The Amazonian

Dear Family,

This past week has been a pretty long week. We got two more Brazilians as roommates and these guys are a lot different than the last ones. One of them is from a small town somewhere in the amazon (its really hard to communicate with him because his Portuguese is a little different). It has been interesting to room with him because I've started to realize a lot of the little things that we take for granted in the U.S.. When he first got here he didn't know how to use a clothes hanger to hang up his coat. From what I can see he wears the same clothes every day. His jacket is way to big for him and I suspect that one of the missionaries who baptized him gave it to him. For the first two nights he slept in the white shirt and slacks. Also him and the other Brazilian don't seem to sleep very much at all. They always go to sleep after the rest of us and are usually completely ready for the day before us Americans even wake up! It's been an interesting experience and I hope I can get to know him a little better. He's a really friendly guy and seems excited to be a missionary but as I said it's really hard to communicate with him. In other news, my companion accidently broke the TV in our classroom this week with a piece of candy. He had to interview with President Dane but once President Dane found out it was an accident he wasn't too mad at all. I had to speak in church this Sunday, the topic was "Laws and Ordinances" and I was actually really happy to be asked to speak because after out 5th week all of our talks are supposed to be in Portuguese. The talk went decently well. Last night for devotional we got to watch President Monson's birthday celebration on DVD. I was kind of dissapointed because they edited it. Aparently some of the songs that the Mormon Tabernacle choir sang for the celebration were from Phantom of the Opera and other broadway musicals and they didn't think it would be appropriate for missionaries to listen to haha. This morning we went to the Campinas Temple again so that was a good experience. So Lauren are you going to visit any other schools or do you think BYU is where you'll go? How about you Ben did you like BYU? Mom we accidently got mixed up with Jehovah's Witnesses because our investigator was talking really fast in Portuguese and we accidently said yes whenever he asked us if we were JW's haha. Yesterday Elder Jensen was trying to tell our investigator that if he would keep the Word of Wisdom he would be closer to God but he accidently mixed up the word "perto (close)" with "preto (black)" haha so he accidently told him that he would be more black with God haha. Luckily we caught that mistake. My weight is holding up fine. I lost a couple pounds when I first got here but I think I've gained them back plus a couple extra. I wasn't a big fan of beans when I got here but now after eating them every day for over a month they're pretty good. I like the black beans more than the brown ones but they usually serve us the brown ones here at the CTM.

I've got to go!

Love,

Elder Caleb Anderson