This goes against everything they ever taught me in medical schooollleee..........

name that movie...tanner

alright, so your description of cheese-cake factory pumpkin cheescake w/ pecan pie makes me just want to melt right now.....(i'm fasting.... and theres nothing even near that here...) well, the news about israel really doesn't suprise me.... and the fact that egypt is trying to broker an agreement is absolutely hillarious to me...seeing as how Egypt is currently run by the Muslim Brotherhood, the same organization that funds Hamas and the Taliban...

sorry...missionary thoughts...

bum pu dum pu...

 

well....this week has been rough in a short sence of the word....

we have spent the last five days going through the ward directory (the only one that has ever been produced, and is only updated by a single secretary whenever somebody gets baptized...they just enter the name and address) well there are about 300 members here in Bento that we know about...we have about 120 active... so we have been going around trying to find the inactives....and teach them and their families...this is a very effective way to help the ward...usually the inactives have families who are not members... so we teach a lesson to the family, the inactive is the member...and some times they start going to church again...its happened several times recently so we decided to try and do it some more...well, the problem is when the records have never been updated, and so for example we were looking for a family yesterday...we found the address, asked the lady who was living there if she knew of the people....and she said yes. success right!?!?! well, turns out that she bought the house from them 16 years ago. yeah. 16 years ago! I was three when they moved out. :/ okay... our number of lessons have been suffering this week because of the search, but we feel like the lessons we are teaching are much more effective, meaningful, and powerful....actually to be honest, our numbers are at about half of what they were last transfer....but like I said, its getting better :)

you asked me about the music we listen to here... well, elder bryant likes the EFY music.... so whenever he puts that on on Pday, I usually go into the bedroom and take a nap. we do have a random few songs that a member put on a DVD for us...a couple of alex boye, amy grant, Hillary weeks, jericho road...etc, lds music..

what music would i like? on a dvd, because we dont have cd players, but we all have a small dvd player....motab, motab, motab....and calm classical....george winston style?

 

oh, so I have been reading cousin Danie'ls emails....and it blows me away how different the missionary lifestyle is here from there.... starting with just the schedule...here's ours:

 

0630 wakeup and exercise

0700 shower/bathroom/getdressed

0730 breakfast/write in journal

0800 personal study

0900 companionship study

1000 trainer-junior missionary program

1030 language study

1100 free-study time until necessary to leave for lunch, which could be at 11 or 1155

1200 lunch w/ member

1300 proselyting

2100 end last lesson and be within half hour walk of home

2130 planning

2200 food/prep for bed/LDM chapter read

2230 lights out

this can be slightly obnoxious at times, zero change in the schedule...but hey, it's good, we get 8 hours of straight proselyting every day. no, we dont eat dinner... and we don't have bikes or cars...we either walk everywhere, or if by some miracle we have cash, we take the bus...

oh well, the computer i'm using is different than any other type i've ever used, and there are no usb inputs that i can see...so pictures will have to wait until next week... sorry.

i laughed when i heard that hostess applied for bankrupcy... oh, speaking of bread, one of our recent converts gave us a huge loaf of home-made bread fresh out of the oven....yeah, I ate my entire half within 20 minutes of getting home...somethings don't change ... especially cinnamon and sugar and butter on fresh bread.... :))))))

 

anyways, thank you for all of the letters, I actually got 2 more this week when we went to a leadership meeting in Caxias do Sul...thanks everybody :)

mom, you asked for a recipe for brazilian beans...well, youre going to laugh...

 

black beans

diced onion

couple of crushed cloves of garlic

random chunks of any type of meat

water

cook it all together for a while in a pot of water (we use pressure cookers here, awesome, scary but awesome, they are aluminum pans with a pressure lid, that once it's sealed, doesn't open until you let out all of the steam...also makes it nice because you never have to add more water...) also, don't drain the beans, cook it until the beans are super tender and the water is black and soupy...then serve over rice along with some random other style of a. pasta, b. meat, or c. polenta...jelified corn meal :P or plain. yummy....lots of people here eat it with crushed potato chips over top...very delicious

anyway, don't set off the smoke-detectors, love you mom XD

Elder Eliason

ps. my hair has once again become the color of snow....

well....tr​ansfers? bah! I'm staying here!!!

