HEYYYY
What a week. I´ll take it from the top. So i took my flight from utah to atlanta georgia. There i met up with 8 other missionaries who had all been waiting for their visas here in the states. They are all assigned in the same mission as me! We got on to our flight from atlanta to Sao Paulo. It was about 9 hours. The captain said we flew faster than planned. Between the flight and the night before, i got about 2-3 hours of sleep. Seems like enough, right? We landed and went and got our passports checked and got our luggage. There was some brazilain man with a sign waiting for us. I guess he does some kind of work for the mission office. We then picked up 15 other missionaries form the brazil MTC and headed to the mission president´s house. It was a really nice place. There we met him, his wife and his assistants. They gave us a pack of things with information and our mission debit card. After we went to the church to get a little bit of training and to meet our trainers. Mine is an from argentine and his name is Elder Batalla. He´s been here for 10 months already so he is fluent in the language and knows what to do. From the church we went to our house. We actually got a bit lost trying to find the right bus to get on. We live in a small little house with another set of elders. They are Elder Lawrence from minnesota and Elder G.Santos from portugal. Elder Santos was actually in the top 10 for portugal idol. It´s like american idol. He sings really well and he has videos on youtube. Anyways, the people here are awesome. They´re really easy to talk to unlike americans. They also love to feed you more than you can handle. They don´t have a lot but they still feed us very well. Our diet is mostly beans rice some meat and lettuce. It doesn´t change much from that. But their desserts!!!! Oh my gosh!!! I can´t really explain them but the desserts here are so delicious! Oh also they have very tasty soda here. I´m enjoying the food here.
Well my comp and I have already taught many people and also just talked to people. He does most the work because I can not understand 85% of what anyone says. And when I do, I can hardly respond. It´s super frustrating. I really want to join in and talk to these people but I can´t. It´s probably going to be like this for the next 6 weeks. But I´m in luck. Elder Batalla lived in Georgie for 2 years so he knows quite a bit of enlish. Elder Santos has studied it and speaks it almost fluently. So I´m not completely lost.
It´s super hot here. I think i sweat like 10 gallons a day. A little disgusting.
It took me the first day to really grasp that I am in Brazil but I´m over it and I love it here. Though we have some super super steep roads. AND our house isn´t even in our area!!! It takes about 15 min to walk to our area. Most days we are on the far end of our area away from our house and it takes about 45 min to walk home. My feet and legs are sore everyday. It´s all good though cause it´s super cool here.
Anyways, if you have questions let me know! I don´t know if I´m forgetting anyting. I hope everything is going good!
Con Amor
Elder Shannon
Letter #7:
Todo Bem!!!!
So I´m beginning my 2nd week here. It´s still super difficult to communicate but it´s all good. I´ve become really good at smiling and nodding. It´s progress. So we tried to teach a woman this past week but it was a little difficult because her husband was drunk and trying to tell us bible stories. It was really funny. Here in Brazil there are some new religions that i´ve never heard of before. There is one called Spiritualism. Weird. They believe that the bible is false and a bunch of things having to do with spirit stuff and spiritual surgery. We found out about it from a man we talked to off the street. Afterwards we found out he was actually a homosexual. He told us he knew what he was doing was wrong but he didn´t want to change. So we told him if he ever wanted to change to call us up. Also we think he is a little crazy in the head. Who knows.
So on wednesday I had to go to the federal police station to get my ``green card´´ so incase any police talk to us, I have proof that I´m legal. My comp and I had to travel on the metro for about an hour and a half just to get to the mission office. We arrived about 9pm along with all the missionaries that arrived the same day as I did. We spent several hours the next day taking pictures, writing down information and giving our finger prints. Afterwards we got to go to a brazilian buffet!! Talk about delicous! Oh and we´d been wearing the same clothes for 2 days because we didn´t want to carry a big bad of clothes around all day. We were smelling pretty gooood.
Anyways, everyday is hot and sweat but we talk to lots of people and we fill up our schedual with lots of contacts on the street. The walking is difficult but I´m getting use to it. We also have to be careful of two things. One is the sunburn and the other are the mosquitos. In about 3 days I got covered with somewhere around 40 bites during the night. We´ve been told that my area, Mauá, has never seen mosquitos this bad before.
People here are usually really nice. Twice this week we´ve had people buy us drinks from off the street and another man tried to give us money. Mormons are popular in Brazil.
Today we get to go to an event called vinte cinco which is a massive street market festival. Hopefully i can find some cool things to buy!
So for those of you who may send packages a few things:
1- When you send it and they ask how much it´s worth, don´t say more than $50
2-If you have to say what´s in it or what it´s for, say it´s simply missionary supplies
If you don´t, there´s a chance i´d have to pay a lot of money to pick it up.
If they don´t ask for these things then well alright!
Hope everything is going good in the states!
Con Amor
Elder Shannon
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