! We played soccer last night and today we played truco (a card game i like a lot), Went to another elders home and did nothing there, and so yeah you can see why it gets boring because we did nothing but we ate lunch in the central of the city and had an x-bacon filét which is an awsome hamburger and had madacuja to drink and now we are emailing. Other p-days we do stuff but today did nothing. No fast food here but in maceio they have a mcdonalds but it is in a mall and cant go in there, and another mcdonalds in the other state serguipe and that one you can go to but too far away from that. Not sure how many people live here, i guess in 2005 there was about 200000 people, yeah its the tobaco capital, just across the street of my house there is a small land of tobaco and you can find that in random places of the city but most of the really big fields are on the outsides of the city but are not far from were i live, and yeah everyone smokes etc...tobaco is a really big thing here...

Don’t remember my exact address but you can try to find the lds chapel on Belo vista rua (street) and then my home is just down the street from it and if you find the chapel you find my area so yeah if that helps, let me know what you find and what you think of my area…( I asked him if he could give me his address, then I could try and Google Earth where he lives to see his house and his street.) Yeah we live on a nicer street but some of the other elders homes are on dirt roads too and i actually like their homes better because it is so noisy on our street and the walls are not sound proof so you hear everything that goes on outside and in the other house, so for example you can hear the drunk people arguing, the loud music and every car and if you haven’t heard about the car that goes around advertising for political and advertisement stuff with load music etc...(Illegal in the states), it can get annoying when your trying to study or sleep but i love my home.

Only two more weeks of this transfer and already have interviews with the president tomorrow and seems like we just did that last week. We currently have a lot of good people we are working with, i think 9 people maybe 10 total/4men/6 mother or children and is awsome to see their progression and excitement. So yeah we haven’t baptised in over a month but that’s because we are saving them for the last week of the transfer and has been a miracle that we have found these people to teach and help prepare for baptisim. We have that family of 4 like I said and they get married next week, and then we have a member who’s sister and son and hopefully her husband we are teaching and will get them ready for baptisim as well, and there’s Sebastião and his wife that we have been working with for over a month and we were about to leave them but his wife told us she wants to be baptised but only if her husband is and he is having a hard time getting a testimony but with knowing that she wants to be baptised it should be easy to help her get her husband the desire for baptism, also have leandro another guy who has been coming to church for two weeks and now that i think about it, we haven’t even taught him yet...well do that this week and baptise him next....so were doing good so far and not a week too late, its coming down to the end of the transfer and i dont think i'll be here the next but well see how it goes. Ok well, is this letter long enough? (I asked him to be more detailed) I don’t think Ill be able to write this much again...K I love you all and let me know when you get the package
Brian