July 6, 2011

Hey Dad! You are certainly right about the cold! Man and I thought Brazil was supposed to be hot! Haha but it hasnt been too bad, the only thing that sucks is that we always have to walk in it. At least we had cars with heaters in the PHilly Mission. It sounds like things are going good at home, so thats good. We didnt do anything special for July fourth. I was actually pretty trunky thinking of all the fourth of july memories. But things in São Marcos are going good still, except we STILL dont have a house yet, so it makes everything a little more difficult, but our Ward Mission Leader is working on it and we should have a house this week according to him. I went to the Temple last pday after emailing and it was sweet. I bought some g´s and a bible. The Curitiba temple is sweet. Lately it has been raining a ton, almost evry day. It rains a bunch here. On sunday I did my first confirmation! I confirmed Wellington, who we had baptised the week before. We have yet ANOTHER baptism this weekend, so it should be good. Until now ive had 13 baptisms on the mission, and i hope there is many more to come. This next one will make 14. So I finished some things this week like training and such and I am now approved to be a trainer! So well see what this next transfer brings, maybe Ill be training! Today we went to Jardim BOtanical again and also to this way sweet cemitary thats by our house. Well, that was my week, and I´´m doing super good here! Man almost every single keyboard in Brazil sucks! Well take care, I love ya!

Love, Matt

June 29, 2011

Hey! I havent gotten your email yet! Im a little early online today, because we are going to the Temple today. Im super stoked to go there again! I love the temple... But anyways I´ll just jump right into what
happend this week. So we had a baptism yet AGAIN! Woo! We are doing good. They were all from refferals. Thats why refferals are super important, because several baptisms result from refferals. Another thing that happend this week is that Sunday I gave a 15 min talk in church on missionary work. Everyone said they loved it and it was really good. I got the branch super excited to help us out in the work. I fired them up on giving us refferals and going out teaching with us. The weather has
been SUPER cold lately. THis cold reminds me sort of the cold in Philly, but not as bad. Super humid and windy. There is frost on the grass and windsheilds in the morning. This weather makes it so miserable for missionaries, becuase we are walking in it all of the time, with the wind blowing in our face. Also, our apartment doesnt have a heater, and its soooo cold during the night and morning. I sleep with gloves, two pairs of pants, a beanie, and 2 hoodies. To make it all worse, our shower is broken so its just cold water. Man, super bad luck! Haha. It sucks having all of these winters. I endured a whole winter in philly,
and just when it started to warm up, im here at the start of a brand new winter. When it comes time to come home, I will just be finishing the next winter, it will start to warm up here, just to go home at the start of a utah winter. Man, tons of winters for me! This sucks! I hate the cold! haha. But in other news, there are tons and tons of annoying barking dogs that chase us sometimes in São Marcos. THey are just
street dogs that roam the streets, so i bought a powerade with a really good squirting bottle, and I fill it up with water and squirt the annoying dogs when they bark or chase us and they run away every time! hahaha, I get em. Last night something funny that happened is that an investigator was explaining to us that she hadnt received an answer to her prayer, and we found out why. Because she had been praying to joseph smith! hahaha. Well we fixed that right up and well see how it goes. Well i gotta run now,         i love you! Tchau

6/22/11

E ai Pai!   Another great week here in good ol´ Brazil. I wasnt robbed so thats a good thing right? haha. Man, first day of summer back home... Good times in the summer... Truncky!!! But it has actually been super nice here lately. Next month will be the coldest and then the days will start to get warmer and longer too. It gets dark about 5:30 right now so it makes the work a little more dangerous at night, but we are smart about where we go during the night. Dont worry. I hear the sun is still up here until 8:30 in the summer so that will be super good for the work. I will just end with a winter here, and then head straight into winter there when i get home. Man, lots of winters to pass in 2 years... Im super happy gary is doing good. Mom said that you have been looking at getting a friend for gary. Man you should wait until I get home and then get a puppy! haha. I will teach it tricks in portuguese. So is it still raining a lot?? It rains quite a bit here. Today we went to the zoo (for free) and it rained on us and we got soaked. It mists here a ton too, more often than rain. But this week was good! We had yet another baptism!! We are baptising every week here. We have 2 more baptisms this weekend, and that will make 3 weeks in a row of baptisms. The members are giving us a lot of refferals, which is helping a lot. This week we stayed in the house for 2 days because my comp was sick. I picked up his sickness but its not too bad and wont keep me from doing the work! I just used the time indoors to eat, and study pretty much ha it was boring. We had activities this week too with the branch, and we brought investigators. Every week we have soccer with the branch, and we bring investigators and they love it. Yesterday we did a service project for this family that lives in the jungle part of our area. Its super long from the city part, and up in the mountains with jungle. There are monkeys and venomos snakes in this area! Its way cool. This sunday we will give talks in sac meeting (about 20 min long) so i have to prepare for that. But yeah things here are going great, and we´re just preparing for winter to come next month! Tecnically its already here, but it hasnt been too bad so far. But i love you! Keep up the good work! I hope your fathers day was super good! 
Love, Matt

