missão celestial!‏

Things haven't changed much since I last wrote. The language is still hard. Now I can recognize most of the words people say to me, but still they don´t have much meaning. I have to translate them into English in my head before I can feel their meaning. I´ll keep working hard. Right now I´m a sponge immersed in Brazilians. I think I smell like a Brazilian now. I don´t think it's a bad smell; it´s just a unique smell. I think it comes from eating rice and beans every day. You begin to sweat it out through your skin.

I had a cool experience with prayer the other day. It was about 7pm, and Elder Snow and I were trying to get to Rio Tinto to meet with our district leader. You either need to ride a bus, or find a driver to pay, or take a taxi, or hitch hike; usually you try to find a ride in that order. This night, the buses weren´t coming around, and we couldn´t find a driver or a taxi, so we were trying hard to hitch hike or something. We didn´t know what we were going to do. After about 20 minutes at the bus stop looking for rides, I said, "Elder Snow, keep your eyes open, I´m going to pray." Then after I prayed a tour bus came around the corner. It was a nice one with air conditioning and soft reclining seats, and they let us ride to Rio Tinto for free. I was smiling for an hour after that.

Today we went to a big statue in our zone. It was of a Catholic friar I think. If I can, I´ll try later tonight to send pictures. It was a pretty cool thing.

I hope everyone enjoys conference. I´m really excited for it because I think I might get to see it in English. I miss English. I just haven´t had a good conversation in English in a realllly long time. All of my conversations are just what needs to be said. They're never profound or personal. I feel like I would be a great missionary if I could just learn the language! Right now I´m putting in a lot of work, and not getting much to show for it, but I know the blessing are coming soon. If the blessings aren´t coming to Brazil, then they´re probably going to my family back home, so keep your eyes out for them! I love you all. Thanks for your letters and your love.

Mamanguape

:) Mamanguape is a cool area :) I´m enjoying it. It´s pretty hot, but not unbearable. All of the roads are either dirt or paved with stone. My first few days here it rained quite a bit, but my companion, Elder Snow, said that it doesn´t rain here very often. I´ve seen tons of plant and animals here. Everything is green, and there are tons of stray cats and dogs. I´ve seen a lot of lizards, frogs, cows, horses, goats chickens, and birds. So far all of the people here have been really accepting of our message, but Elder Snow says its not always like that; we´ve just had a lucky streak lately I guess. We teach a few lessons everyday, and right now we have a lot of investigators, but it´s tough to get them to come to church. This week we tried getting all of our investigators to come, but we only got a handful of kids, which made us a half hour late. One of the kids brought a puppy with him, which was frustrating. We tried tying it up outside the church, but it just cried, so we sent him into primary and then gave his dog away to another family up the street that looked like they would really take care of it. I don´t think puppies are too hard to come by here, and the boy wasn´t sad that we gave his dog away.

The language here is a lot harder than I expected. People in the north talk especially fast, and have an accent that I don´t recognize. I´m practicing a lot, but it will be a while before I can communicate well. I just don´t talk very much right now. I have a little memorized part that I share in each lesson about the restoration, then I let my companion do the rest. Right now there are elections in Brazil, so there are huge trucks with tons of speakers blasting music about the candidates driving around all the time. They are super loud and super annoying, and they always drive by at the worst times, like when you´re trying to teach an investigator how to pray, and you´re trying to whisper in his ear what to say next...

I got kinda jealous when I heard that Ben got to baptize someone before I did, so I made up for it this week by baptizing two people :P They weren´t people that I taught. They were converted by two Brazilians in my district, but they wanted me to do the ordinance. It was difficult, because the two men had really difficult names for me to pronounce, and I had to hurry and memorize the prayer in Portuguese. I kept trying to ask one of the men to step forward in the font, but he didn´t understand what was happening, and he was trying to dive into the water before I could say the prayer. It made me smile :) It's tough to baptize grown men in shallow water, but everything went fine, and it was a good experience for me.

