Cambe October 18, 2010

October 18, 2010
Hello Mother!
It’s so very good to hear from you again. This week has been really crazy what with changing countries and all of that, but it’s all good. Things are great! Tell Camille Happy Birthday! I’m glad you’re still having fun and stuff with the family. How are Abby and Dallin? How are the Grandmas and Grandpa doing? That’s way cool that you got to go to the opera at BYU. The DeJong is a sweet place to watch anything and I’ve never seen the magic flute, but the music is good. The DeJong concert hall has way good acoustics there. I do miss music... we are reduced here to one pair of really bad speakers and the EFY/motab that my companion has. Speaking about being here and such.... Holy cow I am in Brazil! It’s seems really crazy, but I am doing really well and having fun and a great time. So, I got to talk to you in the airport in Dallas, but in Brazil we could not figure out how to make the phones work. We needed a country code or something and everything was in Portuguese and we just kind of gave up. I actually met up with two missionaries that I knew in the MTC going to Londrina right after I got off the phone with you. They had been serving in Texas for 2 weeks and we met up and all went down together. It was sure an adventure. In Sao Paulo for some reason they wouldn’t let Elder Angerbauer check his luggage and it was a nightmare trying to figure out the problem because nobody spoke English and I don’t really know any airport words, but The Lord blessed us and somehow we got the problem resolved and headed to Londrina. No, we didn’t get to see any of the other places because we couldn’t leave security and we never even got off the airplane in Curitiba. I tried to sleep on the plane, but it was really hard and mostly I just stared at the seat in front of me. When we arrived in Londrina the President and the Assistants were there waiting for us and we went to the mission home. Londrina is a beautiful city and the mission home was waaaay sweet; especially after our dumpy apartment in Omaha. I got to sleep in the bed that Elder Scott slept in when he visited our mission. They fed us real good too and the next morning we got some training on the mission and got our papers in order and then we got to meet our new companion! My new companion is named Elder De Souza and he is from Fortaleza, Brazil. He has been out 10 months and it is really great to have somebody who speaks and knows his way around! Otherwise I would be totally lost. He is a great missionary and although we don’t always understand each other we are starting to work together well and I am very excited. Our area is called Cambe. It is a city off to the side of Londrina of probably about 500,000. This area had been closed for a while and so we are opening it up again. The work is a little bit slow just because we don’t know anybody here, but things are picking up and I am very excited. We have one young man named Guiliarne who was with missionaries before and we found him again and now he will be baptized next Saturday! We also have several other families here that have great potential in the coming weeks. Brazil is very different. I like the food though. I haven’t got sick yet. We just can’t drink any water other than bottled which is super annoying, but oh well. The cars and roads and insane and I’m super glad we don’t have to drive! There are also just tons of stray dogs everywhere. Hmm… interesting. The people are really nice here too. It’s funny because in the US people get really touchy about religion and close up when you talk to them. Here, when they are not interested they get really animated and at first I thought they were mad, but right after they just talk to you like an old friend! Ha! The language is a bit difficult and I don’t really understand everything, but when we are talking about the gospel and such I actually understand quite well, probably because that what I’ve practiced. I’m learning other stuff too and I hope in a couple weeks I’ll be speaking better. Elder De Souza and I talk together pretty well and I’m teaching him English. Well, I had better finish soon. Please write back with any perguntas that you might have!
Elder Markham