June 15, 2011

E ai pai tudo esta bem?! Hey, Dad.  It sounds like you´ve been working super hard lately keep up the good work. I know how you feel when you feel like you have a million things to get done and you have no time to rest. I never rest here haha. This week was really good and we are getting this area going. It´s still hard going back and forth by bus every day but we should have our house soon in a couple of weeks so it will be good. We got a house picked out thats in a safe area and its right behind a members house that stays in the house all day so it will be safe. We had a baptism on saturday and it went really well. She picked me to baptize her so I did and it was good except the water was super cold! Every single baptism i´ve done has been in freezing water. I guess I just have bad luck. But it was really good, there was a lot of support from the branch. The members here are so excited to help us out in missionary work and we are getting a lot of refferals. This week I also went on exchanges and got put with the Zone Leader Elder Askins and he´s american, so we just took a break on the portuguese for a while and just spoke english on the streets in between appointments. I realized that my english skills have gone down a little haha sometimes I just say the portuguese word because in the moment I can´t think of the English word. Just imagine when i´ll be here for a really long time how much my English will go. This week I also experienced real legit passionfruit juice and it was soooo good! I also had real guava juice and it was amazing. Usually here in southern Brazil there isnt that much natural fruit juice because they just use Tang powder that actually tastes way good so its all good. The majority of fruit in brazil is grown in the northeast where its nice and hot all year long. Here fruit is really expensive, but sometimes members will treat you to real juice! This morning I had a avacado and bannana milkshake and it was way good. So there is this dog in são marcos that I swear is the ugliest dog in the world haha I need to take a picture of him. He has a bunch of bald spots and really long hair where he does have hair. Its super funny. The weather here is getting colder and colder every day it sucks! There is really heavy fog every single morning. When it rains here it rains in buckets its so crazy. Hmmm what else.... Yesterday we were teaching a 11 year old and a 7 year old that drinks alcohol and smokes weed. Ha man what kids do these days. Things are going good here and the portuguese its going super good. I´ll be fluent soon. Well I love ya and keep up the good work!

 Love, Matt

June 8, 2011

Tudo bem pai! Things here are good, and dont worry about me! Im not sure if they caught the guys that robbed us, but im sure they didnt cuz the police force was horrible out there. Hahaha i was laughing picturing eric rappin on the turn table, i miss that kid. And what did you mean when you said that you had a bid for the roof?? im confused.. what roof? what bid? please explain yourself. So yeah, im working in são marcos now, and its going good! Its hard though, cuz we opened the area so we get lost a lot, that and we have to catch a bus there every day, that burns money up quick. We are still living in the city next to it, so its hard not living there. We are looking for a good house to rent that is close to the chapel, and safe. Hopefully we´ll figure it out this week. But são marcos is a good area that hasnt had missionaries there for over a year, so the members are super excited to have us here and working. There has just been people coming to church that havent been baptised yet cuz there hasnt been missionaries here to teach and baptise. The members here have been a lot of help to us. In borda do campo the members didnt help at all.. it sucked. But we have a bunch of help now. We have a baptism here this saturday already, its sweet! We are teaching some really firm investigators that should be baptised soon. We are still living in sao jose dos pinhais with the zone leaders so it sucks going back and forth every day with the bus and such. Yesterday it rained so hard and i got soaked. The winter here rains a ton, and its super cold haha. Im in for a treat. Something funny that happened yesterday was that a drunk guy was chasing us and we were laughing cuz he waas just so drunk and couldnt keep up with us. Things are going good and im happy and working hard. I gotta run now my companion is in a hurry to go do nothing hahaha. I love ya have a good week!

