Into the Amazon

 Friday, February 24, 2023; Sao Paulo MTC Brazil: The past two weeks have been very intresting. This email will likely be long so sorry!   I flew to the Atlanta airport. I had a 5 hour layover there. While waiting I met another missionary who was on his way to Peru from Arizona. Then on my flight from Atlanta to São Paulo I realized I had my district (the 6 other missionaries I did online classes with), another American district of 6 missionaries, and a few missionaries who had visa problems but were finally going to Brazil. In total there were 16 missionaries on my flight.  That flight to São Paulo was good but super long. The sunset was very beautiful from the plane. I was not sitting by any of the other missionaries. We were fed dinner and breakfast which were both decent. For the flight I was sitting next to a lady and her daughter. During the flight she had me help her edit a note in english as her first languge was portugese, which was super fun for me and made...

Sunday, February 12, 2023; In-home MTC, Raleigh, NC, USA: Hey y’all! This week has been very similar to last week, and it didn’t have too much excitement. That comes this week :) Just more zoom classes and companionship study. I got to learn more about conjugating verbs in Portuguese this week. I am starting to learn a lot of words but putting them together is still quite difficult.  In companionships my District got to mock teach some people in Portuguese… it’s super unnerving because to really teach someone without really knowing much Portuguese I end up just reading off a script, but to make it engaging we ask questions of those we are teaching. The idea isn’t so bad… until you realize that the person may say something in Portuguese that we don’t understand…lots of awkward silence while my companion and I try to process what the person said to us. But it’s good practice and helps encourage me in studying Portuguese so that I can really teach from my heart and knowledge the ...

Saturday, February 4, 2023; Raleigh, North Carolina, USA: Óla! A brief overview: I have been called to the Manaus, Brazil Mission! I will be speaking Portuguese. I was set apart as a full time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last Sunday. The first two weeks I will be doing at-home online missionary training. Following that I will fly to São Paulo, Brazil for four weeks of training at the Brazil Missionary Training Center(MTC). Then I will be off to Manaus for two years!  The Manaus mission covers a big chunk of the Amazon, so I am very excited to go there. And scared ;) In this first email I will explain what my schedule this past and coming week has been and will be. Bare with me, I will be in Brazil in about a week :) This past week I started my mission! Up at 6:30am, to bed by 10:30pm. I was given a schedule that is a little bit complex to follow because it is all in military time/world standard time (0:00-24:00). It also is in Brazil São Paul...