Good Morning Land of
the Free,
What´s with everyone
getting married? STOP IT! Don´t you know your wedding won´t be very cool
because I´m not there? Gosh dang it. But all joking aside congrats to all my
friends that are now engaged! It´ll be a weird world to come back to. Let´s see
what I have to say about this week. It wasn´t too bad. We had a baptism on
September 7th (Brazil´s independence day) of a girl named Jannayé. I think I´ve
mentioned her before, but her uncle came down from Ribeirão Preto to baptize
her because nobody else in her family is a member, but they were all there and
it made for a really spiritual baptism, thats for sure. Our Bishop (Bispo Belo,
father of Elder Belo in the Portland Oregon mission) talked about eternal
families and the blessings of the gospel, something that I´m almost certain hit
home really hard for Jannayé´s family. It was really cool. Also, I did my first
confirmation in Portuguese yesterday, nervous much? But it went well and was a
really cool experience. Also this week I hit seven months in the mission. Which
doesn´t seem like a lot of time in the perspective of two years but when I look
back, it´s crazy. Seven months ago I was with the Clawson (and Byers) family
getting dropped off at the MTC of course being accompanied by one of my best
friends, Josh Kunzler. It´s mega surreal to look back and think about that day
and everything that´s happened since then, both in Brazil and in the MTC. It´s
nuts to me. And now, almost all of my best friends (that are members) are on
missions in different countries. Colin is in North Carolina, Jake is in Hungary
(what the heck?), Josh is in France, and Jeff and Conner are here with me in
Brazil. It´s freaky business for me because two years ago I NEVER would have
thought I´d be out here. In Brazil, or even on a mission. It´s still shocking
to me. Anyways, enough of that. I learned this week that Brazilians, at least
in São Paulo, don´t really care about their own Independence day. Which, being
American is absolutely shocking. I was expecting some crazy partying to go down
but nope, that´s only for soccer games. It´s a totally different world. Holy crap this
week was HOT! My comp (from up north where it´s basically hot, hot, hot with a
view) was complaining about the heat. It´s been sitting around 33. That´s
celsius, you´ll have to convert to farenheit, but with this humidity, mother!
It´s been hot. My neck tan is developing nicely. This is the last week of
this transfer and I won´t say anything about it because last time I was dead
wrong. Though these transfers get faster everytime. Elder Holmes and I refer to
the past two transfers as the great twelve week transfer, and it´s only fitting
that we have another American holiday to celebrate together in our last week
together. PATRIOTS DAY! ´Murica. It will be some good stuff. Well, have a great
week everyone. Nobody else get engaged ok?
Love,
Elder Marley