WoOOOOOTTT...we found out this morning that we are not getting transfered....Elder Bryant and I will stay here for the next four and a half weeks :D yes, i said four and a half weeks because the next transfer will take place the week before Christmas...if we didn't cut it short, the transfer day would fall on Christmas day, and that's not happening.

by the way, Bah! is a word of excitement and joy here...it's a fantastic exclamation...up there with Nossa! (wow) and Cheiquezou (pronounced sheekeezow and literally means "very fancy", but really means on the street AWESOME!!!)

 

então...

 

this week was absolutely nuts! the best way to describe it was an overload of all 5 senses...as follows:

 

Touch-

-This week went from 36 degrees to 11 yesterday...fantastic :D

-I have blisters on all of my toes

-We have bedbugs...ouch

-mosquitos have come to drain me of blood

 

Hear-

-Funk. thats all I need to say. they have trucks here whose entire bed of the truck is a single speaker......and they play the most obnoxious music..FUNK....kind of like Brandon Blake (lil brother) smashing his head on Brittanys synthesizer keyboard and every key is a different noise...coupled with a dozen three year olds with wooden spoons banging on mom's pots and pans. youtube that janx and you'll know what i'm talking about...

-also, we had an interesting experience..we were walking to an investigator's house when a car parked on the side of the road started playing music....pretty common, except the music was just a voice...deep and dark and sinister it said "I am the darkness.....bahahahahahaha..... no...... I AM the DEVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" followed by crazy screamo- i turned to Elder Bryant and said, well, the oposition has never been more clear has it.....we kind of just chuckled and kept on walking

 

Taste-

-beans, beans, beans, and yup, you guessed it, beans!!!!!!! yay :D I love beans... well, mom you were right, beans here are very simple...a little garlic, a little onion, usually some random chuncks of leftover meat. (any type works, pork is most common here though), and tons and tons of blackbeans....but they make them different than you do mom, they cook them until they are super super squishy-soft, until you could mash them with a fork and they would be smooth....only blackbeans here though.. so good though....every single meal every day... :)

-I bought a long stick of salami...fantastic decision...super cheap and super full of flavor

-Tererei (I have no idea how to spell it, but thats how it sounds, just say it as fast as possible and thats how it is said)...basically its Matte/Chemarrou with ice and sprite/lemonade/juice sucked through a bomba...same as chemarrou....very very desirable and delicious when it is hot outside

 

Sight

-well, there have been billboards going up all around town about the new mammogram center that has opened up....and instructions on how to conduct a self-mammogram...that has been a wonderful addition to the city >:/

-the volume of clothing people wear here is inversely proportional to the temperature, not much unlike the USA, but in a more openly fashion... we just have to be careful....very careful.....

-because of the heat earlier this week...the gilla monsters have come out of the forests and have been chilling on the unused roads...they're HUGE!!!! i'll include a picture

Smell-

-Well, we tried to take a shortcut between two of our investigators...they live a stone's throw away from each other, but between their houses is a gorge...where a river runs down through the bottom...smaller than the stream behind our house, and it hadn't rained in over 2 weeks so it was really low...we figured we could save our legs and a ton of time by crossing it rather than going around, over a very large hill, down it, and back up another....yeah, it was and it worked...but the stream was sewage.............yeah, that was absolutely fantastic by the time we made it to our investigator's house....well, we had decided to never do that again.

-we were clapping doors and we ran into a member....she is chair-ridden, and very.....interesting..... but she's a member none the less, so we visited her and her grandmother (pushing 95?) as we were explaining the importance of prayer...her son ran into the kitchen (where we were) and lit up the stove....swooped his head down and lit up the biggest joint I have ever seen in my LIFE....it was well over 4 inches long...we would have just figured that it was a homemade cigarette..the people here grow their own tobbacco and roll their own...but within 2 minutes, he was singing in his bedroom, and the entire house was filled with weed-smoke....she seemed oblivious....we left shortly thereafter

