No Blueberries for me!

Hey! It´s p-day! WHOOP! Ok so I had my first fruit right off of a tree the other day. DELISH. It was called carumbola, No I have no idea if that’s the right spelling. It’s super super good though. My next goal is to find a mango tree. The mango juice here is unbelievable. I had a mango off a tree in sao paulo but I want to see if their better here. This week was not as exciting as last week. Maybe it’s just because I´m getting used to how crazy this mission is haha. A dog tried to bite me yesterday, I beat him down with my book of Mormon though and he ran off yelping, no worries about them dogs. I think he told his friends because i haven’t had any problems since then :)). I talked about the dogs, rats and cats right? They really are EVERYWHERE. I saw a family of 4 dogs the other day sleeping on the sidewalk. It was cute they were all cuddling and stuff. awwwwwwww! There’s also 10,000 ants every square foot here. We have a small nation of em in our trash can. Nothing we can do to get rid of them. The mosquitos were getting revenge for their fallen brethren this week I think. I had 10 on each leg the other day haha. They are NOT normal mosquitos. They bite through my dress pants, and garments underneath. Blew my mind when I first realized they were doing that.

I’m officially the ward piano player. No one in the ward plays so it’s just me struggling to keep up on the lil electric one they have. I’m also going to start teaching an English class on Wednesday nights! I’m excited because it’s a good thing to invite investigators to and strengthen my relationship with the ward. Haha dad. The bishop here LOVES the walking dead. It just made me think of you, him and his son asks me about tv series all the time and if I’ve ever watched them. The bishop is WAY awesome. He has such an awesome sense of humor. Did I ever say there are sand/grass/futsol arenas EVERYWHERE here? Well there are. The Brazilians love their soccer. We aren’t allowed to play soccer though so I don´t have to worry about embarrassing myself. BUT we can play basketball, so that’s AWESOME! Ok so crazy story for the week. We were walking down a hill one day (by the way there are 1,0000000 super steep hills in my area) and this guy far away was walking toward us eating popcorn. He was probably 40 or so and yelled ´´Élderes!´´ We said Oi! And went and talked to him. He just started going OFF about deep doctrine crap. He was using a ton of weird words that i had no idea what they were. He literally talked for 45 minutes straight about Weird stuff. We found out after a little while that he´s a preacher for the protestant church. So we eventually said. Look, we gotta go. He asked if he could leave us with a prayer and we said sure! He said ok and KNELT down in the middle of the road and started praying FOR 10 MINUTES!!! Me and Elder Basìlio just looked at each other in the middle of the prayer.   So something else kind of ruined my week......THEY DONT HAVE BLUEBERRY PANCAKES HERE. I was so sad. Mom no need to waste weight and send me those. I was just a lil sad (sniffle). I’m sure you´ve already heard but 233 people died in a club in Rio Grande do Sul. Everyone is talking about it. Really, really sad. People here are really giving. Whenever you need water you can go to any house and ask for some. Maybe it’s because they know you’ll die here if you don’t get water but still. Kinda cool. I went on splits this week into another area with an Elder. It was fun! The area he was in had a lot more Favelas than mine. We taught this 15 year old girl and it was crazy spiritual. Ok so the question, I still have socks and because everyone takes their shoes off when they walk in their floors are clean. YES. I’m drinking plenty. People here are giving. You can go to any house and ask for water and they’ll give you some. All the water people drink is filtered. They have areas where you can fill up on of those big blue jugs for 60 cents. That’s what we drink. Ya just can’t drink the tap. I drink extra though because my shirts are completely drenched in sweat by the end of the day.  I’ll take more pics next week. Send ME some! Freak! You can just upload them and send them to my email even!  Please send lots of pics and videos back with the card. We aren’t supposed to carry our cameras around with us 1 for safety and 2 so we don’t look like tourists. I’m trying to get more though. I still have an ingrown toenail and was sick all day yesterday. Sucked walking around with the flu like that. But it’s cleared up a ton today. No I didn’t have a fever. Yeah I already met Elder Page the first day. He’s way cool and his Portuguese is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy good. We talked about alpine for a lil then I had to run. Right now were just trying to find a bunch of new investigators. So lots of walking and knocking right now. But the mission is really really really hard. Its is so difficult sometimes to just walk up a hill or get up in the morning because all I want to do is sleep. It is 1,000 times different from the MTC. Everyone always told me it would be hard, but you just don’t know until you´re here! From what I´ve seen if you´re not 100% committed and obedient you won’t make it! I couldn´t do this if I wasn´t being obedient. I’ve never been so tired, stressed, frustrated, happy, peaceful, and just content in my whole life. The mission is tough, especially where I´m at. But it’s so worth it :)  I think that’s all I got for now! Tchau!

