Ants all over the door

Dec. 23, 2014

View of Fortaleza from mission home

Oiii I hope you’re not sick... so to answer your question I am in... well I don’t exactly know because I can’t really understand much... talking Portuguese here compared to talking at the CTM is like speaking English in America compared to speaking English with a fish haha... so  I think I know how Shane feels... its really hard to understand people.. My companion is pretty much a perfect missionary tho so it's all good... he’s from misnsdfs idk how to spell it but its next to sao paulo.. its like in a volcano so maybe Jackson knows.. maybe its minas gerais.. I’m not sure.. but he’s way good at teaching and he knows English pretty much fluently so he helps me with words I don’t know, but besides that we speak only Portuguese. He’s teaching me alot, but it’s still really hard.

     Our apartment isn’t super nice, but its not bad. There’s only 2 or so bats that live in our bathroom so it could be worse haha. The one night that we came home.. we walked into our room and there were ants just all over the door.. probably about 50.. so I looked at my companion and asked him if that’s normal in Brasil.. I guess it’s not, so that’s a relief haha, so then we looked at the other side of the door and there was a hole like the size of a baseball and just piles of ants crawling out.. so you know I was kinda bothered by the ant farm living in our door, but I figured I’d just get out some bug spray and spray around the edges of my bed and it would all be good cuz my beds like 8 feet away from the door so it would be fine... but then I looked up and there was like 30 of these gigantic mega ants flying around the light in our room.. these things were like each bigger than an inch.. and apparently ants here in Brasil have wings haha.. so we ended up moving our beds to another part of the apartment where there are less ants haha.. 

So my area is pretty small.. like I walk from one side to the other and it feels like I’m walking across Poplar Forest. Our ward is way strong tho.. I think there’s like 150 people?.. Church was rough tho... even my Brazillian companion leaned over to me during one of the classes and said he couldn’t understand their accent very well...so ya after 3 hours of focusing to try and understand you get pretty tired haha but the ward is way strong so it’s all good... I’ll figure out how to speak eventually... there was a ward activity the other day and there was like a good 70 people there it was cool and like 30 youth... I was playing basketball with them, it was a good time.. people here are pretty bad at basketball haha but I guess most people in America are pretty bad at soccer. O and no I don’t have a hammock, that would be pretty sweet tho.. most the houses we visit have one hanging in front of their TV but we don’t have one... maybe I’ll buy one eventually.. kinda difficult right now tho because I ran out of money haha I have like 75 real... and some boot money but that’s American haha and in this part of the state they don’t even take cards let alone american money... but the bright side is every day for lunch we get fed piles of food for lunch.. they just tell me to keep eating haha. I think it might be becuase they want to say something to me and they think that’s about all I can understand in their accent... which is probably true. So one of the members here sent you a message on facebook yesterday for me about using skype today... cuz I guess we can’t on Christmas.. but I guess you didn’t get the message.. but it’s all good because no one here has microphones... we checked like every lan house haha so I guess we’re going to be calling our families instead.. so I’ll tell you tomorrow when it’ll will be, but it’ll be Christmas I know that..  but I'll email you tomorrow more about it so make sure you check you email/facebook . Enjoy Christmas! I’ll talk to you guys soon! 

Love, Elder Udy