Week Fifty Six - Transferred and New Companion

Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:48 AM

Hi Mom!

So I´ve been transferred, and it´s a pretty crazy experience. Since I spent most of my time in the Interior, I´m used to knowing everything in the phone call, but this time I had to go to a chapel in the center of the city to find out where I´d be going. But I´m still here in Curitiba, and I´m actually working in Ala 2 (like the Curitiba 2nd ward), which is in downtown Curitiba! All of the tourist sites are in my area, and there are TONS of things to see and do. My P-days are going to be so full from now on!

My new companion is Elder Pinho, a Brasilieiro. I was starting to miss being with a brasilian because there was a lot of temptation to speak English, and now I have another companion that´s still learning it, so that makes things a lot easier. I´m super excited to get started, and to see how everything goes! He says that the people here are pretty rich, but I´m not too worried about it; everyone needs to hear the message. It was kind of a shock to hear I´d be headed to the middle of the big city, but it´s pretty fun so far, even if crossing the street is a challenge.

I´m glad you guys had the chance to feed the missionaries, that´s always great! I cooked for the bishop of my last ward yesterday, and for some of our recent converts. One girl that we baptized last weekend started crying when I left, so that was hard, but I got a bunch of their email addresses. I´m glad all´s well, and have a great week!

Love you!!!!!
Love, Eric



Hey Dad!

So I got transferred, and now I´m serving in the middle of the city, in Ala 2 (which is like the Curitba 2nd ward). It´s the first chapel that was ever built in Curitiba, and it´s smack dab in the middle of downtown. All of the tourist sites are here, and in my zone I´ve got a ton of places that I can go. It´s super cool, and now that I´m here, one day when we´re all here together it´ll be easy for me to get us to where we need to go! I´m really excited to work here, for sure.

My new companion´s Elder Pinho, a Brasilian who started his mission in the same area I did! He´s got about a year and a half on the mission, and just got here recently, too, so we could be spending a good amount of time together. Which is fine with me, because I like having Brasilian companions better than Americans, to be honest. Not that I don´t like Americans, but Brasilians give me more of an incentive to learn Portuguese and really master it. When I was training, it was a little tougher because I had to translate a lot, but now I can relax, especially because I know that he´s going to be able to know what to say. The weather´s warming up, I think, and up until now my shoes are OK. Some got super wet because it rained REALLY hard yesterday, but they´re still going strong.

I´m so glad that things are going well for everybody, and hope that it stays that way. I´ll be praying for all of you guys.

Love you Dad, have a great week!!!!!

Love you!!!!!
Love, Eric