Pics from Brazil

A house made from a sewer opening

avatar trees 

Graffiti is on everything here, and we found a little baby mouse dying in the road :(

Our zone from the MTC at the mission Christmas party & Elder White from Lewisville!! Yeah I look gross oh well haha

My Companion.  

My favorite Brazilian Camilla! & a close up of Ellen

December 16th

This week I have worked really hard on trying to show the people that even though I can't speak the language very well that I still love them. It has been a great experience & I have definitely seen a difference. It has definitely been beneficial. Helen, which is actually Ellen haha yeah it's very obvious I can't understand Portuguese, got baptized on Sunday! It was so awesome. She is so rock solid it isn't even funny. I am so excited for her future. We have found tons of people this past week, and have been teaching a lot. We have been working on trying to stop and talk to everyone and knock on every door. It has been such a blessing. We had 6 investigators at church on Sunday so I'm hoping we can set one of them with a baptismal date for next Sunday.

 Well this morning we moved into our new house which was so exciting! No more termites and ants everywhere :) That took up a lot of our morning though which is why I'm emailing right now instead of earlier. So worth it though. 

December 9th

Well this past week was better than the first. The language is getting better, which is good. We met a girl named Helen last week. She is 18, and is a 7th day adventist. She is so nice & wayyy receptive. She came to church for the first time yesterday & gets baptized next Sunday which is exciting. We have three other potential baptisms. I'm still really not that good at speaking, but I'm understanding a lot more. I have noticed this past week how much Heavenly Father loves me. I'm really starting to like Brazil, it's definitely different but good. I'm trying to just work hard and stay focused so there's blessings that come from that. We are moving houses next week which is exciting because our house is infested with termites. There everywhere, it's so disgusting haha I don't even want to know how many crawl on me at night. We had stake conference yesterday, & our mission president spoke. He gave a great talk, well from what I could understand:) things are definitely not easy, but I can feel Heavenly Father's love for me & I know that he helping me to become the person/missionary he wants me to be. Slowly but surely things are getting better. I know that I will eventually come to love this mission as much as I loved Reno. Thanks for all the prayers, I know that they are being answered and are a huge help.

December 2nd Brazil!!

Well the flight was way long, but it went well. Elder Hunter & I were the only missionaries to fly to New York & then to Brazil, everyone else went to Atlanta which was weird, but it was cool going to New York & flying over the city at night. Our flight was 10 hours long from New York & since I have great luck the person who sits next to me doesn't speak Portuguese at all haha he speaks French & only a little bit of English. I was hoping to practice the language, but that of course didn't happen. We flew into Sao Paulo. It was way cool, it definitely looked just like I thought it would. We then flew to Curitiba. When we got off the plane we met our mission president, President Monteiro. He is way short & speaks absolutely no English haha. We got on a bus & headed to the mission office where we dropped off our bags. It was definitley way more humid than Nevada that's for sure. We headed to the mission home & had lunch. It was some wierd food, but good none the less, I drank plenty of Guarana :) We went to the mission office again for transfers & I saw some people who were in the same zone as me in the MTC that I have kept in touch with which was definitely comforting considering at this point I couldn't communicate with anyone. They announced companionships & everyone who had been reassigned was put with Brazilians. My companions name is Sister Lopes. She is from somewhere up north, she says it too fast for me to understand so I'm just going to say it's by Menaus. She speaks absolutely no English which is great because I speak absolutely no Portuguese. She has been super patient with me though. Although this is a big change & I miss Reno I know that this is where I need to be. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan. I just need to work hard and rely on the spirit and everything will be okay..