---Elder Green

 GPS=  S 03(degree sign)08.339´

            W 059(degree sign)59.721

HEY, HEY, HEY, HEY :)

January 21, 2013

IT´S HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just thought I´d open with that :). Its really hot here.....haha. BUT I actually dont mind it all that much! AAAnnnnd apparently it´s winter here. I was dying yesterday and my comp said just wait, we have missionaries pass out on a regular basis because it´s so hot in the summer haha. Speaking of my comp his name is Elder Basìlio. Yep! I got´s me a Brazilian companion! He´s way awesome though. He´s the district leader and has a real talent for teaching. We get along great and he loves english and wants to learn really bad. His dream is to go to a general conference live in Utah and understand everything haha! Kinda cool. My areas name is Lagoa Verde. YEP Green Lake in english. Its in the middle of the city so I´m not in the middle of nowhere but still in the jungle. The Amazon is GINORMOUS!   DAD THANK YOU FOR THE NBA STANDINGS IVE BEEN WONDERING FOR 3 MONTHS. Haha.......ANYways. My area has 1,000 hills. Super steep and they're everywhere. I´ve only found a few roads that are level for more than 20 feet haha. .There are 10,000 cats and dogs walking in the streets. Rat´s too, lots of dogs and cats and rats! Its the whole dang pet circle of life. I´ve seen some pretty SICK dog fights though. They just poo and pee in the middle of the road too haha. They other day we were walking down some alleys to talk to a 16 year old named Gabriela that showed a lil bit of interest. While we were talking to her outside her house this little girl came running around. Anyas age at least, She was barefoot and had on a purple shirt that was purple near the top but faded into black/brown near the bottom. She was so freaking adorable. The accent here is impossible to understand. My comp is from são paulo and he said it took HIM a while to get what people were saying. (sigh) I got so frustrated my second day. I literally had no idea what was going on during the lesson. I wanted to scream. Gah just thinking about it makes me frustrated. I can understand people from São Paulo fine. But here its just so different. They understand me, I just don´t understand them. BUT. I´m the freaking bomb at charades now so thats a plus :)) But yeah super hot, and we walk everywhere. I lost 11 pounds in 3 days if that says anything haha.... I get a lot of stares when I walk around because im 1 1/2 feet taller than everyone!  Every house I go into that has a floor, (so i need to take my shoes off), literally every person yells whaaaaaaa????? When i take my shoes off and picks them up and looks and them. They just laugh and laugh and laugh after I tell them their mine haha. So the food here is wayyyyyy good. They have crazy fruits that they only have here that i wont even attempt to spell but they are good. They also have this Amazonian nut, thats only in the Amazon and its basically a giant almond. Inside a really hard shell so it´s tough to get out but its worth it. SO good. I haven´t had a coconut yet but i want to. Bananas are UNREAL. Mangos.....oh my gosh....mana from heaven greatest thing ever. Ok so there are so many bugs here. Mosquitos galore. SO many. I hate them. When i see one, I ATTACK. Not just try, I ATTACK. Like my life depends on it. I´ve kind of made a game out of killing them in cool ways. 

