Ola meus Pais e amigos

 

Wow, everything is flying by. I've already done so much. They really just make you jump right in, no real orientations or anything.

 

My District is awesome. There are 10 of us. 7 Elders and 3 Sisters. My companions name is Elder Garrett Egan. He went to BYU also and so did one other Elder in my district. They're all awesome and we get along super well. Our class is crazy though. It's just then ten of us but our teachers, Irmao (Brother) Peterson, Irmao Williams, and one other to be named are awesome. But the thing is they only speak to us in Portugues. My two years of Espanol are actually helping and hurting a lot. I can understand what they are saying because of it, and it helps with conjugation, but I'm always saying things in the wrong accent. Like de is pronounced chi, well kinda like that. It's crazy. It's coming along well though. They already has us teach a couple of lessons to an "investigator" (a couple of other missionaries blew it and told us he was going to be our teacher in a couple of weeks) but even though we know he is actually an RM it still feels like we're teaching someone who is completely clueless about the evangelho (gospel). He's a great actor. We teach him another lesson today, this time I didn't write a word for word script in Portugues, I'm going to try and actually come up with the phrases while we are teaching him. I hope it goes well.

 

So apparently the teaching program that they are using for us is brand new. We're like the second group to use it. I think it works super well. We really are learning so much about o evangelho and Portugues. A lot of missionaries that were going to Brasil didn't get their visas, so there is a total overflow of missionaries here. We were put in a Branch that has a bunch of people going to Eastern Block countries, instead of being in an all Portugues one. It means that we get to speak in English which is nice now since I don't know enough Portugues, but was also excited to be imersed more completely in the language. Oh well. So the two Zone leaders that are in charge of our group, Elder Redpath and Elder Olson, are awesome. Elder Redpath is from Northern England and its such a nice guy. He loves to just talk to you about anything. It's great. And Elder Olson is incredible nice. He's a little more reserved but is still awesome. They are like the perfect companionship.

 

Elder Egan and I get along just fine, but at the same time we don't seem to be the closest friends. Like we tend to want to talk to others in our district, but there is still a mutual respect and love there. We work well together and haven't started to annoy each other yet. (I have my fingers crossed that we won't ever) But we are going to be companions for 9 weeks, and I guess you get tired of constantly being with someone all day. We'll see how it goes.

 

Everyone here that is going to Brasil, jokes about getting temporarliy reassigned because no one is getting visas. The District that we replaced had 14 people and only one made it to Brasil, the rest are in like Idaho, Texas, and Salt Lake City. I really hope visas start coming through.

 

So gym time is the best. I look forward to it so much. We get to be outside and play soccer. I scored a goal the first day (which is ridiculously lucky since there are like 50 people on the field) but everybody like freaked out and stuff. It was kinda nice. There was an Elder from Africa playing soccer and he was hilarious. He didn't speak much English and had a heavy accent, but he was super good and was always yelling funny things like "Give me some love" if he wanted you to pass the ball. He made the whole experience better. Everyone is so incredibly nice here. It's like a competition to hold the most doors open for people, or to say to hello and smile to people. Everyone greets each other in their language though. It's kind of awesome.

 

 

I have pictures to send but they're on an SD card. I need a USB cable to upload them. I don't think my phone came with one, but if you could check around the house for one that would be great.

 

The Sisters add a completely different dimension to our District. I really feel like they calm us down and make us work harder. None of them took Spanish or anything, and they don't seem to be picking up the language as quickly, but it gives us an oppurtunity to teach them which really helps me learn a lot in the end. Basically half of our days are all Personal Study Time or Language Study, which neither of them have a teacher so you have to self teach. It's hard to stay motivated for that long when you've already done so much in one day. But I'm trying. So I can only write letters on P-Day which is today and I can only email family. So I'm working hard to get that all done today. Sorry to some people if I don't have time to get a letter to you this week. I just have so much to do. They have every second of your day planned out here. Even P-Day ends at 5 25 and we have to go back to class.

 

Well that's all I can think of to say. Tell me what's going on with everyone. It's easiet for me to read letters because I can get them all through the week, and I can only check email once a week. And even then I only get thirty minutes so I would just print the emails and read them later anyway.

 

Tchau. Me amas. ( I love you all)

 

Elder Cameron Bruce.