Well, another week has gone by and I’ll answer a few of your questions, and fill you in on some of this week’s activities.

I received the letters from, I think the Miamaids... I think that was the group, or maybe the Beehives... I got letters from the young women! There, that’s the easiest! I’ll let you know when I get letters so you know they have arrived. I only receive letters once a week.
My health is holding up. My stomach is doing just fine. I just get tired of eating the same thing every day! Ummm.... We really don’t eat breakfast or dinner, only when we actually buy food for it. But I try to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have hamburgers, cookies, grilled cheese sandwiches, chicken nuggets, bread, cake, juice. Sometimes my companion and I make stuff together, sometimes we don’t. The neighborhood where we live is pretty quiet, our area is huge. We seem to have both a rich area and a poor area. We live in between them both. I will say this, people treat us great!

We baptized and confirmed two boys this past week, Nilo, and Ismael!! The bishop gave them the Priesthood as well! We are going to continue to work with the rest of the family and hopefully they will soon follow!!!!

My division with the zone leader was good! I learned a lot from him. He’s American, so it was a good little break to work with someone rather similar to me!

Now a story that will probably scare you mom, and maybe make you cry. But Elder Mondonca and I we went to the beach today along with one of our ward missionaries and his girlfriend (or something) who’s also in the ward. While we were all riding the bus back, the ward missionary got off a few stops before us to buy soda for lunch. The girl stayed on the bus with us because she lives close to us. A few minutes later the three of us got off the bus together. Our lunch appointment was the other direction, so we asked if she wanted to be walked home and she said “no”. So we said goodbye and turned and walked down the street and turned the corner onto another street. There is a huge freeway “thing” that we cross every day, and while she was crossing that freeway, she was assaulted or robbed in the median. We had only been apart from her for 1 to 2 minutes. She knew where we were having lunch, so she came to their house and the family helped her out. All everyone wants when you are robbed is your cell phone. That is why missionaries don’t carry them, so we have nothing to give. So that is my story for the day!

While we were at lunch today, the mom, who is not a member, gave me a present for my birthday!!!! She bought me a really neat tie!!! It is a family of all girls, 5 girls and the mom. The mom is not a member, but we are working on it. She just needs to get married!!!

I am really trying to get you some pictures. I am just going to pay someone to make a CD for me here. So hopefully you should get them soon!!! What kind of things would you like me to get for you if I see them? I got Logan really cool scripture cases!!! How about you? And keep an eye on my bank account!

Logan, you need to start practicing your trumpet since marching band is coming up soon!!! And remember, please clean my trombone!!!!!

Well, Love you all tons! Miss you all!! Talk to you next week!!

I am trying for the pictures again so we will see how that works. Well, it appears no pictures again. The computer I have doesn’t have a DVD drive. I think the idea of swapping memory cards is bad because they always get lost in the mail, then I have nothing. They get lost to often. Eventually I will work it out.

This week went well. I have a minor cold nothing big. We had our first baptism in our new area and hope to have like 7 more, but we only have 3 weeks to do it before the next transfers. Yesterday was my 4 - month mark, which is really crazy! I have been studying the scriptures a lot. I was rather far into the Book of Mormon but decided I wanted to do a more detailed study so I started over and am moving really slowly. Sometimes I read the same chapter more than 10 times. I do not really know how to start thinking in the language, I think it just happens over time. It seems that the more I write or speak in English I think of the same thing in Portuguese, and eventually it will just be like that. The language has progressed a lot with a companion that speaks no English. So I just keep going.

To answer some of the questions I can remember. About the money… We all have a JP Morgan Chase card and we go to a bank on the 10th and 25th of each month and take out money. We get 120 reis which is about 68 US dollars. I know isn’t much, huh?... haha. All of our rent and bills and stuff are paid by the mission office. We give our bills to our Zone Leaders who then take them to the office the following week. We eat lunch at the member’s homes. Sometimes they give us money and we go to a restaurant. We usually only eat lunch, and then just snack on things in the morning and night.

My mission has a washing machine “thingy”. I think not all missions here have them, but I am not 100 percent sure.

I have hopefully some really good mission stories coming up in the next few weeks, but I want to see how they turn out before I start telling them. Because, just like with everything in life, it may not turn out just the way you wanted it. But at this point it looks good.

Tomorrow I am going on my first division. So I get to go with my Zone Leader and spend a day and a half with him which will be neat. It’s good to hear about Cam!!! That’s the exact mission I was always given at EFY for the mission day or whatever it is called. haha. September 8th nice and fast!!!

Just to let you all know the mail system here is really strange. I got a letter from Tristan who is currently serving in Thailand in about 2 weeks which is faster than the majority of letters I get from the US. So I have no real way to give you a time frame for anything! haha. Oh, and an fyi, it looks like someone has really been doing our family history because one or two p-days ago I went to family search and there was a lot of new stuff for our family history!

So what do you all want to know about? I tend to have a problem with thinking of things to write, because as you said, “I am living it”. So what do you want to know???

Well I miss you all, but time just flies, and before you know it, it will be over. I love you all so much! I hope you all are reading your scriptures, and saying family prayer!!! Much love!!!

Hey!!! I think this was the week that you all were going to be at the cabin! I hope it is going well!!!

Well, Elder Mondonça is a good worker, but does struggle with some of the rules. Honestly nothing much happened this last week, well, because... we got sick... We think Elder Mondonça ate a bad pastel, because he was throwing up all Thursday night. And then I think he passed it to me because I spent all Friday night throwing up, and then all day Saturday in bed asleep. So, we didn’t work for three days. But, my new area is really, really, really big. Sometimes we will take a bus to get to the other side. It will be hard to work because if we have appointments on opposite sides of our area, it will take up a lot of time to walk. My new apartment is more like a house, it’s huge. It is an apartment for 6 missionaries... but only Elder Mondonça and I live there. It’s hard to describe so you will have to wait for the photos which I am going to do next p-day because I have a good computer to use now. But the house has two bathrooms, both have problems haha. It has two bedrooms, and like a master bedroom. It also has one large room like a mix of a living room and family room, a big kitchen and a front and back porch. The back porch is completely enclosed. The room we sleep in and the other smaller rooms are like seriously bigger than the computer room and mine and Logan’s room put together, so it’s like four computer rooms. This place is huge! The master bedroom appears to the graveyard of all items broken by missionaries. There are like 3 broken-off half assembled bed frames and a broken fan or two. haha. It’s actually rather funny. Elder Mondonça and I spent a good deal of our transfer day night to clean our new place. The place is clean!!!!! It is so nice!!!! I have a place to study my scriptures really well, and it is so much better than my last place. I am way into the Old Testament right now and am just reading away!!! Oh and thank you so much Reedville Ward Primary Presidency!!! The Kool Aid is a great addition to the card! Thank you!!! Really other than being sick this week nothing new or big has happened. I am really hoping this upcoming week is filled with much, much more. I miss you all!!! I hope the cabin was just fantastic!!!! Much love!!!