Like in between my legs or something its SUPER fun :) but yeah i get bitten all the time. Coolest animal I´ve seen is a parrot, like I said I'm in the city.  Ok so NOW is the best part. We met a guy named Alex on Thursday, baptized him yesterday..........yeah SO CRAZY. MY FIRST BAPTISM! He was crazy receptive and wants to serve a mission now. He´s only 17! So awesome. His family wants to hear about the gospel now too he said. He doesn´t live in our area he was just visiting his cousin but he leaves this week and wanted only us to baptize him, so our mission pres gave the ok and we did! It was so awesome. I didn´t do the actual baptism, another Elder (elder rex) did because we had alot of baptisms and had to get them done quick. SO cool :)

 I MISS EVERYONE!!!!!!!  I always see the cutest little girls here so i think of anya then of the fam. (sigh) Being in the field has tripled my missing because I don´t have all my great district anymore to have fun with!  ILL HAVE A NEPHEW IN 6 WEEKS. YES!!! Send 480 pictures when he comes ok? ok.
Until Next week, Love you all!
Elder Green

Merry Christmas!

December 25th

Hey family!!!
Ok so MOM. I LOVED ALL THE PRESENTS ESPECIALLY THE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you mom and kristin. All the pics are unbelievable. And those extra pics of christ you sent to me laminated that there were doubles of I gave to some of the guys in my districts the doubles. They all love that picture of Christ since they saw my big one by liz lemon. AWESOME. And I loved every single tie. Which is kind of amazing becuase I am pretty darn picky about my ties! Really though I loved them all. Batman shirt=awesome. Jazz shorts=awsome. ALL THE PICS!!!!! I was wanting pics so bad. Thank you so much. Ok so first Christmas eve. It was just normal shedule here until like 630 or so. Then we had choir practice for a while (everyone here is required to participate in choir, kinda dumb becuase we are only singing to 6 people on the stand then haha) But after choir practice we had a musical devotional type of a thing. It was crazy spiritual. Really awesome. OH and before all that we had dinner. Mom.....the dinner on Christmas eve was the WORST one we have had here...it tasted like dust and old people. So gross. BUT I stayed positive! I just wanted you to know I was really missing your Chirstmas Eve dinner hehe :) THEN we went to bed early but before bed they had ice cream and brownies out for us! SO yummy. And around 10 we heard bells outside our hallway and some of the district presidents and the presidents wife came around and gave us cookies and a lil bag of heaven. They all had santa hats on and were going room by room giving the bags to the elders! Awesome right?? I am loving it here. But at the same time Im sort of sick of it and ready to get out in the field! Makes sense right? Anywho, we stayed up a little late because they LET US SLEEP IN TODAY!!!! WHOOP!!!! But we got about the same amount of sleep anyways because here instead of 4th of July or New Years Fireworks they go crazy with fireworks on Christmas. Starting at midnight of christmas eve.....and the rest of the night....haha. It was hard to sleep! But the fireworks here are just like really loud bombs. Sounds like a war. They don't shoot into the air haha! Some do but 90% just are super loud!!! So we all woke up and I immedietly opened my few things OF COURSE. And no i didn't open a single one before then. Even though I wanted to :). Christmas day, rather today we woke up LATE (awesome) and had breakfast downstairs. Nothing special but I wasn't hungry anyways with all the candy we've been eating. Then we had a member of the 70 here in the morning and he spoke, hes the president of the Brazil area, President Costa. It was a WAY good talk. Ill include details in the next letter. Then we went up and changed and pretty much the rest of the day we can do whatever we want in p-day clothes until 7 and then we have another devotional! They have games going on all day like PING PONG (yes i freaked when i found out), gym is open all day so bball and volleyball all day if we want to. Paper air plane contests, they are showing the otherside of heaven too which is SWEET. I'll probably go watch that after this :) Oh mom so i busted out the fruit leather yesterday and shared everyone LOVED it. Especially Irmão Victor, he's obsessed with it hahaha. I loved getting a letter finally in my box from you!!! I havn't gotten a letter from anyone in 3 weeks....haha. Poopy! I got bunches in Provo! Oh welllllllllll. Mom could you send me Invictus poem and The poem about the road not taken by Robert Frost? those are my favorite poems and I want to add them to the book. We had a testimony meeting with just our District on Christmas Eve too. I think that may be probably one of the strongest places I've ever felt the spirit. I think It's because I love my district. Alll of them. WE ALL make each other laugh so much! I could be best friends with any of them! It's awesome haha! Well i gotta run. MOM AND DAD: Your Christmas present is taped under the Piano, Merry Christmas :) love and miss you all soooooo much! Thanks again for the stuff. Best Christmas ever....in a different way :) Its equal to the best lets just say :) Tchau Tchau!!!

