16 Sept. 2015

Dear Family,

This week has been the most exceptional week of my life. I
dont really know where to begin. I have 5 roommates: Elder Jefferies
is my companion, Elder Murray and Elder Mcgladrey are americans and
Elders Arujo and Rocha are brazilan. All of them are my bros now. The
first few days we spent a lot of time with elder Arujo asking
questions about Brazil. Although I’ve only been here a week it seems
like I’ve been here forever. At this point I can already understand
most of what people say in portuguese and I can basically communicate
anything I need to say back as well. Most days go something like
this…

I get up each morning at 6:30 am< and shave, get dressed and do some personal study. There's no air conditioning in my room so it gets pretty hot. Then we go to personal
study and breakfast. So far my favorite part about Brazil is the food. Everything they have served here has been amazingly good. Even the french fries and hotdogs they served were better than what actual americans make. After breakfast is basically a giant mashup of teaching and studying.

On only our second day they had us teaching a lesson completely unassisted to a Brazilian teacher we'd never even met. And whats more, it was required that we speak entirely and
exclusively in portuguese throughout the lessons. Currenlt we teach one actual lesson a day but this upcoming week we teaach 2 per day and from weeks 3 and on we teach 3 lessons a day. The lessons are usually about 40 minutes long, so I've had to pray (in portuguese of course) for help with speaking and understanding the harder than I've had to pray for anything else.

I realized once I got here that I actually forgot to bring "recreational" shoes with me so I'm having to workout in my dress shoes. But its ok, I'm not the only one. They only give us 45 minutes to write and my time is growing slim so I'll tell you some
intersting things about Brazil. The motorcycles can legally drive inbetween traffic here so you have to watch out when you're driving. Pedestrians have no right of way either so you have to be careful when you walk around the city because if you get run over its your fault. I didnt pre write this email so its the most disorganized mess of all
time but rest assured that my email next week will be better.

Oh yeah also, on day 2 Elder Mcgladrey's jaw swelled up because basically he got a kidney stone in his salivary gland and when he got here it blocked his salivary duct. he had to go to the hospital and have it removed. but hes fine now. I miss you guys a lot!! But I'm working hard and its paying off!

Love you mom and dad and kids,

Elder York