Letter #5

So... Irmão Veras took us to a Brazilian barbeque today. Wow. I don't think that I've ever: A. Eaten so many things that I didn't know what they were or B. Eaten so much meat in one meal. Absolutely ridiculous. Ready to sleep now. Uhh so first I suppose the news I forgot last week:

1. So every Sunday and Tuesday we have a devotional type thingy, and we sing a song as a "choir". Everyone is in the choir... so really they shouldn't bother saying choir. But yeah last week was interesting. You know Battle Hymn of the Republic? Neat song and all, but in Portuguese? Really? Tongue was tied for a while there.

and 2. Every Sunday we also sing the Hino National... Please look it up on line, then you might understand the insanity that all the Americans go through every week. So fast

Doubled our Americans last week. We are at the point that last night, when we split up to watch a devotional movie, the Americans stayed in the gym and the Spanish and Portuguese speakers went to other rooms. Plus we get another 69 today. I don't like it.

Our district is now at 10, with another sister coming today apparently. We are also getting a new district for our week with at least 6 people in it. Weird.

Do you want me to send any tangible pictures, or the computer copies from Sister Bushman enough? I can't tell what he sent and what he didn't, and I don't have some of the best ones on my camera, so I will have to pay him for them if you want them.

NEXT EMAIL :P

Sad to hear M&M aren't feeling well, we just got done with our coughs here I think...hope.

Devotional last night was another amazing one from Elder Holland. I just don't understand how one guy can be so amazingly cool every time he talks. Well, yeah I do, but still. So instead of just yelling at us right off the bat like usual, this time he started really soft and sentimental and mushy whatever. Funny though, don't think I have ever notice him be truly funny. Dunno if I said so last week, but my roommate´s old district member´s companion left for home last week. Yeah, would NOT want to talk to Elder Holland about that. If anything was made clear last night, I think it was that you would rather die than tell him that you came home early (or that you came home at the right time and didn't go to church). Yikes.

Oh, I did figure out that basically the only option is to ask the mission president about when or where to go after the mission. You have to take the visa into account too, and I think that is the thing they are most worried about.

Being at the pool is nice, but yeah 4 hours gets excessive quickly. I think I'd rather take the four hours to the current count of 0... Oh and HOW COME WE DIDNT HAVE THAT EXTRA GAME RULE WHEN I WAS AROUND? I would have done all 100 in an hour. Yeah. *cough* I'd try anyway.

Ready to leave? No. Not terrified either though. I should be fine when the time is up. I can kinda sorta get what I want to say, and I know that when I can only speak Portuguese that I will learn waaaay faster, so I'm cool with that. Not looking forward to leaving the district though, they are all great people, even the new ones. My roommate leaves this next week though :( Since he is Spanish speaking before he came in he doesn't stay as long as us. What a bother.

Dunno if I mentioned this last week either: Mail is actually back to normal now. Instead of 2-4 weeks, the letters are getting here in about 5 days for some. However, this just means my companions stay up later... Oh well.

Talk to ya next week!

Week #4 letter

Hello,

Here's this week's update...

YAY MARYN! Nice job of course.

As for temps, it's been weird here. Actually somewhat chillyish in the mornings (compared to normal), but we have a Californian in the district, so the classroom is usually like a sauna :(.

Dunno if you know this yet, but something like 160 visas got through recently, so we got about 30 Americans today and another 40+ coming next week. The rest are going right to the field. We get two new elders and a sister today, brining our district total up to 10, not sure how we are going to all fit in our tiny classroom, but eh I get a window seat now so I don't care if we had 20 people in the room.

Em T's case is sooooooo normal, so I'm not really that surprised. It's more or less what every single person I talked to said, but yeah it comes as a shock at first. Me though? You know I'm broken. As much as I like it at home and as much as I love everyone there, I'm perfectly fine being here. Can't say the same for everyone though.

We got a Brazilian and Uruguayan(?) roommate last week, and apparently the latter got here the same day as us. His old companion left for home just yesterday :(, but mostly people are just obsessive over letter writing and receiving. Horrible waste of time for me, sitting around in the post office waiting for people to finish their 6th or 7th letter, but whatever, I brought something to do this time.

I can make sentences all slow like, so I don't have to just memorize or read, but it's still reaaaally slow. I imagine I'll be fine by the end though.

How does that trip work anyway? Cause am I allowed to do anything at all if you come here? I keep getting reminded of the things you can't do until you are released as a missionary. Dunno, have to see what mission pres says.

Know anything about E. Bresciano (yes I realize it's probably spelled wrong)? Just wondering when or where he is.