Wrecks and Waterfalls

Hey Family!
So. This week has been pretty darn good.  Erica sang in the tuesday Devotional with Sister Caldwell, they did wayyyyyyyyyy good!  I don't exactly remember what song it was, but a bunch of people were talking about how awesome it was.  Because it WAS awesome.  Oh, I got New Roommates!!  WHOOP!  One is from Brazil & one is from Argentina.  They are way cool & seem pretty nice!  It's good though, they have been helping a little bit with the language.  The Brazillian had THE thickest accent EVER & talks sooooo fast.  He's pretty hard to understand and the kid from Argentina is nice.  He is 5 foot nothing though.  My shoes are literally twice his size haha!  I heard about the Connecticut shootings.  Sad.  We had a good talk about that kind of stuff in our district so that was good too.  Elder Wilson got a fever of 102 earlier in the week, that was pretty exciting......sad.........but exciting haha.  He felt better the next day though.  My teachers are Iramo Ramalio & Irmao Victor.  Ramalio is a shyer guy but we make him laugh  a lot.  He knows a crapload of stuff about English/Portugese structure.  I've learned more about English here in a month that I did in all 3 years of highschool!  Sad but true.  We all really like Piamalio though.  He's a good teacher.  Irmao Victor is...wierd!  I can't decide if I like him or not.  We all agreed he made the worst first impression ever but after that he's actualy pretty funny.  Like the other day he told us the story about how he lost his license.  He said he was driving on the freeway (drivers here are INSANE by the way) & he saw in his rear view a guy swerving all over the road, obviously drunk.  So Irmao Victor said, "I'm going to save people today."  He slowed down until the drunk driver came next to him & he slammed his car into the driver so he rammed into the side wall & stopped.  The police came & the guy was drunk.  But they caught Victor on camera doing it so they took away his license!  See, like I said Crazy?  Or Funny?  We're still deciding.  Both our teachers were bragging about going to se the Hobbit on Friday & how it was the best movie they've ever seen.  Oddly enough, I don't really care!  Yay!  I thought I would at first but nope!  Erica's teacher, Irmao Costa is the BOMB.  One of the nicest people in the world!  Really though.  We both love him.  He's way spiritual & SO nice.  Erica & Sister Caldwell get along really great it seems like.  This week Sao Paulo's team from Corinthians beat Chelsea in a massive tournament, world tournament in Japan.  Fireworks went off non stop for 2 days.  Starting at 6:02 a.m. on Sunday!  It was crazy.  We saw a car out our window with like 12 people in it & Corinth flags just hanging out their windows.  It sounded like a war outside, b/c the fireworks are just loud bangs.  Soooo we'd have fake gun battles all day here haha.  I can't wait to actually teach real investigators.  I feel like I would learn the language 10x faster in the field.  I'm crazy jealous of all the Elders going out when their MTC time is shortened!  Ok so as you know we don't get to call on Christmas, BUT we email.  All of us.  Our district is scheduled for the afternoon.  So look for it then.  I said bye to Erica last night :(.  She left at 4:30 a.m.  It was pretty....darn rough.  I'm really missing everyone.  It all kind of came down on me how much I miss everyone haha!  Anyways!  Before I get all choked up, I talked to an Elder from Manaus down the hall & asked him what his favorite part about Manaus is.  he paused & said "The Waterfalls!"  I was surprised!  I didn't even know they had any there!  Whoop!  Waterfall baptism! Haha.  The weather here is AWESOME!  Has been around 80 all week & rains every other day here & I do so love the rain! :)  Still studying charity this week.  I'm loving it.  It's crazy how deep you can get on one topic.  I'll probably just study it for the rest of my mission!  The Christmas program sounds pretty GOOD here!  I'll tell you more about that next week.  on Christmas day..... when I email you :)  Tchau!  That's all I have to write, gotta run errands.  Love my family!
Love Always
Elder Green