June 2, 2011

Hey dad! Wow thats so nuts about the water in utah. Looks like you can just go skim boarding anywhere! This week we had training and it was really good. Im improving so much on the portuguese every day, and i think i should be fluent within 3 months. Im already speaking whatever i want, its just sometimes when you wanna tell a story or something you dont know the vocab for special words. The good thing is my lesson vocab is good, and thats whats important.

This next part i dont know if you should show mom. She might get worried and such, but i thought i would share it with you. You can judge on if you think mom should know. This week i was robbed. It was on thursday and we were walking at about 8:30 and we started to cross the crossing that takes you over and to the other side of the freeway and I was walking about 7 feet in front of elder dos santos, and i passed 5 guys that let me pass, one of them having a big stick in his hand, but i walked about 15 more feet before i realized that elder dos santos wasnt behind me, so i looked back and i heard shouting, and i saw one of the guys grab the cell phone out of elder dos santos hand, and the guys saw me that i was looking back and they yelled at me to run off, but i didnt want to leave my companion, so i ran up to help him and they started to rob me too. They said they had a gun, so we didnt want to resist. They took my backpack, 17 bucks, my umbrella, my nice mission scriptures, daily planner, cell phone, consecrated oil vial, and my irregular verb portuguese card. It happened so fast, with them yelling and screaming in our faces, throwing in a few blows with the stick, then yelling at us to leave. They hit my back pretty hard that cut it and gave it a big bruise, and hit elder dos santos;s hand really hard that made it swell. We ran to a members house and they drove us home, and then we used their phone to call President Cordon, and he told us to go to the hospital to check out and make sure we werent hurt too bad, so we went and it turned out fine. My back was just cut a little with a bruise and elder dos santoss hand was just swollen and not broken. Man, it was so scary. President took us from borda do campo and now we are living with the zone leaders waiting for a house in our new area são marcos. We went to the mission office and they gave us new backpacks (which the backpack i got is horrible and hurts my back), and scriptures ( used and dirty ). BUt I have my life and thats all that counts. Just make sure you are always praying for my safety, cuz i needd those prayers! Im fine now, and everythings alright. It was just a trial but i know i will learn and grow from it.

But things are all good now and we will work hard in são marcos. It is a branch but it only needs 10 more members to make a ward and construct a chapel. We will make it happen! That was my week, pretty much. I love you dad just know that, and im praying for you guys always.

Love, Matt

May 25, 2011

Hahahaha corndog conference..... But yeah, hey!!!! Im doing good and everything is fine! Just to jump right in this weeks events, a drunk guy approached us, super hammered, and the first thing he said to us is " im not gay" so i said "thats good" and he looked right at me and poked me in the chest and said "why is that good you americano!" haha it was so funny. We told him that we were in a hurry and we had to go, so he said it was okay and started to run at us hahaha it was crazy so we got away. THere are a lot of drunk people on the streets here at night. ANother thing that has happend this week is during one of the lessons the lady we were teaching just took her top off and started nursing her baby right in front of us without hiding anything hah man its just a culture thing here and its weird. I saw it happened on the bus too. Its just normal here. THis week the new misionaries arrived and they dont speak absolutely no portuguese! It was funny to see how horrible they were and to remember how bad i was when i arrived ha. its crazy how much ive improved. Im also having dreams in portuguese now and its super weird and funny haha. I went on exchanges this week and while i was walking a group of guys were yelling english words at me like good morning, hey, hi how are you americano, and other things. Haha dang brazilians. The temperature is getting pretty cold now. The temp in our house the other morning was 58 degrees! Super cold, and the humidity just makes it worse. Something funny that happend this week was that all the brazilians were saying how the world was gunna end last friday and they were freaking out. Brazilians are crazy! ha. They say that america never landed on the moon and that all we eat is sandwiches and cheeseburgers. Our investigators are going good, and we got a new investigator that lives on like the last house in our area. We had to walk through a forest to get to his farm hahaha but the scary part was walking back to the town part of our area at night. He lives in a super dangerous area but its all good, cuz we got the spirit with us hahahahaa. But yeah, its going good here in Borda do campo! Thats funny that you finally lost it all on the boat after 20 years, and thats super sweet that you got an ipad 2 from ufl! Give it to me when i get home! Deal?? haha. Well i love ya have a good week!
 Love matt