Since you left me 4 emails to read, I'll just skip on over to the next one now

Like I thought I said last week, I ran into rick a fair amount, but I don't know anyone else. Anyone I should know here, or coming? But yeah, Americans are doubled today, with more next week. Scary.

Don't need stamps, they don't count for anything here I think, so I just have to go to the PO and pay for it. No big deal.

As for stories, I'm sure there are plenty... But nothing in particular comes to mind, at least not that I can explain in an email. We played a weird mind game, but like I said, won't work in an email.

The mail strike is over apparently, so now they will be working to get back to normality. Whoo...

I’ve been told Brasilia is a Facebook mission? Do believe I've never heard of that. Apparently Elder Cordon's home mission was the first one, and Brasilia is the third. Dunno how that works, but sound weird. Wanna do some research?

Turns out Elder Holland's very close family friend is Brother Alderson. didn't know him well myself, but apparently he knows rick and me. Just now heard that another duckkling is coming. Mike? Hopes me? 

Oh, I guess the major reoccurring jokes usually revolve around funny things that Elder Schmidt says. One such phrase being very famous... "ONLY RICE AND BUTTAH?!?" in awesome German accent of course. He was amazed when that was one of my meals was just rice. Yeah... hehe

Don't be thinking I never eat though. I probably eat more meat and other weird stuff than at home, just my main meal is rice because I actually enjoy it.

Weird food for ya: corn Popsicle. Not going to try it. Terrified

And chocolate banana pizza. Actually somewhat good... Hate their normal pizza, but that one is good.]

Time to go, 30 mins goes by waaay too fast. Wish I could actually remember to say anything meaningful, but that timer gets rid of any interesting stories I had through the week. Maybe I'll write some down beforehand next week.

Bye all

Writing Carl

I have had people ask where they can send a letter for Carl.  Here are very specific instructions.. please address the envelope like this-

Elder Carl Robert Funnell
Box #7 District #38-A Brazil MTC
Brasil Brasilia Mission
Rua Padre Antonio D'Angelo, 121
Casa Verde, Sao Paulo, SP
Brazil 02516-040

Please note that he can't receive any packages while in the MTC, only letters. It takes between 7 days and 3 weeks to get a letter to him in Brazil, so make sure you plan accordingly- he leaves the MTC on November 22nd.

I am sure that he would love to hear from you and has time during the week to write letters, more time that he has to email! Oh and send pictures too if you can.

Weekly update #3

In case these posts sound a little odd, some of his comments are answers to questions I ask him, so it may sound a little lopsided- sorry.  Also, if you would like to send him a message, email it to me and I will forward it to him...

Sounds like letters take 7-12 days to get here... But if you didn't get mine... HA, nearly a month now. There is in fact a mail strike, so when that ends things might be getting a bit faster. Yes I did get your email in time; I just didn't have time to say much in response.

Random news that I forgot last week:

- I got a cold or something and was coughing and barely capable of talking since last Tuesday. Yeah fun. Betterish now though

- Every week we get missionaries from Provo, and in last week's bunch I found Elder Mattheiu and we also got an Elder and Sister Peterson. Neat thing there is that they are actually siblings two years apart, and they went into the MTC at the same time. They are currently companions since there aren't enough sisters for her to have her own. Kinda like what happened with our district the first week.

- I found a major hole in my new suit pants :( But I also taught myself how to sew... so they are whole now :)

Sister White gave an awesome testimony on charity on Sunday. It was about her and her niece trying to have charity after she lost her brother. Neat neat neat story, not going into details though, too long

About temple stuff... That actually may be difficult. I don't remember seeing anything like that, but I will certainly look next week.

Camera solution. Cool, that works. I'll try to fill this puny memory card while I'm here, expecting a new one eventually. And like I said, really don't need much, but our chocolate is waaaaaay better than Brasilian chocolate. Just saying. And German chocolate is better than ours, but we are out of that.

I find it funny that dad is going for stroke and turn, but like you said, he will be good at it when he gets used to the weird rules of swimming. By the way, my withdrawls are starting. Sweating is not fun, and basketball = sweating. Yuck. Swimming sounds soooo nice.

Anything of extra fun or interest? other than what I said? Probably, but not coming to mind in my measly half hour.

As for a normal day, I'll send that in a sec.

And I would note that video games are not GOOD for you, but in moderation they are just fine. Major hint for mission though:

READ THE SCRIPTURES MORE THAN JUST NOW AND THEN BEFORE COMING. Having fully marked up scriptures helps a lot, and remembering all of the references that I don't remember is also pretty handy.

13 mins left... I'll try to send another.

(Round Two!)

