Monday, October 27, 2014

Brazil's Just a LITTLE Different than CA...

Greetings from São Paulo, Brazil!  It's been an interesting week, trying to get situated to everything.  Brazil's just a LITTLE different from Southern California.  Lots of walking, lots of rain this week.  Stuff like that.


I spend a lot of time in the office working with the referrals as of right now.  Now you may ask, "Elder Morgan, what's the most difficult part of working in an office in a different country?  The new language?  The culture shock?  The strange keyboards?"  Nope, none of those.  It's deciphering the dang handwriting of all these referrals!  People call in with their referrals and the secretaries write the information down, but sometimes it's like trying to read ancient Egyptian!  I think I've got the hang of it now, but every now and again I'll run into a symbol that could potentially be 18 different letters and 6 different numbers at the same time.

Oh, another weird thing about working with the referrals.  Now that the office has a secretary exclusively for referrals it's my job to write everything down when missionaries call about people to teach.  But if you've ever learned a foreign language then you'll know that talking on the phone is super difficult, haha.  It's pretty funny, people will call and we'll talk in Portuguese and I have to say, "Repeat, please" a million times.  People will ask, "Who is this?" And I'll say, "Elder Morgan, the referral secretary."  And they'll ask, "How long have you been in Brazil?"  And I'll proudly reply, "Three days!"

We had a few investigators attend sacrament meeting, which was nice.  One was named Josepi and he's really cool.  He's an older gentleman and is trying really hard to quit smoking.  He asked us to take his cigarettes from him so he won't be tempted, so we did.  I have to say, it felt weird walking through the streets of Brazil with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, haha.

Things about Brazil:

- Sao Paulo pizza is DANG good.  Like, amazing.  It's a lot different than American pizza, but still really good.  They don't use red sauce, and you can get the crust filled with chocolate.  You'd think it'd be gross, but it's actually super good.

- You can't throw the toilet paper in the toilet.  It has to go in the trash basket.  Weird.

- In lots of places if you ask for water they'll ask you if you want it chilled or at room temperature.  Why anyone would ask for room temperature water is beyond me.

- The President of Brazil is running for re-election and her logo looks a lot like the Chick-Fil-A logo.  Every time I see it I get hungry.

That's about it for this week.  Até mais!

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

(Once again I can't figure out how to turn this picture--but as Carter says, "this isn't for the weak stomached or cat lovers--I found a completely squashed cat on the road!  Kid still has his sense of humor, that's for sure…)

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