First Letter

Hey there Family!
There should have been an email that got sent to you the same day. With pictures of my district with our mission president and his wife. I also made sure to print extra nice so they could read the email address. But I guess it didn't make it or they haven't sent it because there was a bunch of Brazilian holidays surrounding Easter here when we got here and the CTM was pretty deserted as far as staff is concerned. And yes I made it without any event, no I never fell asleep at the airport. There was no booze, broads, or action. (To clarify, this is a family quote/joke from the movie Kelly's Heroes). However there were Russians. Well Russion Elders on their way home. I didn't run into any missionaries until Atlanta, and I met Elder Goldsberry and Sister Sommers at my gate to head to Brazil. Elder Goldsberry is one of my companions here at the CTM, Elder Jensen is the other. So I ended up in a trio. Elder Jensen is headed to Porto Alegre Sul too.
Thanks for paying respects to lil' Chip for me. (A chipmunck that died on the job last year) Glad to hear he made it safe through the winter. Well it may be Chillyquin but when I arrived here it was Sunnypaulo. It is hot here, and it is humid. It has been a little overcast the last two days here. So by the way, my paragraphs will be super messed up because there is no enter button on these keyboards, in fact they really won't exist. About Brazil and Sao Paulo. Everybody here seems to drive the same white VW Bus, it is kind of awesome. But I just decided I wanted to talk about the actual people first. All the Brazilian Elders here are awesome, my kind of people. I was a little nervous when I showed up because I thought there might be some kind of awkward divide between the American and the Brazilian Elders. About three minutes at lunch blew that fear out of the water. Walking down the hallway, especially with a little blue dork dot on your name tag gets you mobbed with hugs, smiles, and handshakes. D&C 4 tells us to remember brotherly kindness. These Elders have got it down. We sit in a classroom most of the day learning Portuguese but I think one of the most helpful things is just talking with the natives. Everybody here gets along so well and we all love each other. Well at least they do now that we can't play futbol at gym time. Apparently some of the Brazilians and Argentineans got a little too aggressive. My Portuguese is actually starting to take shape fairly well, it helps understanding Spanish. I already know about how to conjugate and that every noun has a gender assigned to it, and I understand articles. Some of the verbs and tense endings are a little different here though so they throw me off. I do kind of a portuspanglish, but I definitely communicate better with the native elders a lot better than some people who have been here two or three weeks. My English is taking a monster hit though already. There is really very little use for it and when I do use it, it is very slow and simplified so the Brazilians who do speak can understand. In our room are two Brazilian Elders. E. De Jesus, and E. D Silva. They are really awesome. We have very broken conversations, but you would be surprised at how little you have to talk to be able to have fun and communicate with someone. Pretty much this has been the longest game of charades ever! I have five minutes left so I will start to wrap it up a bit. We only get a half an hour to write every p-day (Wednesday) But we do go to the Sao Paulo temple which is incredible, and also we are allowed to leave the CTM and go to the shops and talk to people in the surrounding neighborhood. But today was so busy it doesn't look like we will get to do that. The food is good, but all the natives don't like it. It's cafeteria food to them. Fair enough, but food is food. Some of the stuff is pretty funky though. I wrote this in my actual letter, but no joke, on Thursday's is pizza day. They have fried banana and chocolate syrup pizza. Nothing regular. I don't remember the others though. Well I don't want to get booted of and not have this send so I am going to go. I like the hand prints and paw prints in the concrete. ha. Molly must have been mortified. Also congrats on the Honey crisp! I have the packet but you should be getting a letter with my return address on it soon, and give to to people and tell them to write me. E. Jensen has had six letters and I'm at zero! I love you all very much. Take care. You are in my prayers.

Elder Morgan