Elder Rhodes...out of the CTM and into the mission field!

Portuguese is super hard and I had to give a talk my first Sunday here in Piracicaba. Was actually pretty good. Nobody believed me when i said that i didn't know any Portuguese before my mission and that I've only been in the field for a week.


 2nd thing. The apartment I'm staying in has 2 sets of elders and this area hasn't had baptisms in over a year. Between us and the other elders we have 8 people on date! Elder Costa and I have 3. There is a father and mother with a daughter; Sheila, Socrates and the daughter is Bianca. She speaks so fast and so loud that I don't understand a single word. When we were teaching them the other night i kind of just sat back relaxed and thought"now this is what its all about right here."  Kind of a peaceful moment for me since i have been somewhat stressed to learn a language that I have had 0 contact with in my 18 years of existence. The other person on date is Augusto. He is 14 and will be baptized on the 13th.

We also found this woman named Clarisse. We went in to teach her and her husband was super standoffish when we got there. He just sat in the back of the room and listened to the message of the restoration which was crazy spiritual. I could tell he was interested and when Elder Costa went to give a Book of Mormon to Clarisse, I had a prompting to get up and give one to him. We wrote  2 questions in it. They said:  "Was Joseph Smith a prophet? And "Is this book of God?" As soon as I gave it to him he started looking at it and seemed super awkward but I could tell that he wanted it. He immediately started flipping through it. We also taught a ton of people in this park the restorations.
I see like 100 lizards a day which are called lagas here. Also i see parakeets and toucans. The are stray dogs every where which reminds me of another story. We went to church the other day and the other Elders had an investigator come that brought a dog. So after I gave my talk we had the chance to go outside and watch a dog for 2 hours so the investigator could have a chance to go to church.

Conference was a blast!  We basically had a party with all the American missionaries to watch it in English. The talks were so good. Its weird to think when I come back we will have 2 hours church. We have a baptism this Saturday.  Yessss! The language is coming along good. I can pretty much understand close to everything.  Speaking is a lot harder though.

Here are a few pics for you.

All of us "greenies" arriving in Piracicaba.



With my CTM comp, Elder Morrow


Our last night together in the CTM.



Out working.


Location: Piracicaba - State of São Paulo, Brazil

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