Not in Kansas anymore...

January 25, 2010

Dear Family,

Right now I´m in Praia. My area of Praia is Vila Nova. I´m in the Praia 2 branch. This has been one interesting week.

So I just tried attaching pictures but it didn´t work. We´ll probably end up having to transfer to a flash drive, and I´m not even sure if that will work. I´ll see if my companion can help me next week.

My companion is Elder Rodrigues. He´s brazilian and speaks less English than I do Portuguese so communication is interesting. He´s cool though.

There´s so much I don´t even know where to start, so I´ll just go for it. I hope this makes sense.

All the showers are cold. We have filtered water. Our apartment is about as larger or larger than most of our investigators houses. I thought I would be done with stairs after the MTC but I was very wrong. My area has stairs like you wouldn´t believe. And sometimes, there aren´t stairs. After culture day last week when Irmão Paries told us about Porto, Portugal I was kind of sad that I wouldn´t get to explore castles. But if your definition of castle is a big structure made of stone and cement, falling into disrepair, with winding passages and narrow stairways, then my entire area is a castle. There is literally broken glass everywhere. Most people where flip flops. A lot of the cildren go barefoot. There are also dogs everywhere. I have seen maybe 2 that didn´t look absolutely disgusting. The weather is warm. In the afternoon it gets pretty hot. This is Africa in every sense of the word. Seeing a white person who´s not a missionary is like seeing a black person in utah. No, that´s not true. It´s less common and more strange.

On sunday I had to try to translate sacrament for a Nigerian who doesn´t speak Portuguese. English is the official language of Nigeria. It´s interesting how many Nigerians there are here. But it was really hard for me to translate for him when I´m just barely trying to understand what´s going on myself. We had dinner with a member after church. We ate rice and chicken. My companion told me not to drink the water so I didn´t. He did though. I guess he was willing to take the risk.

I got my first african haircut today. It´s pretty much the same haircut that most black people get, but it looks a little different on me. To say the least.

During our proselyting we don´t carry anything but our scripture cases. We don´t carry anything in our pockets and we hide our money in our white missionary handbooks. Every building here is made of cinder blocks and cement. well, there are a few that are made of whatever planks of wood and sheets of metal they could find. There is a dry river bed that runs through the city. We cross it to get to some of our area. A lot of people dump trash in there. It smells really bad.

There´s dirt and dust everywhere.

I´ll write more next time.
The Atonement works. We have a living prophet today. The Scriptures are the word of God.

~Elder Canute Peterson.