he is finally in brazil! 10- 17-2011

The keyboards here are a little different so i apoligize if i dont type very good! Well i´m finally in brasil! woo! man is it different here! when we first arrived President Souza did interviews and all that jazz, and to determine who our companions would be, and i think that he thought that my portuguese was the best, so i got a brazilian companion that doesnt speak engish at all, while the other 2 got american companions, so it has been difficult, but it will probably help me learn faster. He is really cool though, and we get along great. the area that i´m in is in the city of fortaleza, but probably the poorest part, so i´ll try to explain what it is like here a little, so we live in a little apartment on the second floor of this building. its really weird because all of the houses here a just like attached, meaning there is no space inbetween them, and they dont have like shopping centers or anything, so the shops are in between houses and stuff. in our apartment we have a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a place to do laundry. in the bathroom there is just a toilet, shower, and sink, but the shower is just out in the middle, so after i take a shower i have to sweep the water into the drain, oh and they only have cold showers here, so i wont have a warm shower for 2 years ha, its all good though, it is so hot that i wouldnt take a warm one anyway. the water here is too unsafe to drink out of the tap, so we have to go out and buy tanks of clean water. oh and the dont really have indoor plumbing or any real system for getting rid of ´bathroom business´ so when we are walking around outside there is poop just floating down the street, and at one part that we walk by there is like a huge lake of crap and stuff, it smells SO BAD! oh and another think is they dont really have trash cans here so everyone just throws trash on the ground, so trash is everywhere ha. we have to walk everywhere, so i get super sweaty ha, and everyone stares at me because of how white i am, so thats fun. but none the less i like it here, once i can understand what people are saying it will be good. i dont think they have a school for kids here so they are always just running around, people here wake up and are outside in the streets at like 7 in the morning, cause it is all bright and stuff by then. the language is really hard to understand and speak here, but i´m getting better, hopefully in a few weeks i´ll be able to understand. my first day here i tryed teaching part of the first lesson to a guy in portuguese, i think he understood ha. their is a family here that we always stop by and say hi to, they are really cool and are trying to help me with portuguese. they are always making us eat though, everytime we go there we have to eat a big meal. its weird cause we pretty much just eat one time a day, at lunch time, but i´m never hungry, i still feel like i´m getting fat though ha. the church here is really nice, probably the nicest building in our area, and it is airconditioned, so its like my favorite place here ha. its like 2 miles away though so yesterday for church we had to walk there and back twice, cause we have 2 wards that we have to go to, so each time i got really really sweating, probably not the best first inmpression but oh well haha, everyone is sweaty here. oh and yesterday we were walking home from church to our lunch appointment, but we had some time so we stopped by that families house, and of course they made us a huge meal, which made me full, then right after we had to walk over to our lunch appointment and eat again, i almost threw up haha, the people here are super nice though, they love missionaries. one thing that i think is cool here and people are very up front about stuff, like when we teach lessons we are pretty much just like hey you need to do this, and so they do it. oh and they love american music here, like justin bieber and stuff, so thats like all they listen to, but they dont know what it is saying haha. oh and for washing clothes here they just have a washing maching and then they hangdry everything, so that is fun. i really just need to send pictures so that you guys can understand. well anyways i think that is it for now, this week we are going to another church to preach to like 50 people, so that should be cool, and we´ll probably have 2 baptisms this week, so should be a good week! till next time!

he is in south dakota!

So i've only got like a half an hour to email right now because I dont have a library card yet cause i need to get a letter that confirms my address, so i gotta make this fast ha. Well lets start with leaving the mtc. So I woke up at like 5 in the morning so that i could get all ready and go the the travel office. We were on the road by about 6 headed to the airport, it was so weird finally getting out of the mtc and seeing the world again. When i got to the airport it was weird not being surrounded by other missionaries. We had like 2 hours till our flight so i got to call home and talk to family, which was really cool. The i pretty much just sat around until it was time to board the plane. A lot of people were coming up to me and asking me where i served my mission, and i was like oh i'm just going out to the field right now, i guess i look old enough to have already served a mission, guess thats what 2 months in the mtc will do to you haha. The plane that we took to Rapid Springs was the smallest plane i've ever been on, we had to like go outside and walk up stairs to get on, and i swear it only held like 30 people. Plus i sat next to a family from France so i couldnt understand them at all haha. When we landed at the airport in Rapid City i was really suprised because it seriously just looked like a huge field with a little building in the middle of it. There were only 2 baggage claim stations, and there were probably like a total of 300 people in the whole airport. We were greeted by President Layton, and the AP's, then we headed off to the mission office, where i met like 6 other Elders from the area, and met the elder's who i was gonna be with. Originally President Layton told me that i would be in Rapid City till tuesday, then i would go down with the zone leaders to wyoming. So after we had lunch i headed out with Elder Kocherhans and hopped on a bike and started doin some missionary work. We went to downtown and did a little street contacting, we met this guy named Swag, he pretty much told us his like story about how he gets money from the government because he was dropped on his head when he was 4 and how he used to smoke weed and stuff, he was kind of off, but we taught him the restoration, i gave the first vision part and the book of mormon, it was pretty cool because i didnt expect to be teaching that soon! but i think that i did alright. Swag wasnt in our area though so we gave his info to the other missionaries. After that we went to another part of town to make appointments with some investigators, a lot of people here are pretty poor, so a lot dont have cell phones, or house phones, so the only way we can contact them is by biking all the way to their house. Another cool thing about Rapid City is that it is like 50% Native Americans, they are pretty crazy,and i swear everyone here is drunk by like 10 in the morning, but the people here are the nicest people i've ever met, and they are so simple, they all dont really have anything in terms of like money and stuff, but they make do and seem pretty happy. My second day i had a little orientation thing and president Layton told me that instead of going to Wyoming i would be staying here with Elder Kocherhans and Elder Cooper, and they would be my trainers, witch i was really excited about because these guys are awesome and we're pretty close already. All the other elders are really cool here too, the only bad thing about staying here though is that our companionship is the only one in Rapid City that doesnt have a truck, we're all biking, luckily the weather has been pretty good still, like in the 80's everyday, i've heard it could change any day though and be like 50 degrees ha. I dont have like any time to tell more stories this time, but things are goin great, i love South Dakota so much, its true what they say that it doesnt matter which mission you go to because you love it either way. Plus the field is like 100 times better than the mtc ha. Well anyways here is my address for while i'm in South Dakota:


Elder CJ Powers
2525 West Main #311
Rapid City, SD 57702


make sure every thing that is sent is through the post office, because they can forward mail or packages for free that way.


well i'll write more next time!