Missionary Man: It's a Relief that they Eat Pickles Here!

Hey Mom!

Glad to hear Jon's okay; he's in my prayers. Your writing class sounds interesting, Mom. It would make a good sitcom, ha ha!

I don't hear anything about the United States down here. My companion is blonde and everyone just thinks we're Germans. A lot of the people we talk with say they've never talked to an American before.

Floripa

I'm doing well--just fighting a head cold. :( I was on a really long healthy streak, too!

I'm having fun here in Brazil. There are some things about missionary work that this mission does differently from Houston South, but I'm dealing with it. The people here are nice and we're finding more people to teach every day. The language is coming pretty fast for me; I'm able to teach pretty coherently.

Chegou means "Arrived"

To answer your questions:

The mission president brings all our mail from the mission office to our area every time we have a zone conference (once a month). It is safer to send mail there; he will bring it to me.

I have not had any problems adjusting to the water or the food here. This state (Santa Catarina) is one of the richest parts of Brazil. They've got good water filters here; you can drink right out of the tap and it's fine. Everything is amazingly expensive, though; a box of cereal is $7.00 US (so cereal is now out of my diet--ha ha).

They eat pickles here! That's a relief. They also eat a lot of french fries. They have these really tiny french fries that they sprinkle over all their food at meals. The food here really isn't that different at all from back home other than this weird herbal drink (which tastes worse than dirt) that EVERYONE here just loves. Very strange.