 

well, after that inspirational note...one that is a bit more spiritual....on a slightly political note

please read Mosiah 29.... but concentrate on verses 16, 21, 22, 23, and 27

we were teaching Irmão Luiz's family last week and ran down the road afterward to visit a member to see if they wanted to do a FHE with him, later that week...well, they did, and they also gave us a reference (LOVE LOVE LOVE references)....we visited them that night...and holy smokes!!!!!! so...she was baptized 12 years ago, but has since then left the church....she lived 18 miles away from it...that's difficult for someone who doesn't have much money for bus tickets or a car...., but they moved to Bento Gonçalves last year....she has a 13 year old son, who is literally the most humble, meek, and willing to learn kid in the entire universe....she also lives with her husband and an 8 year old son....also very kind meek and humble....along with her 2 sisters and 1 brother...all in the basement of a house.....LOVE THIS FAMILY!!!!! they have nothing but love and happiness there....they are the type of home I want to have when I start my own family...there is zero contention and tons of laughter and smiles... they listen intently to the lessons, and she helps because as we talk, she remembers....so, we have visited them twice...and the two sisters and the two sons all want to be baptized....yeah, they're awesome awesome awesome....

 

anyways, I have to go, my time on the computer is dwindling.... thank you so much for the emails mom, dad, and blake...they were fantastic and made my week...

 

BY THE WAY... I GOT MAIL!!!!! everybody who sent mail in the months of September or October I got your letters :D thank you so much!!!! I will respond as time allows...sorry, no promises on promptness... and mother, thank you so much for those awesome pictures, they are truly a blessing here in Brazil

I'll finish with a quote from my bishop here....

"three, three-thirty....same thing right?"

in reality...when we say do you have 5 minutes that we can share a message...it means 30...if we say ten, it means 40 (max. lesson length)

its brazil, everybody is always late, and everything goes over, and nobody cares.

 

much love from the richest city in Brazil.....(true story...)

Elder Eliason

 

P.S. Christmas wish list?

-Small English Hymn book

-love

letters (w/ pictures)

letters (w/ emoticons)

letters (w/ drawings)

letters (w/ food stains from sitting on the table waiting to be written)

letters.......X infinity :)

 

 

Gilla Monster

 

 

Giant Moths

 

 

Go International!!!!!!!!!!!!! woot woot Futebol Brazil!!!!

soo....this week we will have p-day tomorrow, and transfers will be on wednesday....since President Wright is in São Paulo.... the email of the week will come tomorrow... :S keep smiling

Elder Eliason

Area where we work



 Purple church (aka a Igreja do Rei Jesus) or the Church of the King Jesus, purple is the color of royalty


Vinyard one of the members owns


Our district


the cemetary after Dia dos Mortos....their version of halloween, except they have mass in the graveyard, which is fine except we woke up to gregorian chants...which I love by the way...but kind of weird, and my allergies have been haywire since then...so much pollen...


Baptism of Luiz


Elders and Luiz

it's monday, monday...p-day is so monday

and thus I shall write unto whoever cares....and if you wrote me a letter within the last 2 months, I still have yet to recieve it....

woohoo, another week has passed here in bento Gonçalves...more and more miracles are happening all over the place...

this week I had the privilage to baptize Irmão Luiz. He is an amazing individual...quite the character too...he works in construction, is missing his middle finger, and loves to do everything himself...but he also has the soul of a saint. Elder Bryant and Elder Christaldo (the elder before me) ran into him by clapping doors (yes, we really do stand outside and clap until somebody answers, its illigal to enter a yard/porch without permission but it's easy since none of the houses are insulated, most of them are either brick or concrete, or if they're poor, particleboard... all of the houses here have large gates and fences and usually barbed wire or razor wire, or broken glass above a cement wall to keep us out too...) and he let them in and accepted the first lesson...well, elder Christaldo felt something with him, and asked elder Bryant to go back, even though he reacted the same way that most of the people who are uninterested act...kind of say cool, thanks for the story type deal...and it came up that he smoked, heavily, chain smoker...but then when they arrived to teach the second time..they asked him to stop smoking, and said that it'll help him spiritually.... he said he'd stop. he hasn't touched a pack of cigarettes since...we tried teaching him when I got here, for two and a half weeks we tried and nobody answered the door, we had all but cut him when we knocked one last time (note: he has gone to church every week since the elders met him) and he answered with having read all of third Nefi and wanting to be baptized....miracles.....well, we talked to him about the word of Wisdom, and turns out, alcohol played a huge part in his life....well, he stopped in one day. talk about intestinal fortitude.... His family is planned to be baptized in two weeks, seeing as how transfers are next monday, I really hope that I get to stay here and be a part of it....