MTC, CTM pictures!

We are HERE We are HERE!

Oi Everybody!

Helllllllooooo my family! So I just got on my flight to Sao Paulo!!
Alright so I'm going to tell you a lil about my stay at the MTC. First the Elders (well some of them) in my district, Elder McIntosh was my first comp. He's a really nice guy. Very smart kid. He's picking up the lingua pretty quickly. We joke around a bunch on our little bit of free time and get along great.  I was in a trio with Elder Wilson as our third companion. He's from Virginia, but if he'd lived in UT, I'm pretty sure would would have been best friends. He's so funny & me & him & Elder McIntosh get along pretty well, really well actually.Wierd. Anyhows! Elder Perry is from Freemont & Elder Carrol is from Atlanta.....yes where we are flying out of right now. Elder Carrol is just a crazy kid, always laughing, Elder Perry laughs a lot too. Elder Jones is from UT, he's a redheaded big guy in my pics. He's one of those rare people that like never stops smiling. Ya know what I mean? Like you just think how is it even possible for anyone to be that gosh darn nice?! He's one of those people. It's just like C'mon, yell at me!!, when you say something rude. His comp is Elder Frogly who ran track for UT state. He's like the fashion expert of the group b/c he lived in Italy when he was younger but goes back there a lot. Elder Yorgenson lived in Idaho Falls & went to BYU-I .  He's like a big jolly ol' boy. He always cracks random jokes & has this awesome really distinct laugh. haha It's pretty DANG awesome. His comp, Elder Witt is the guy in the group that slaps us back into line when we joke around too much. He teaches great lessons. So me, Elder Perry, Elder McIntosh & Elder Witt are all going to Manaus! So yeah, me & all the guys in my (previous now) district are really close friends. We all FLIPPED OUT, when we found out that we would be flying together. It was pretty funny. Alright so I'll just tell you about some stories & what not I guess! I'll just go in order of how I wrote them down in my little notebook. Elder White, who's first name I don't know was at Provo MTC. He was a Guard for North Carolina, played in the March Madness last year, etc. etc. VERY good player. He stopped his career to come & go on a mission! He bore his testimony to the whole MTC in one of the Sunday devotionals. That was pretty cool.
 So Elder Wilson tells these cat stories here about how his uncle would kill them. I'd tell you one, but some are too gruesome to tell.....haha. So his uncle, he claims is "sane" but I don't buy it. He has some good red neck stories being from Virginia!  Oh! I saw Nathan Stucki, Chrystian Fyffe (spelling) here! So that was pretty durn awesome. Got a pic with both of them. Mom you will be very proud to know that my very last dinner for 2 years on American soil was Pei Wei in the Atlanta airport. It reminded me of HOME!!! MTC life schedule was pretty long. Lots of class time & the classes would be really warm & you just run your mind CRAZY hard all week/all day long. I never fall asleep for more than 2 minutes, i'm proud to say :) But one day I was extra tired & was writing some words. BOY OH BOY, that was fun. I'd fall asleep in the middle of a word then wake up & finish it. OH! By the way. On the flight to Atlanta I sat next to a lady from Mexico, a city near Cancun. We started talking & I ended up teaching her the 1st & 2nd lessons. THAT WAS PRETTY AWESOME. She took the Book of Mormon I gave her & read from it the rest of the flight. SUCH a good lady. She was Catholic & had a husband & 3 kids. She was probably around 40. She said she had seen a few missionaries around her town & wanted to find them when she got back to Mexico. She has a billion questions, but thankfully I could answer them all. They were mostly about a Prophet, how a new one is called, families being sealed, Baptism, work for the dead