First Week out of the CTM

Hello!

So this letter probably won't be as long as some of my others because I want to send you all some pictures of my house and companion and stuff and it takes forever to download the pictures so I want to leave time to do that. I will try to write fast.

Before I start I want you to know, everyone but especially mother, that I am fine right now and that I am beginning to love the work...my first few days were pretty rough though. But don't get your panties all in a bunch over my first few paragraphs.

So after I emailed you last Wednesday we went to find the house we were going to stay at...but the funny thing was that we didn't have one. We were with another companionship, arrived at their house and they were like "OK well this is our house so as of right now you don't have one so you will be staying at the ZL's house until you guys find another." What? So we headed over to the ZL's house which I thought would be able to accommodate another companionship...but not really. It just had a bunk-bed in the what I thought was the "entry-way" but turned out to be our room.

So we just put our stuff on the floor and I would have unpacked but I had no dresser or closet or anything. Anyway, so then I decided to change into some comfortable clothes, so I opened up my suitcase to get some clothes out and found a bunch of red-goo stuff everywhere. In my hurry to pack I didn't strategically place my Axe body wash (of course it was red) and it somehow broke open and got everywhere! I almost added a few tears to the red mess right then and there.

Well, long story short it got on a bunch of my garments and a couple of my shirts along with some other stuff by fortunately I was able to get it all cleaned and my shirts and garments are fine. But at that time I didn't know that so I stuck my clothes in the washer and climbed up into my bed and wished my Mommy was there to clean up the mess instead of me :). Just kidding, but not really. My companion and I didn't really talk the entire day and I had never wanted to come home so bad. Yeah, one of the worst days of my life.

But remember! It got better! I can't really do a day by day thing but my companion and I actually opened up a new area called Limão that is right next to Casa Verde. So this week we got a bunch of contacts from the ZL and his companion and began teaching and contacting in the area.

Teaching is unbelievably hard for me because I now realize that I learned pretty much nothing in the CTM about the language. My companion is extremely patient with me though which is pretty sweet and the people usually are too. They pretty much just think I am a joke of some sort and laugh at me when I teach or talk to them. Two nights ago we were teaching this family about prayer and I explained a scripture then started bearing my testimony about prayer and a member that was there with us literally just burst out laughing during my testimony. Then of course everyone else started laughing and I sat there trying to cover up my soft-sobs underneath a smile. I feel kind of bad whenever I talk because I pretty much kill any spirit that happened to be there, but my companion pretty much makes me.

When it is just me and my companion together it is pretty cool because we both teach each other; I teach him English and he teaches me Portuguese. But when it is all 4 of us (my companion, ZL, and his companion) they all seem to have an attitude of "polite neglect" towards me. They all speak Portuguese together and after about 4 minutes of me trying to translate (which is literally physically exhausting) I zone off and think of something else...a life of English and a dresser to put my clothes in...

The ward here is awesome. They have a list of the entire ward and which days they have to feed us. So everyday my companion and I have a lunch scheduled with a member family, and usually it is delicious. Rice and beans of course, which I really like, then some meat and juice of some sort. Them Brazis love their juice. I have had a few questionable meals where I thought that I would be feeding the food to the toilet later that night, but I have not got sick yet. They cautioned us in the CTM to never drink water from the tap which for one is pretty much impossible with lunch everyday being at a member's house where of course they used the tap water to make their juice and food, and two it has not made me sick at all yet so I am not going to worry about it.

Oh so the mission rules are that I can only email my Mother, Father, Brother, and Sister. For now I will obey but that might change later. I can receive emails from anyone though so please keep writing and I hope my parents put the right address up on the blog to where any letters should be sent? Please do. Anyway, I'll be writing more hand-written letters and sending them off in the coming weeks.

OK I need to go download the pics, I hope they work. Sorry this letter has been pretty boring, hopefully the pics are interesting. I really miss you all so much you have no idea...it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I know that I am here doing the Lord's work and I have seen it bless family's lives already.

Oh yeah we have baptism dates for a family for November 15th, pretty sweet. They had been taught a little bit by another companionship and were passed off to us. Only the parents are old enough to get baptized, so we will baptize those two. Anyway, I love you all.

-Elder Brent Parsons