A Brazillian Miles from Home

First email from Brent

Boa noite!

Sadly I can no longer say "buenos noches!" as my greeting seeing as I am speaking Portugalianese now. Well, not really speaking, more mumbling to any Brazilian and hoping they just think I am mumbling in Portuguese and they didn't understand me, rather than them > knowing that I was just straight mumbling because I am an idiot.

Wow it has been a weird last six days. We traveled here all of Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Literally the longest 20 hours of my whole life. Our flight from Salt Lake was delayed for about 45 minutes so we got to Dallas and hurried to our terminal to catch the flight to São Paulo but it had already left...fifteen minutes earlier. So we had to wait around for another two hours until the next flight left. No one in my district seemed worried at all about catching the flight except me, I felt like Mom. I was literally herding them through the airport (most of them somehow could not even follow the simplest of signs. "Yes we have to get to the "D" terminal so if you see an arrow and a "D" next to it, follow the direction the arrow is pointing). No else thought it was important to call the CTM (MTC) to let them know that we were going to be about 2 and a half hours late...so I had to do that as well. So we finally got on the plane to São Paulo and it was the worst plane ride of my life. Instead of arriving at 5:30 in the morning we ended up getting there at 8:30am São Paulo time (3 hours ahead of Utah). And we left Dallas at 8:30pm. Oh, and I didn't sleep at all the entire time. I am pretty sure I was the only one awake for several hours that wasn't employed by American Airlines. Anyway, it was horrible, but we got here. I traveled with most of my district that I am currently with so atleast we got a lot of time to get to know eachother right...? Not that two months in a stuffy classroom won't do the trick.

My district consists of 10 outstanding gentlemen. I actually really like the guys, some are a bit weird, some are a bit annoying, but it could have been a lot worse. My companion is hilarious though. Oh man, I wish you all could meet him. His name is Elder Blackham. He is from a small town from Green Valley, California...according to him in his town you are either LDS, a true hippie, a Wicka (practices witchcraft), or some odd combination of the three. He comes from a LDS/Hippie family. I would say he mostly reminds me of Spencer Mayberry (except his skin is actually white, not some weird half-black skin that Spence has and he is a lot smaller, he weighs about 132 lbs and is about 5 foot 7 inches). He is obsessed with choir. OBSESSED. He sings in every silent moment. I don't actually mind cause he is actually good and it is really funny. Oh yeah he is also like Ben because he is extremely cautious and deathly afraid of getting hurt. The first thing he told me is that he is so glad he wont be riding a bike in our mission (he is going to São Paulo North as well) because the drivers are out of control here and he knows he would get killed by a driver because his reflexes are not fast enough to get out of the way.

Oh yeah! The best part of my companion's wide array of personality characteristics is that he is an extreme hypochondriac. Rarely does a day go by where he doesn't mention some life threatening disease he thinks he has. I love it. It makes the days bearable here, listening to him complain about his acid reflex that will burn his esophageous (spelling?) or him thinking he swallowed a chicken bone and being worried all night that it will wreak havoc on his intestine. I told him to always share his hypochondrac thoughts with me becasue I will go insane without them. He believes that Wal-Mart's outsourcing is going to ruin America's economy and believes you are a terrorist if you buy from another country other than America. He is also an extreme liberal...but we can't talk politics in the CTM but every once in a while i'll get a small amount of debate out of him. He thinks it is hilarious when he slips up on Obama's name and calls him Osama..."I can't believe it, I just did it again!" He loves Obama. Anyway, we definitely wouldn't be friends outside of this place, so it's weird that I actually enjoy his company.

Oh yeah, I am writing from the comforts of Mr. Cheney's Cookies. It's a little place across from the CTM where all the missionaries go to write their emails. They do this thing called MissionTies that I need you to sign up for mom/dad. I don't really fully understand it but I am pretty sure that you have to do it all on your end. Go to MissionTies.com and sign me up for it. When anyone writes me a letter to this email account > (brentparsons@myldsmail.net) they will print it out and send it over to the CTM and they will put it in my mailbox which I check twice a day just hoping that I will get a letter. So if anyone wants to contact me send me an email to this account and it will be printed and given to me just like a letter would be. I can only send email to my immediate family so I will just send a letter to my parents that they can forward on to you. I only get 45 minutes every p-day to check and write email so I will probably just a write a big letter to everyone until I get out and have the chance to be on the computer more often. I hope that whole thing was clear, I dont really understand it myself but mom and dad, please just go to the website and sign me up. I want letters! I want to hear what is going on with everyone no matter how trivial you think it is. It has only been six days and I am already going insane.

Oh yeah, on top of everything I got called as district leader on friday night. I am still not sure what responsibilities that entitles but my branch president's counselor just said to be "a perfect example to your district in everything you do". Oh yeah thanks for that. That definitely eases the burden of adjusting to this prison-like setting, would you like me to do anything else besides be perfect? Unbelievable.

CTM life is extremely repetitive. I wake up, do personal study, go to breakfast, go back to the classroom and do companion study, then I do MDST (Missionary Directed Study Time, missionaries just study whatever they want during that time), then go to lunch at 12:15, then go to class at 1:15 until 4:45 then go to dinner, then go back to class from 5:45 until 9:00, then my companion and I plan for the next day, then we get ready for bed, lights out at 10:30. Oh and three times a week we get time for 45 minutes of gym during MDST. WHOOPIE! Everyday we do that. For two months. Which seems like two years from now. Just kidding, but not really. The CTM is not THAT bad it is just stressful and repetitive and I can usually hear myself getting fatter during most of the day due to large amounts of food and no exercise.

The food is pretty good, not as bad as I hear. I actually enjoy the rice and beans (I like to stuff a roll with the rice and beans, it's delicious) and the meat is good too. Although I think they keep accidentally spilling a large bottle of lemon juice into every batch of meat I have ever had...those clumsy cooks.

The language is really frustrating. It is so annoying to have Brazilians everywhere in the CTM and not be able to communicate with them. It has only been six days though and they say it will get better.

Anyway, I got to go, time is up. I hope I didn't forget anything. Mom and Dad make sure you sign up for the mission ties. Everyone write me! Thanks for doing the blog Karrissa. Will you guys make sure everyone knows about it? I didn't tell a lot of people about it. Make sure everyone knows...I don't think I told Tasha about it so let her know. Anwyay, thank you for everything and I love you guys and hope I will hear from you guys soon. I can only get on the computer once a week so I will make sure I write an email at least that often and maybe a letter sometime too. Farewell!

-Brent