we walked over 12 miles on wednesday....with the hills, we basically killed ourselves, and we got absolutely nowhere because of it...except 4 lessons...only one of which was productive...during the companionship inventory, we reviewed the week and decided how we could improve our abilities in teaching, how we teach, and how we can be more obedient. President Wright, our current mission president has only been here for 4 months, and Elder Bryant said that when he arrived, he made a promise to us that if we start working with our heads and not with our legs, this mission could double the number of baptisms....so we took that to heart, and have started planning better the areas where we teach, and keep all of our appointements relatively close to one another...and let me tell you, I can already see improvement...

I have been working really hard to understand and comprehend the language here...and it is coming along very well, I can follow any conversation now for the most part, as long as the person is speaking in my general direction...for some reason, the words sound different when the're speaking to somebody else... something that I definitely could improve on is how I ask questions... here in Brazil, you ask questions the same way you would say a statement, you just use tone inflection at the end of a sentance....but when your accent is thick, that becomes nearly impossible...

I just tried to send a picture, bot for some reason, the computer is not allowing me to upload any photos, so I'll try on another computer in just a second....thanks for the patience...

Let me tell you, I have discovered the best panini-sandwich thing yet....cinnamon, bananas, sugar and dulce de leite between two slices of buttered bread in the grilled-cheese sandwhich maker that we somehow obtained....AMAZING....banana pies...basically, theyre delicious.....

Sorry to hear that you're bummed brittany, you know, most of the sister missionaries that were here at the CTM that I made friends with had boyfriends back home.... you dont have to be solzinho para servir um missão.....

anyways, tanner, you are nuts for loving winter track...i loved running out in the cold, not the circles part...

Preston, I can't wait to see your facebook account

blake, I mean Brandon......you're just awesome, I thought of you this week...the gummy-bear song has gone insane here, everybody loves it, in PORTUGUESE!!!! ugh.....

Best of luck,

com amor

te amo

Elder Tyler Eliason

p.s. that photo of the changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is absolutely fantastic....makes me get shivers inside...

prayers out to NY.....

heres the mail, it never fails, it makes me want to wag my tail, when I hear it come i yell MAIL.....

 

except its email, so whatever right??? NOT

 

here we go again...

another week has passed here in Bento Gonçalves, the hills are still steep, the cobblestone streets are still absurdly slippery when wet, and the old grandmas who don't want to talk to us curse us in italian....yes, it happens on a regular basis... Its really cool though because the older generations here all speak Italian...and most people here can understand it because its relatively similar to portuguese...I had the most amazing grape juice here...it was all natural, and home-made...i normally don't enjoy the american cough-syrup like substance that we call grape juice...but this one was divine! my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it....mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

 

this week was somewhat challenging but blessed.... our only investigator that wanted to be baptized told us on tuesday that she is not comfortable yet with the church, and therefore wants to wait until she gets comfortable....which could mean eternity. She's a very closed person, which is interesting, because here, if you tell somebody your name, you're basically family...and you recieve the life story...it happens many many many times every day with people we street contact or clap houses with...ESPECIALLY if they're single middle-aged women. well, we had no idea how to help her except to just keep on visiting her and being a friend...well, we returned on thursday with Bispo, and boom, first thing she says is that she has recieved an answer to her prayers and that she is ready to be baptized on saturday. YES! well, that means we have to call zone leader so he can do the Interview...but he already is going to another district on friday for an interview, so the only time he can come is right before the baptism on saturday...no big deal, except he has a baptism of his own in Caxias that he needed to be at...so he and his companion took the Onibus here at 9, Bispo gave us a ride to Enecir, and we did the interview, alls well until we try and take the Onibus back to Centro, where Elder Black and Elder Garnier needed to catch their bus to Caxias so they could be there in time for their baptism...the bus that was supposed to go by Enecir's house showed up ten minutes early, while the interview was still happening, and boom, the next one passed when elder Black and elder Garnier's bus was supposed to leave the station in Centro... oh, and it takes about an hour to walk back from her house to the bus station in centro...so that wasnt an option... so, we're just standing at the bus stop, praying for a miracle, when a car pulls up, its an inactive member who has just moved here from Santa Cruz.... he called us over and asked if we had a chaple here in Bento..which we do, and we started talking...he offered us a ride back to centro...what a blessing and a miracle. we get back to Centro, and elder Black and elder Garnier have just enough time to buy tickets and get on the bus before it pulls out. Miracles happen by way of prayer. it was also a miracle that Irmã Enecir was baptized. She is an amazing woman, and an amazing strength for the church.

