He made it to Brazil!

9-23-13

mother.

i apologize ahead of time. almost nothing except important stuff will have caps or quote marks or apostrophes. this is a portuguese keyboard!! legal não é?? cool isnt it?

How was your flight? good, only got about 3 or 4 hours of sleep but thats the past. im good now. i actually was talking with people before boarding and who sat next to me in portuguese! it was pretty cool. no baptism commitments from it though. 

Did you have any trouble connecting with the right people when you arrived? no. i didnt. a lady who was holding a sign called me over. shes actually not a member of the church, just works for a company that has a contract with the church.

Did you need to exchange any money? i did, i did so. ive used it since, its been very handy.

What did you do each day? wow that would take forever to recount. ill do that after the other questions

What is the biggest surprise to you??  What didn’t you expect? umm.....boa pergunta. good question. im not sure. someone else asked me the same thing here and i told them what im going to tell you. i didnt really have any expectations when i came here. i hadnt really thought much about it before. when i got here though and i saw that everyone has a gate facing the street to access their house, that was a bit surprising. also when i saw the floors inside the house that are basically just uneven stone surface...and then the 50inch tv and ipad. also a bit surprising, though ive heard of this before and was kind of expecting it.

How is the food? the food is way good!!! im also happy i dont  have to use my water filters. the water here in sao paulo isnt that bad and ive just been drinking it straight. so far 0 side effects. yay! lots of rice and beans as expected but thats way good too. and also parofa which is like a seasoned flour kinda thing. it comes with a lot of meals and is a nice additive! the meat ive had has been good. the guaraná is awesome. its a drink. ive had it once before in the states at BYU with elder scott crawford. hes serving stateside right now but we both got our calls the same day at byu and he left the mtc only a week before me.

How are you sleeping? i thought sleep would come harder because our casa is right next to the main street and cars here are very very very loud. lack of mufflers and lots of people who like to drive fast and accelerate fast and people who have probably 4 foot by 4 foot of speakers on their roofs blasting music as loud as they can....yeah i thought id have a hard time sleeping but 2 things. 1, i think i was absolutely exhausted the first night. and 2, i told myself to think of it like a soothing song i think...or a lullaby or something. whatever i did it worked. and i havent had a problem with it since.

Tell me about your companion? Elder Steele is his name!! hes a way cool guy and weve started to get closer these last 2 days than previous. im sending pictures later. hes fluent in portuguese, been out about 1 year 5 months. american. very helpful. a bit quirky. nothing bad or annoying just i can see him having been a bit weird pre mission. way cool guy though.

How was church yesterday? was surprising! honestly very similar to an american ward. we had about 80 or so members there. started with sacrament meeting, then sunday school, then priesthood. i laughed a little when i passed by the young womans meeting room and they were setting up a white table cloth and some flowers. oh women haha. way cool though! some people came up to us and welcomed both of us. pretty much everyone was excited to see us. were both opening the area. but not really. what that means is just that were both new to the area.

Is the language harder in country than in the MTC?? are you kidding me? definitely....its ridiculous. im picking it up though. sunday was an amazing day for me. i understood a lot of what everyone said and if i didnt understand i was able to recognize the word i didnt understand, and find it in the dictionary. if people talk slow enough i can hear and understand pretty much anyone. the challenge is when the speed up, slur the words, and use jiria which just means slang.

as for the rest of your letter. all ill say is thats all awesome and im happy for all of you when appropriate and im sad for all of you when appropriate. i have a lot to tell you if you want to hear about brasil :D

im going to go ahead and send this and then some pictures and then tell more about brasil.

lots o love!