Here they don´t usually eat three meals a day. The people with money usually only eat two, so we end up having huge lunches everyday. Yesterday at lunch I probably ate twice as much as I should have. I was stuffed, but I kept craving more food, so I kept eating. I think that's the definition of binging, but it felt really good. We get 150 reais twice a month to buy what we need. I think that's probably more than Amber, and the food here is pretty cheap. A good meal is probably 5 reais, and you can get more bread than you can eat for one meal.

I´m going to try to send some pictures of the MTC, and my first week in Mamanguape. The cartoon is of my instructors, and the other is of my whole district.

I'm a REAL Missionary now!

Well, for the past 9 weeks I´ve felt like a fake missionary. Fake contacting and fake lessons all day long. The last week in the MTC felt like one of the longest. We did our last fake lesson on Saturday, and that went well, and then on Monday we took a lot of pictures and said all of our goodbyes. It was sad to leave all my friends that I´d grown close to over the last two months. I think it was harder to leave some of them than to leave from Pleasant Grove, because all of my friends and family in Pleasant Grove I knew I would see again, but I don´t have that guarantee with any of my friends here in Brazil. Yesterday morning I got up at 5am and went to the airport at 6am. For breakfast I had a cold cheese and butter sandwich, and juice that tasted like melted popsicles :P I´m glad that I don´t have to eat the MTC food anymore. I flew with some Brazilians and Sister Olney, first to Recife, then to Joao Pessoa. The flight was actually pretty quiet. When we got to Joao Pessoa our president was there waiting. His name is President Hall, and he´s an amazing guy. Super friendly and very spiritual. He took us back to the mission office where we had grilled cheese and more juice, and we had some orientation. There I got my current companion. His name is Elder Snow. He´s 22, and he´s from Santaquin. He seems kinda shy, but he´s really nice, and he is going to teach me a lot. Pres. Hall said that Elder Snow is a special missionary, and he was inspired to pair me up with him for a specific purpose. I´ll keep my eyes open for what I need to learn. After orientation we went back to the President's house and had tacos :) Brazil doesn´t have tacos, so all the new missionaries, including the Brazilians, were pretty excited. We took pictures there, and had a short testimony meeting. I can´t wait until I can actually speak what I feel in Portuguese. I have so much more of a testimony than I can say. I feel like my testimony is growing daily, about tons of different aspects of the gospel.

After the testimony meeting we went back to the Moroni house. We had 28 elders sleeping there! It was pretty hot and humid. I slept on the balcony. This morning I got up and came to my zone. I´m living in Mamanguape. It's just 40 minutes north of Joao Pessoa. I feel like I'm inside the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. Plants grow everywhere, and its just all around a cool place. I´ll try to send pictures as soon as I can, but that might end up being Monday.

From now on my p-days are on Mondays and I have an hour to mail. It feels so nice to actually be able to write a full letter! and read a few emails too. I´ll let you all know as soon as I start baptizing people :) I love you all and hope you´re having great fall weather. It´s going to be between 80 and 100 degrees year round around here :P I´m enjoying it today though!

New mailing address as of Sept. 7th, 2010:

New mailing address as of Sept. 7th, 2010:

Elder Jacob Forsyth
Brazil Joao Pessoa Mission
% R. Deputado Jose' Mariz, 515
Tambauzinho
58042-020 Joao Pessoa - PB
Brazil

Last Week in Sao Paulo

Man, the MTC has been great, and I´ve learned a lot of things, but I´m kind of excited to leave. I´ve been sitting in the same classroom 8 hours a day for the past two months and I´m ready for a change :) Joao Pessoa is going to be so different in so many ways. There will be sun, and heat and I won´t be hanging out with 200 missionaries everyday; just one. There will probably be more bugs, and different food. I´m looking forward to walking around a lot more and losing the 20 pounds I put on here. I think the last time I weighed myself I was 177 pounds. I think I´ll loose it pretty quick though; especially if I get some sort of tape worm :P haha. I don´t think I will, but it could happen ya know.