 

I also gave a 10 minute talk in church this week on how our wards and our people are examples to the world, and how that leads to missionary work in all places, times, and situations.

This week I read the majority of Our Search For Happiness, by M. Russell Ballard. And it is has changed my perspective on how I need to live my life... it was amazing...there is a quote about how to have a life well lived...I cant find it, but (mother, if you would find it and please post it here, I would be most gratefull)

anyways, this week was awesme, I highlighted the big points, but remember that you can do missionary work wherever you are, at any time, just by smiling and being you.

Elder Eliason

Woot woot, another week of living the missionary life here in Bento Gonçalves, Brazil (be sure to put brazil under the address mom :D thx)

I am going to attempt to drop pictures on here....i'm not quite sure how this will work, but I will try....

 

 

 

well, i'll start again in another email....

 

but for now, the carne...

 

we helped three families move here this past week, and when people here move, they move....everything...everything from all of their cabinets, the refrigerator, to even the kitchen sink, its theirs. also, nobody lives at ground level....they either live up a lot of stairs, or down a lot of stairs....so that makes the moving process really fun XD.... also, when we were moving one of the families, they were watching Cars 2...the secret agent one, but it was in portuguese...no big deal right? well...think Mater. in porguese... It was hillarious listening to a guy trying to immitate Larry the Cable guy in portugese.. hahahaha.... anyways, we were clapping doors this week...we did a bunch of that because a bunch of our investigators have been not reading, not praying, and not going to church...which means that they're ripe for not being investigators anymore....but we were clapping doors, and we were out in the boondocks, and elder bryant had to go to the bathroom really bad....and there are no public bathrooms here...just FYI...so what do we do? we go to a bar. those always have bathrooms right??? yup...we walked in...the bar got silent, and elder bryant asked...so, wheres the bathroom? and everybody just started laughing and laughing....the bartender pointed to a door, and said help yourself.....fun stuff :D

we have another baptism this week, we don't know who is going to baptize here, but it'll be one of us... her name is Enicir, and a wondeful lady whose daughters both joined the church, and decided that she needs to know what they now belive....she's super active and very fun and smart...

also, Maria and Adriano are probably going to get married this week hopefully!!!! miracles do happen, they thought that if they got married that they would lose a lot of money that they were getting from the government (notice that the lot of money is used loosely, and signifies just barely sixty bucks) but the bishop talked to them and told them how his mother-in-law was able to survive through the same situation.....so hopefully this week we'll go to the court :D

 

So...my companion is terribly mean, I mean that with the most loving respect of course, but he is malicious when it comes to jokes.... he got to do a baptizmal interview over in Farropila, the city next to ours...and so we did another division...aka we went on exchanges....except he left me this time...and another elder came with me.....but not the senior companion from there...no, that would be too nice....Elder Nelson, the same Elder Nelson who was in my district at the CTM, meaning he had less than two weeks experience out in the field also, was my new companion for the day....and I was in charge of meeting and planning which investigators to contact...where to tract...etc.... yeah, we enjoyed the bliss that we experienced when people talked to us, and we only comprehended I dont know, every other word if we were lucky? eh... oh well, we did well, taught 8 lessons, and asked a person to be baptized and she accepted...except she is moving next week, but her husband is an inactive member who got really excited when we clapped their door...he opened the door and grinned, and told us that he hadn't seen missionaries since 12 years ago when he was baptized...but now that he has a son, and a wife, he wants to start going again.... :/ yay, except they're moving to Santa Maria....the mission next to ours....BAH Humbug! oh well

 

we helped a guy build a house on saturday....layed bricks, made cement, learned how to make reinforced cement w/ rebar, yada yada yada..it was really fun though....