Elder Horton 

okay so got here tuesday. we didnt actually get to our casa until very late...wanna say like 9. an awesome sister named hosana showed us where we lived. shes been very nice and helped us out once or twice. we have to do 2 locks to get to our casa. one for the outside portão, basically big door, or in this case, gate. and then the door to inside. the last elders actually left a small mess across the house...which ive since cleaned up!!! i like cleanliness and the Lord delights in cleanliness. lets seeee. we have a washer, no dryer. we have a toilet but we cant flush the tp, we have a little garbage can for that. the shower is in the same room as the toilet. no curtain just continuous floor and a squeegee for when youre done to get the water down the drain. we do have hot water. the bed is NOT long enough. but thats okay i will survive. we need a study table. were supposed to have one but dont. weve been studying on our beds. lately its been 85 degres in our room when were going to sleep. and summer is JUST starting. january will be fun. the humidity here though is pretty much the same as SC. very little difference if any at all. i havent actually had a huge problem with the heat here. it hasnt been too too hot initially but even when its been hotter and i was sweating, i was thought it would suck more in church clothes but its not that bad really. ive had one blister already on my right foot toe next to the pinky toe but i popped it and dont feel it anymore. pain is just weakness leaving the body anyways. um yes everyone speaks portuguese here. when i first got here it was maybe id catch a word or 2 here or there but as ive been here a week now and know a lot more of vocab and the jiria, slang, and how they talk, id say on average i hear and understand about 60%. soemtimes 0 percent. sometimes 100%. elder steele has been a way good example to me on what a missionary should do and how one should react in different situations. i have nothing bad to say about elder steele, only good things. i dont know his first name..but im planning on having him write it down in the designated section in my journal before we separate in about 11 weeks now. thanks for that journal mom very handy.

dont have anything in my planner for monday or tuesday which im using to remember what happened. i dont have anything on monday or tuesday other than match calculations :) i do love math. celsius to farenhet and meters to feet. here, people dont ask how many feet i have. they ask meters. so i figured it out!! the answer is basically 2 meters excatly plus or minus a couple hundredths. its a common thing for people to comment on my height like they did in the US and then ask voce joga basquete?? do you play basketball?? not much has changed. also a lot of times theyll ask where im from. theyll also sometimes ask if elder steele and i are brothers haha.

quarta feira, wednesday, we had a zone meeting that was cool. one of the missionaries from brasil had a guitar and he brought it!!! i played it for about...2 minutes because we were leaving soon but that was way good!! i havent forgotten how to play yet! since we didnt know the area yet, the rest of the day we spent getting to know the area and doing street contacts. i basically mostly just observed the first day or 2 and through in a  tchau or a bom dia here and there.

Shoot im running out of time haha. we have 5 people that well be focusing on this week. we have a goal this week of having 5 people with baptismal dates which I know we can do. Irmao Belchior said, an example is proof that something is possible. With that being said. Moses parted the Red Sea. Ammon converted whole cities of Lamanites who hated his guts initially. Others also had many many fruits of success. I can too. Phil 4:13. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me! Alma 26:29 And we have entered into their houses and taught them, and we have taught them in their streets; yea, and we have taught them upon their hills; and we have also entered into their temples and their synagogues and taught them; and we have been cast out, and mocked, and spit upon, and smote upon our cheeks; and we have been stoned, and taken and bound with strong cords, and cast into prison; and through the power and wisdom of God we have been delivered again. Id be willing to go through all that if it meant that  could be a greater part in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man and bringing Gods children to Him again. I love this work. I will write more next week.

I love all of you!!!

Elder Horton

I got a bit more time because my companion wanted to get back on as well. My area is called Vista Verde. We have a nice chapel in this area, you could probably find it and my area if you went to LDS.org.

Also Elder Steele today helped me make my carteira from pass along cards. my wallet. and i modified it so it had 2 pockets instead of only 1. More efficient that way

Every day theres a ward member assigned to feed us. its way nice and way cool that we get to do that. im super thankful to the members for taking us in and feeding us and I ask God to bless them for their willigness to help the missionaries out because I know its not always easy. And I know that they Are blessed. Its been cool being inside the houses of the members. Yesterday, Domingo, Sunday, we were in the house of a member for lunch and there were 2 nonmembers there as well as 2 less actives and its great because we taught them the first lesson and I pretty much know one of them is going to be baptized because the way she recieved the lesson. unfortunately, shes not in our area...so we passed on her information but the cool thing is is that the missionary whos area she is in, trained my companion so Im sure he will do good. The other girl there will require some more work but shes in our area and her boyfriend is a member so I think we can help her come unto Christ and be baptized.

Times almost up, The other 2 less actives, they actually lived in SC for a time!! which was cool. they both speak english and portuguese and spanish. anways were going to reactivate them too and help them find the answers theyre looking for. out of time! love you all!