Oh, tell Maryn that neither of them is better, because... I AM!!11!11

Just kidding :)

Here's a day:

6ish: get up

7: personal study

8: breakfast

8.30: study and practice (with district, we don't do much companionship only stuff. Only 7 people in the district, so we all work together usually)

9.30: Lab. That means an obnoxious language learning program that doesn't work right. So really lab is BoM reading time, because there is a ridiculously small amount of time to just read and study.

10.45: Gym. Basketball for the next month, then the volleyball court opens again.

12: TRC, or practicing to teach people. Kinda annoying because the other people in oyur district are allowed to speak English, but if our companionship does, we get yelled at. So, I get yelled at. Oh well. I say what I can in Portuguese, but it doesn't work for responding to deep questions or bearing testimony.

1: Lunch

3 hours of class as well as practicing teaching

5: Dinner

3 more hours of class with different teacher

9.15: planning

9.30: Snack. Very cool. Consists of bread and chocolate milk. Sometimes cake or fruit also.

10: In your room

10.30: Lights out.

11.30: Get mad at Brasilian elders wrestling in hall...

That's about it.

you asked for Portuguese:

Que horas sao? what time is it?

Quem oração? Who prayer? (not a sentence, but confusing because both are said exactly the same

Quem vai orar? how you actually say "who will pray?"

Você teve uma boa noite? You had a good night?

Qual Missão? Which mission?

The first tesitmony I bore in purely Portuguese. Really short:

Eu compreendo pouco portuguese... mas eu sei que meu companhiero falou a verdade. I don't understand much Portuguese, but I know my companion spoke the truth. Works well when you companion spoke Spanish before coming here. Spanish and Portuguese are very similar.

Eu declaro que aquele panda é roxo. I declare that that panda is purple.

Meu filho/irmão é um missionario da igreja de Jesus Cristo dos santos dos ultimos dias. Ele está em Brasil.

30 secs... good luck me

Weekly update #2

Here are excerpts from this weeks email...I love Wednesday!

As for the food, I'm perfectly capable of eating most of it, I would simply prefer not to. I have a lot of rice and fruit, and their grape juice is good. Apparently the CTM food isn't anything compared to real Brazilian food, but that's what it's like in the MTC too.

We get to go to the temple every week, so we went again today. Lots of neat stuff in the distribution center, but I don't think I need much of it. Oh well. We are going shopping today, so I will be getting ties (at the request of the other Elders), shorts (because unfortunately it's impossible to go in jeans), and whatever it is that I need that I forgot... I think the camera will work, I just need to figure out the deal with the memory cards. I might go look for some lame memory cards to see if they work, or I might be stuck with one memory card for now. Or, if you can find a memory card that works with my "fossil" and send it that would be cool too.
I think  the leaving date is Nov 22, and everything is done by plane because Brazil is seriously huge.

About packages, we are absolutely not recommended to send anything(except letters) to the MTC, in case I didn't say that before. Packages should go to the mission home, which I believe is in the call packet. If you don't have it I'll get it from one of the other five people in my district going to Brasilia.

I don't know who those missionaries are, but I imagine they are from anywhere that goes to Brazil. 400 is more than we have here, did I say that we only have around 150-200 missionaries in here? Our Northern American count went up to about 30 this week though.

The classes are great, and the teachers are great, but I think we are getting jipped of our study time. We have 6 hours of class every day, 2 hours of study time that we don't really get to pick what to work on, and 1 hour of practicing teaching. I appreciate the fact that practicing is good and all, but we don't have any time to practice for those lessons, or any time to learn the language. Getting there slowly, but I'm sure it will be getting better. The Provo missionaries are saying that they had a better system for the first few weeks, but that the last few weeks will be much better here because we might actually be able to talk to the Brazilian missionaries.

As for words and phrases... its hard to think with that timer looking at me., but here's the most common ones.

Tudo bem!?!

Tudo bem!

Tudo bom

Tudo bem, and whatever combination you can think of. That is the standard greeting and  reply.

Our teacher says "belaza" and "legal" a lot... which is like "beautiful" and "legit".

The phrases that come to mind are things like

Querida Pai Celestial

Eu sou um missionario da igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Ultimos Dias

and... running low on time, ill get some for next week.

Found Elder Mathieu at almoço today. He says no one else will be coming :(, but oh well. The people in the picture are in another district, and are a few weeks ahead, they just flew in on the same day. My companions consist of Elder Bushman and Elder Schmidt, Sister Hass was the only other one in our district until last wednesday. Now we have Elders Holland and Cordon. Speakng of Elder Holland, the apostle one gave an amazing talk at conference during the priesthood session, and we watched a neat devotional from him as well this last tuesday. I think he and Pres Uchtdorf tie as the coolest people to listen to ever.

Tell Chris that if I beat him he owes me a LOT. cause it isn't likely. But maybe. And I'm glad Hamber is fitting into the team.