"Elder, that is not the Language I learned in the MTC!?" (Week 7)

May 15, 2017

Ola America!

Week one in Brazil was quite interesting! My last Sunday at the mtc was a little sad because I had to say goodbye to all my friends there, but come Monday morning I barely had time to think about it! I spent all Day and night Monday, and most of the Day on Tuesday traveling. One cool part was that even though I thought I would be alone on all of my flights, I actually was not at all! I ended up flying from Salt Lake to São Paulo with an Elder Who was returning to the Field after having to come home for family issues, so that was Nice, and then in the São Paulo airport I met up with a bunch of missionaries going to my same mission that were all coming from the São Paulo MTC.

(Quick note: in America spell check would let me know whenever I spelled a Word wrong...it wouldn´t really correct it, and mosto f the time neither would I, but at least I knew....Well, in Brazil they also have spell check that is aligned with the Portuguese language. So the two things I apologize for are the many misspellings which I´m sure are coming your way, and IF the computer corrects a Word to a portuguese Word and I do not catch it, its not that I AM alread that good at the language that I don´t even realize it...its the computer)

Anyways, upon arriving here in Fortaleza, our Mission President and his wife were there to meet us, along with all the STLs and the Assistants to the President. We all took pictures and then all the new missionaries loaded up into a van and went to drop our luggage off at the appartment we were staying in that night. (Not at all important, but there were goats in the street and it was funny. Even the brazillian missionaries were trying to take pictures of it and that made feel better for thinking how strange it was.) We then went to the mission home where we were again greeted by our President and all the Mission Home Missionaries singing our mission Hymn to us which was cool! We then ate lunch and had a lot of safety meetings like what to eat and so forth. After that we went to the Presidents house for dinner and He Sat and played guitar for us for a while, then we had a testimony meeting. Wednesday we had training at the church which was Nice because the church had Air Conditioning. I. Love. Air. Conditioning. Anyays, we were introduced to our trainers, mine is a Brazillian Elder named Elder Paixao, He is from São Paulo. We aslo found out where our Areas were. Then we Just did trainings all Day. Everyone was commenting on how good my Portuguese was (shout out to the awesome teachers at the Provo MTC) But also, I think their expectations were low because they all knew I was from the Provo MTC, and appaently missionaries from the Provo MTC dont usually know Portuguese when they get here.

My área is the city of Quixeromobim and is very special because Elder Paixao and I are the second or third set of Elder to be sent here. It is a brand new área! Were the only missionaries for the entire city which is awesome but difficult because it is not really that small. It is also VERY hot here, and the Sun is merciless. But all the same, its pretty cool. We took a bus out here on Thursday morning and got straight to work. The people here are so receptive, everyone we talked to invited us in to share a message. This is awesome, the only difficult part is getting them to follow up on commitments. We have A LOT of people Who want to be baptized but then nobody came to church on Sunday except for the 12 members we already have here. Thats another intersting part, there is not even a branch here its called a group. All in all Brazil is cool so far, the only downside, other than the heat, hás been the fact that while (to the shock of my friends in the MTC) I really like the food here, It does NOT like me. That and the language is really hard right now because I cannot understand anyone, BUT the fact that I have been given the chance to bring the Love of Christ to a whole city is awesome.

Thats about it for now! I hope you all are well! I miss you all, take care!

Love,

Elder Ferrell

P.S. 

I am sorry, I have not yet been able to figure out how to upload pictures, I will try to next week.