Week 3 - February 24, 2017

President & Sister Grahl
with the missionaries that arrived in Brazil this week

So I am now at the Brazil MTC- which is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It's a lot newer than the Provo one, but much smaller too. It's just one building with seven floors and with a garden courtyard thing in the middle, and there's only about 80 missionaries here. Most of those are native Brazilians- there are only two English-speaking districts and maybe one or two Spanish speaking ones- but that just makes it so much cooler. 

Brazil MTC
(stock photo)

All of the Brazilians are so, so friendly and very patient with all of the Americans' broken Portuguese. We get to go on splits with a Brazilian companion every other day for about half of the day; I haven't yet because I just got here, but I'm really looking forward to it. My companion, Sister Pertab (who was my companion in the Provo MTC before she got her visa), and I- in addition to the same roommates we have in Provo- also have two Brazilian roommates who are just the sweetest people ever and are so helpful with learning the language. One is serving in Uruguay and one in Argentina, so they're having to learn Spanish, which means we are all just kind of struggling together.

Brazil MTC courtyard
(stock photo)

 We went to the temple this morning- it was about an hour away- and it was crazy beautiful. We also get to go walk around Sao Paulo a little bit later today, which I am SO excited for. Tomorrow, we're heading to this busy street that's apparently always crowded with people and within a few hours we're supposed to hand out 6 Books of Mormon per companionship to random people on the street. I'm really excited for that too, though, actually. Even though I am sure my Portuguese will get laughed at and probably no one will be able to understand me, I've heard that it's fairly easy to give them away once you find the right people and it'll be great practice for actual missionary work.

courtyard from above
(stock photo)

The food here is super, super good. They have these amazing rolls with cheese that you can put in a panini press every morning. I can't tell what half the fruit is but it all tastes fresher than fruit in the US. There is meat and rice and beans with absolutely every meal, but it all tastes great. They also come around and give us juice and muffins and sometimes chocolate at about 8:30 every night as a little night-time snack (they call it lanche).

Sau Paulo Brazil Temple
(stock photo)

Anyway, everything is great. Portuguese is still hard. They only give us 45 minutes to email here instead of an hour, which is kinda frustrating. Brazil is hot and humid but crazy beautiful. Love and miss you all!!

Todos o amor,

Sister Coleman