This week we went into the middle of Sao Paulo and handed out Books of Mormon. It was a ton of fun. People here are really nice. I´m definitely not fluent in Portuguese, but I was able to have good conversations with everyone I met. Elder Anderson and I handed out 5 books and met a lot of nice people. Usually we start our all our conversations with, "Do you believe in Christ?", and they´ll always turn around at least to say, "yes", but the last man we talked to said "no", and it totally changed the direction of our conversation. He was interested to hear what we had to say about God and prophets and the bible and the Book of Mormon, and we ended up giving him a copy of our book. It was really cool. Today was our last p day, so I bought a few books at the temple, and a Brazil jersey up the street. I cant wait to see what cool things I´ll find in the north.

I want my brothers and sisters to write and tell me how school is going. Ben is the only one who has written me in 2 months! What is this! Thanks so much for your love and support. I´ll try my best to represent the family well here in Brazil, and I´ll try to make my next email more exciting! A lot will happen this week! I love you all lots.

Holy Cow!

Holy cow! I´m almost done with the MTC! I only will write from the dumb MTC lab computer one more time, and then I´ll be in Joao Pessoa. I fly out from here on September 7th. If you want to send me any more letters you´ll need to start sending them to Joao Pessoa, because they take about 2 weeks to get to me. My MTC time went by so fast... I don´t remember my Joao Pessoa address, so check my blog for it. ( if someone would send me an email to remind me of it I´d appreciate it.) A lot of Brazilians here think my companion looks like my brother. I think its funny. I´ll send you some pictures in a couple weeks. Amber was wondering if I´ve learned to snap like a Brazilian. The answer is yes. I don´t know how to describe it, but it´s kinda cool. I went to the Campinas Temple today. A ton of Campinas missionaries were there, but not Amber :( I met her mission president though. He told me Amber is a great missionary, and is making the family proud. I´m having a great time here. Not a lot of new things have happened. I love my new Brazilians. One is white with blond hair and blue eyes. He speaks pretty good english too. We learn a lot from each other. His ancestors are from Italy. He´s funny, because he knows a ton of slang words. He´s constantly saying things like, "Is the word 'crap' a swear word?", and I have to answer, "No, but you probably shouldn´t use it that much." I love it. Thanks for all your love and support. I love being a missionary. I´ve really begun to enjoy doing hard things, because then when medium things come up, they feel easy :)

Hey everybody

I keep finding things in Brazil that remind me that I´m not in America anymore. I never thought I´d find myself cold in Brazil, or cold in the middle of august. It's been about 50 or 60 degrees the last couple weeks. It feels nice mostly, but I get the chills every once in a while. I laugh that I was trying to get a tan before I came here. I wanted a tan so I´d avoid burning in Joao Pessoa, but now after 2 months in doors I´ve lost all the tan I had to begin with. This week we had a big church open house thing. It was neat. The choir got to sing at it for a few nights. Someone said the event might end up in the Ensign or something, but I don´t know much about it. They made us sign press releases though. I went proselyting for the first time this week. I went on splits with a Brazilian, so it wasn´t that hard. I´d try to introduce myself, and explain the Book of Mormon, and when I´d stall out he would pick up the conversation again. We handed out 9 Books of Mormon. We were only supposed to do 6, but I thought is was fine that we did extra :) It was tons of fun.

We lost our second set of Brazilians this week. That means I´ve got 6 weeks down, and only 3 to go. Only one more set of Brazilians and then I´m out of here. Time has been going by so fast... I hope my whole mission doesn´t fly by this fast. I´m really enjoying being a missionary. The schedule is tough, but every night I go to bed knowing that I accomplished something. That feels pretty nice. Today I got the chance to go to the Campinas Temple. It was really pretty. I didn´t get the chance to let Amber know I was going there, so I didn´t get to see her. I don´t even know if she could get permission to go there. I don´t now how close to the temple she is now that she´s been transferred. I´m going back to the Campinas temple next week though, so maybe I´ll get to see her then. The Sao Paulo temple is closed for cleaning. Mikayla was wondering if I learned how to tie my ties like Elder Miller. I learned to tie the cobra knot one of my first days here. I thing it´s way legit, and now my whole district wears it. Thanks for all your love and support. Everything is going great here.