 

questions from mother....

1. yes, we have electricity...we live in the city, and our apparment has been slowly growing nicer over the last 12 years that the church has been renting it...we now have a stove, a fridge, a shower head that heats up water as it comes out....and safe water to drink...well, relatively...they stopped giving us waterbottles at the CTM b/c they were breaking out in the field....so the missionaries here have begun a new method of drinking water...when you move to a new area...you drink about a gallon of tap water your first day... you get sick to your stomach and feel terrible for about a day and a half....after that, youre in the clear to drink all the water you want from that area...now there's judgement calls, like when you ask an investigator for a glass of water, and he brings out a rusted tin cup and pours water out of a beer bottle..... but yeah, fun stuff....we get a card that gets a little bit of money put on it twice a month so we can buy food for breakfast or dinner if we so desire...but really, we only eat one meal a day....which makes it really easy to fast...which we do more than i've ever done before....

 

anyways, the church is true..pray about it if you haven't already.  God never lies.

Boa Sorte,

 

Elder Tyler Eliason

 

the first photo is of us on our first week here in the CTM, my companion is the one on the right, and the elder in the middle is Elder Brito, the one with the "list" XD

 

 

 

CTM friends

 

 

my district at the CTM

 

 

well, you get really bored w/ 9 weeks in a classroom

 

 

Zerildo and I :D

 

 

Elder Beatty :D

 

  

Elder Searles

 

 

familia de Zerildo

 

 

the view out of our window....

 

 

my pant leg after I was chomped on by the dumb dog....

 

 

another of zerildo and Wesleys baptism

 

 

 

where some of our investigators live...

 

 

 

and the beauty of the earth....and brazil...

 

 

some nasty brown spider that jumped at me when moving the family's stuff :D

 

we get mail once a month here, so snail mail will work, its just going to be a LONG wait...and the responses will be even slower....I bring my camera with me to the wifi lab here in the Bento Gonçalves shopping center to take pictures of the emails, so the e-mails work just perfectly. you may also post on the blog (that is, if it´s alright with you..) that people may send letters in the form of a word document, email it to you, and then you will email me the attatchment..that´ll work too

also, send letters/packages/love to ONLY the Caxias address, the other one only works half the time.

So, Bento Gonçalves, the wine capital of Brazil...yeah, word of wisdom is a wonderful challenge here... IT is amazingly beautiful here, you thought the forests of virginia and the carolinas were thick?? BAHAHAHA, yeah, I did too...untill we got here.. after a 3 hour plane ride, to Porto alegre, where the mission home is, I took a bus with another greenie from my district at the CTM out here to Bento Gonçalves. The people here are uncannily friendly...even the people who reject our message when we knock doors always offer us water if its hot, or Chemarrão if its not swealtering...sometimes both. XD Chemarrão (i´m positive that i´m not spelling that right, but whatever) is a drink that was origionaly against the word of wisdom, but has been revealed that it is not....basically its green hay, crushed up, and drunk with boiling water through a filter straw...it litterally tastes like wet hay. not too appealing, but it starts to grow on you after you drink it every lesson you teach... speaking of lessons, we have investigators who have attended church over the course of the last month, so our hands are extremely full trying to get around town and teach and figure out who is really interested in the church, and who is just doing it to recieve the benefits of being a member... the vast majority of the town makes elder Grigsby look like a king...the poverty is unreal, actually just the opposite...its EXTREMELY real, but people accept it, and everybody is trying to make their situation better, which I find absolutely incredible. We are teaching a whole slew of investigators who love the gospel and are attending church every week, but are living together unmarried because they just cant afford the marriage...it costs about 160 R$ to get all the legal fees done for the marriage, (that equates to about 85 USD). The only thing we can do for them is teach them about the benefits of the laws of the fast, tithing, and chastity....we did have a set of our investigators get married on friday though! what a party :D they´re getting baptized this saturday! man, this email is becoming difficult to write because about half of the words i want to say are just in portuguese.... To answer your questions mother...

