First Letter From Brazil – That Was Fast!

Ola from Sao Paulo!

I made it here! After a few adventures. I stepped off my flight from Albany to Detroit at 7 45, which left me 15 minutes to get to the international departures and catch my flight! Got there in 10 minutes, almost positive I was the very last one on that very big plane. There was one sister missionary on the flight! She had already been in the Provo MTC for three weeks but just got her visa. She was in the seating section in front of me.

So after 11 hours of flying, which I mostly spent reading Preach My Gospel or sleeping (I talked with the english-speaking Brasileiro next to me about the church, too, but she wouldn’t take my Book of Mormon because a coworker had already given her one), I made it to Brasil! Sao Paulo, as it turns out, is enormously gigantic. And very beautiful! There are trees everywhere.

So I told you I made it to Sao Paulo, but as I think you could tell from the email Delta sent you, my bags didn’t! So I’m still waiting for them to come in from Detroit. Hopefully tomorrow, is what they told me! Mom, thanks for packing me an emergency packet of clothes and everything else haha. I might be wearing these same pants and tie tomorrow.

The first day was great! 11 of us came into the MTC, including that sister flying through Detroit, although she isn’t with our group anymore because she’s ahead of us. 6 elders and 4 other sisters! My companion and I and one other elder and one other sister are all going to Santos, which is nice. I like everyone I’ve met so far, and the whole time has been great! We hear calls of “novos missionarios!” from the halls when the older groups see the blue dots on our nametags haha. We hear nothing but Portuguese from everyone but our teachers! Actually, my companion and I managed to have a pretty good conversation in Spanish with some new elders from Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. That was fun. I think I’ll really like learning Portuguese! We haven’t done much so far but I think my Spanish will help a lot.

It’s quite warm here.

The 10 of us taught an acting investigator as a group as well, which went pretty well. And other than that we’ve just had some bem-vindo talks from the MTC president (who started yesterday!) and some other leaders, and some time to walk around!

Well we only have a few minutes on the computer here today, but I hope that gives you an idea of what I’ve been up to! Hope everything is going well at home and everywhere else you all are!

Com amor,
Elder Maughan