Into the Amazon

Tuesday, March 28, 2023; Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil:  Olá!!! If any of you have questions, comments, thoughts, let me know! If you want better or specific pictures let me know too and I will do my best! All missionaries get a debit card with some money that gets put onto it every two weeks. My companion and I took an uber to the nearest (safe?) ATM and withdrew our money for the next two weeks. We then went shopping for groceries.  My companion decided we should fast one of the days this week. We went 24 hours without food or drink. I thought our monthly fasting was a little difficult back home-USA where I could rest and relax all day. What was funny was I actually didn't sweat as much that day. Turns out if you drink less/no water, you sweat less! Who knew ;) This week we had Zone conference. The Brazil Manaus Mission has 109 missionaries total. I think there are like 4 Zones? Each with 20-30 missionaries. We had our Zone conference with another Zone as well, so maybe 50-60 mis...

Monday, March 20, 2023; Coroado, Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil: First week in Manaus!  So much happened and was new that I know I forgot lots of things to add, but here are a bunch: Tuesday morning all the missionaries leaving the CTM had to be ready by 4:30am. We then went to the airport and got on planes to go to our missions. There were 11 missionaries going to the Manaus mission. 10 Elders and one Sister. The flight was around 4 hours. I had an awesome welcome! The first thing besides nature that I saw in Manaus was.... drum roll... 5 broken down, dirty and rusting planes. I don't know the story about them, but they were near the runway, and I saw them first while landing. Very comforting ;) We were met by our Mission President, President Beck and his wife, along with 6 other missionaries. We were then taken to the Presidents house/apartment and fed lunch. It was super good-potatoes!, fruit, a rice dish, fish -I don't [yet] like fish, etc. The roads and driving are similar to Sã...

Saturday, March 11, 2023; Brazil Mission Training Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil:  Oi! I go to Manaus in 4 days!!  This week has been good. Again, it was mostly similar to the last few weeks. So, I made this email long (Sorry!) describing languages, food and schedule here at the Brazil CTM a little more in depth. Saturday the power was cut off. The CTM was using a generator, so we had power, but it didn't allow for air conditioning. Wow, I took that for granted :) The heat and humidity sucked. Luckily the power turned back on. Sunday was good. Since it was the first Sunday we fasted for dinner Saturday night, and breakfast Sunday morning. Then for church Sunday we had a testimony meeting. The branch president told us he would love to hear Portuguese testimonies but since we were all English native language speakers, we could also just speak English or a combo of both. Maybe 10-12 people bore their testimonies in English, Portuguese or both. We had a class where we talked in depth a...

Saturday, March 4, 2023; Osasco, Baronesa, Sao Paulo, Brazil: Oi!! Just over a week left in the CTM then I go to Manaus! This week has been pretty similar to last week. 6 hours of class a day. Three meals a day with 2 meals usually featuring rice and beans. Devotionals on Sunday and Wednesday. On Monday I again had a mock 'teach someone' with my companion Elder Pohm. We were going to have one on Wednesday too.  Wednesday was the weirdest day this week. We found out in class that our schedule would change in the evening. The church Area President of Brazil came for the Wednesday night devotional. Because of that our Wednesday mock teach was canceled. We also had choir Wednesday which is always one of my 2 favorite parts of the week. We ended up singing one of the same songs from last week so. Last week I said we sang in 5 languages. The song is 'Called to serve'. The choir director this week told us this: In the current English and Portuguese church hymnbooks the song ha...