1- no, my first area is not in porto alegre, it is in a decent sized town about 3 hours north (by way of bus)

2- there are approximately 150 active members, many many more who are semi-active or nonactive

3- there are no missionaries here in porto alegre n. that have cars except the mission president (he has a minivan)

4- there are none of us who have bikes either, they would be stolen and parts are EXTREMELY expensive to replace here

5- My first companion is Elder Bryant, he´s from Spokane Washington, he´s been out in the field for 20 months. He´s apparently the legend of Porto Alegre N. So I´m super pumped to be trained by him.

I don´t know how to attatch photos....okay, I just looked at the computer...and it doesn´t have a SD slot, but it does have a USB hook-up, so i´ll find an SD to USB transverter and I´ll try and send pictures next week. Last night was the elections for the state governments, and let me tell you, more people are excited about the state elections than the presidental elections of the US... there were fireworks and horns honking all last night just as the results were announced. Also, I got bit by a dog on my first day...fun stuff, drew quite a bit of blood actually, I was quite supprised...I took a picture of my pants afterwards because you can see the saliva where the teeth chomped on my ankle...full teeth impressions...but luckily none of the teeth went though the pants or the socks so there is no chance of infection from the bite...made my companion laugh though...he has yet to be bitten by a dog... the food here is incredible, we get lunch EVERY day from a member...or an investigator, they love too cook, but only lunch, very rarely will we ever get dinner...and even more rarely will we even try to make a breakfast, usualy it consists of a handfull of rice. One of the things I love to eat for either breakfast or lanche (post dinner-snack) is a bowl full of rice, covered in milk (cold-cereal style), and then a spoonfull of sugar and a bit of cinnamon, it´s SO GOOD!!! you can eat it cold or Hot, I like it hot, I think it brings out the flavor more...if you want to make it more of a dessert, which people do here, use sweet and condensed milk instead of regualr milk. also, milk only comes in boxes here, and is good forever untill you open it.... we usually buy 3 percent because it´s the cheapest, you can get 1 per, but its almost double the price, or you can get 6 or 12 per....also more expencive, but VERY DELICIOUS...Rice rice rice....everywhere I love rice, i´m so lucky i like it, because if I didnt, I would be hosed.....there´s this drink here that everybody loves, it´s orange juice mixed with soy milk....oh my heavens, it´s almost like drinking a creamsicle....never mind, it´s like dreaming a super smooth orange julius. mmmmm.....

Also! General Conference!!!! AWESOME, watched it in Portuguese, so I only caught a little bit of what they were trying to say...but what I did catch was that women can now serve missions at age 19, and that men can serve at 18!!!! oh my heavens, so is Brittany going to try and do what i did and serve a mission after 1 year of school? I know she wanted to serve one...do tell all :D

Pdays are now on Monday, sorry for not writing last week, I didn´t get an opportunity, in the CTM, pdays are wednesday, here they´re on monday...transfers are on Tuesday... :/ oh well, i´m here now. There are so many hills here, you know that really steep hill in cali that everybody knows about...well most of the roads here put that one to shame...and people drive straight up and down them in cars and on motorcycles...motorcycles are EVERYWHERE here...its awesome. also, there are security guards here in the mall with full body-armor and m-16 rifles...makes me laugh. My roommate from the CTM was from Farropilah? I have no idea how to spell it, but that´s the area right next to mine, and when we went to district meeting last week, there was a picture of him on their wall...made me smile :D go Elder Brito! (he´s the armored car driver)

Anyways, I love it here, we had trouble sleeping last night because people were lighting off homemade fireworks around our appartment all night long...(you can tell which ones are home-made because the factory made ones make it more than twenty feet off the ground before they explode) Brandon blake would LOVE it here XD also, all of the (non-main) roads here are made out of cobbelstone, which I absolutely love, I don´t know why, but I do...it also makes it extremely dangerous and difficult to go up and down when its raining...which it does almost every night here....that´s why here is so perfect to grow grapes it´s super sunny all day, and then when the sun goes down, it rains.

 

So long, farewell, ciao....

Elder Tyler Eliason

P.S. the fact that we only get mail one time a month does not change the fact that I want letters.... ;D

NEW ADDRESS

New mission address:

Porto Alegre North Mission

Caixa Postal: 13008

Porto Alegre, RS

CEP: 91010-971

Brazil.

Tyler & Adam Thiriot at the CTM