Cooparido- Campo Grande- Matou Graso do Sul- Brazil

1. I’m glad that you sent that email yesterday cause Today (Monday) is my
P-day. I am in the Cooparido ward area of Campo Grande in the state of Matou
Graso Do Sul the northern most part of my mission. I got to the mission home
and sent you that short email last Tuesday, then found out that I was coming
here and wow it was a surprise. This is a part of the mission they only send
a couple every once and a while, so Íll probably be here for a while. And
this is why: I had to wait all day, after the meeting to get our companions,
we waited till 9 at night. Then we went to the bus station. Then we waited
another 2 hours for our bus. Got on the bus and had a 14 hour ride to campo
grande. It was not a very pleasant time…lol.
I got here and had to wait again for a long time for my companion to arrive.
I just dońt like waiting. We had to go through a whole day of training and
stuff where I understood little to nothing. Lol. That is how my first week
has been, if I had to summarize my first week here in one word it would be
LOST. I have been lost since I got here. I don’t understand a lot of things.
I just follow what my companion does. When people talk to me I can usually
understand what they are trying to get across to me, but not all the time.
And I usually cant respond back to them, I know words but I don’t know how
to connect them or use them correctly in a sentence. I some how find a way
to get around everything though. So a second word I could use to summarize
is QUIET.
The area is nice, it is pretty sub tropical. There are palm trees, coconut
trees, mango trees, banana trees, avocado trees, and just tons of cool fruit
trees. That is one of my favorite things about the area is all the awesome
fruits that grow on the side of the road that we can pick and eat. We picked
a couple avocados to make sandwiches out of and some limes from our lime
tree. The mangos aren’t quite ready yet they are all pretty green. I love
the juices that are made here, there is no such thing as juice from
concentrate!
And the work is great people are very receptive to hearing the message. It
does take a little work to get them to really feel that it is true, but that
it natural. No baptisms yet but we have dates for a family Vander , Sania and
their daughter. They have been coming to church and been fellow shipped by
the members there. We are working with 15 new investigators we found this
week just by street contacting. Elder Munaro said that was a new record for
him, 15 new investigators. I do a lot of the street contacting and Elder
Munaro does the lesson teaching, I bear my testimony and smile. I do know a
lot about church stuff in the language so I do alright when I’m talking
about that stuff.
My companion is Elder Munaro. He is from Porto Alegre where a lot of that
flooding was going on that you told me about. ( oh about the flooding, there
was a district that were going to leave the CTM the week before I did but
they couldn’t cause their area was flooded… ) So Elder Munaro is an
excellent missionary and can teach about anything and somehow manages to
make up for my slack. And he understands my garbled Portuguese. He doesn’t
speak English but he is trying to learn from me. Hés cool. We live in a
small green house with two other missionaries. Elders Davies and Lioliel.
They are crazy. All of them have been here for 16 months and have a lot of
inside jokes, and are constantly joking around.
I am always tired and my feet are hurting, we do a lot of walking. We walk
everywhere and we dońt have bikes or anything. It is constantly hot here, I
am always sweating. Very hot. 40 Celsius two days last week. I dońt
know how everything is so green around here cause is o hot and haśt
rained since Íve been here!

All in all im doing fine and Ím sure it will all get better soon.
Love Andrew.