in the temple, etc. etc. Haha but her first quesiton was, of course, can you guess it? Polygamy! Once I explained it she understood & we moved on quickly through! I hope she finds some missionaries. I offered to find some to send when I get to the MTC but she said she knew where we met for church....Lets hope!! MTC was crazy spiritual. I learned SO MUCH!! That's what it's there for I guess. Feels wierd leaving Utah now though. I finally feel like I'm GONE! It's pretty amazing how many Elders just beligerrantly break the rules there though. Like they aren't rules, just some suggestions. STUPID. Like a certain Elder in front of me is listening to some music off the little T.V.'s in front of us with head phones. Naughty Naughty boy! I had to tell him earlier not to watch the T.V. haha it's just kinda comical! Maybe he'll figure it out along w/a bunch of other Elders here. For those going on a mission reading this, BE OBEDIENT!!!!!! If you're not sure you're breaking a rule, then jus don't do it. You cna literally tell a difference between the obedient ones & disobedient ones really well. The obedient Elders teach very articulatly & smoothly. They are more focused & speak better in every way! The disobedient ones freeze, go off track & say 1/8 of what their comp does. True story. And Blaine you were right that you can tell which sisters are good & which sisters came for the wrong reasons. There's no middle ground with them. The ones who came for the right reasons are AWESOME! We had some amazing sisters (2 of them) in our branch. They really brought a special spirit & strengthened the Elders they were around a bunch. Sister Warburton, from England, and Sister Loftgreen from Utah! They're going to rock it in Portugal, & African missionaries, going to Portugese speaking on Africa....Cape Verde, Mozambique I think. I officially missed my first movie today. Like I really wanted to watch it, O Brother Where Art Thou? I don't know why....besides that movie is stupendously amazing. Besides that I don't miss facebook, or my phone, at all...which was a surprise! But I can't wait to listen to some Mo-Tab at Brazil's CTM. You can't listen to music in Provo's :( Kristin, I miss Anya soooooooo much! I miss you all soooo much! I LOVE MY FAMILY! Mom, by the way, your famous for all the food you sent among the Elders. HAHAHA You should have seen some of their faces when I walked out of the package room with a suitcase. THAT was funny (fyi we sent a suitcase for Erica with stuff for her, and both of their christmas presents, not full of food :)) Jani! Thanks for the Letters!! I hope you find a new better job :)

I'm pretty durn tired. Hmmm..........what else....Friends who are going foreign speaking on their missions, STUDY STUDY STUDY your language!! I studied a lot before I cmae & am so happy I did. It takes off so much stress & you have more confidence when you are teaching the lessons. I can't say it enough, STUDY. Trust me, you won't regret it. There are A lot of Eder's here who were overwhelmed with it. They were really down for a while, SO STUDY!!!!! Also Preach My Gospel. It's an amazing book for missionaries. I've really grown a testimony of that. So make sure that's a priority as well. Gram: SUPER worried about you. Please oh please get better! I carry around one of Papa's hankerchiefs with me everywhere, to wipe my sweat! I like to imagine he's wiping my brow & saying "get up, get going!" So thanks for those :) Big fat ol' THANK YOU to all my supportive family in general. And those friends who are writing me now!! You know who you are. I re-read most of my letters every night before I got o bed. They mean a whole lot. Soooooooo what's going on with planet earth? Anyone important die lately haha? Trump prove Obama's a terrorist yet? Kudos to him for trying....but he's an idiot. Well that's all I got, Love Y'all and miss EVERYONE!! Tchau!

Elder Green