First Email from Brazil!

Ola! sorry about the silence, the only let us write letters and email
once a week but ive sent you guys some emails that could take a awhile
to get there. and tell nathan Happy Birthday for me and that I have a
present for him that ill send next week. hopefully he likes it. but
Brazil is getting better, it was really tough the first couple days
adjusting but its gotten better. ill have to find someway to get
pictures to you guys so you can see some stuff, i dont have many cuz
they wont let you take pictures here. something about looking like a
tourist and thieves targeting tourists. but its way different here.
the food is amazing. and its gotten to the point where i dont even ask
what it is i just eat it, im that hungry. but they always have some
sort of meat and its always really good and they always have fresh
tropical fruit like papaya and mangoes, which are my new favorite, or
others and its so good. and theres always rice and beans, that never
changes from meal to meal. but all they have for breakfast every
morning is ham and cheese sandwhiches. it gets boring but its food.
its only one building here too. it went from like 18 in provo to 1.
but the atmosphere is completely different. its so laid back here,
Brazilians are just like that. but i love the Brazilians so much. I
have two in my room, thankfully one speaks english, but all the ones
on my floor are awesome. The cant pronounce my name and they think i
look like the lead singer of Coldplay so they call me Elder Coldplay
Guy and they sing coldplay songs to me all the time its hilarious. One
of my favorites, Elder Maia, came into my room with his Ipod and
speakers and started playing the song called the scientist and told me
that its his forever alone song. But i have fun with them. they laugh
at everything we say and do, theyre always laughing so we hang out in
my room at night and I talk to them in my broken portuguese. Theyve
helped me out so much, and theyre always so nice about it. theyre
awesome i love them. but its alot harder here cuz all the signs are in
portuguese and everybody speaks portuguese and it gets hard to
understand sometimes but its getting better. and the teachers here are
Brazilian and have the sort of Brazilian laid back attitude. they roll
into class 20 minutes late and they dont teach us much at all. at
least not like Provo. its been hard adjusting to it cuz theres no real
set schedule. its more of you go and do what you want with your time.
and thats tough for me cuz i dont just want to learn portuguese to get
me around and teach people, i really want to learn portuguese. so it
just takes me doing alot more on my own studying which is always fun,
teaching yourself a language. Luckily I have the Brazilians. But I
hope one of the coolest teaching experiences yesterday, we were
teaching one of the fake invertigators and she was having problems
with her family and stuff and in the middle of the lessons i was
teaching things and using words that i didnt know i knew or had only
seen once, like sacerdocio (priesthood) I had seen that word once
before, and things were just flowing and coming out and she commited
to be baptized and all that and after the lesson my companion told me
that he felt the spirit so strong when i was teaching. it was awesome
cuz ive never felt the spirit during these kind of fake lessons cuz my
portuguese sucks and theyre well fake. but it was really good to have
a lesson like that and it really boosted my spirits. but im out of
time now so ill write you guys more another time. i love and miss you
guys. i hope everythings going well keep me posted. Elder
Rindlisbacher