10 Days Without A P-Day

Hey, sorry you´ve been missing the e-mail from me, but the fact is that I didn´t send one. We got a letter from Pres. Leal last week, which was a letter from Pres. Didier, and our P-day got changed from Monday to Wednesday. So from now on, expect a letter on Wednesday. Needless to say, the last couple of days have been a bit difficult. 10 days straight without a P-day. Ouch!

Ha, so I hope that everybody wasn´t too worried about me. Rest assured that if I am struck by a car or bitten by a rabid animal (and there are many in this town), you´ll probably hear about it by phone, so no news from me is good news. [Mom is settled now because of the examples Luke shared… not!]

So first, I´m gettin’ letters from some of my missionary buddies? Sweet! From Mrs. Kelemen, huh? Mother of Mark Kelemen, who is serving in the Atlanta, Georgia Spanish speaking mission, very cool. I´ll be looking forward to those. Thank you!

Well, I made it thru my first transfer. It was hard, with not knowing the language and just generally being new, but I think that I did well. And surprise, I´m getting a new companion! Elder M. got transferred to another city, I just said goodbye to him this morning. I haven´t met my new companion yet, (right now I´m hanging with another Elder from my district until our new companions arrive from Londrina) but his name is Elder R. Johnson (R. because there are many Johnson’s, and there needs to be a difference on some nametags, and apparently he´s even more musically inclined then I am) and he´s American.

Now there are some good things and bad things about that. The good thing is that now if I have a question that I can´t express in Portuguese, I can ask him and get an answer in English. The bad part is that I have to watch the temptation to speak English too much, and also that my accent in Portuguese probably won´t develop as fast with an American, but that´s all right, I need to get the pronunciation down first.

So I have yet to meet my new companion, he should be here in about three hours. I´ve spent half this p-day waiting at the bus station because the LEZ´s didn´t know exactly what time they would be arriving, which was annoying, but that´s ok. I´ll let you guys know how it goes.

Oh, I keep forgetting to mention, but I got a violin from somebody here. Got, in the sense that a Sister in the ward heard that I play, and she´s letting me borrow it for as long as I´m in the area. I think it´s a 3/4 size one, not full, so it´s slightly awkward to play, but it´s nice to play the violin again. Apparently, I´m playing in Stake Conference at an undetermined date. Also, I managed to teach myself how to play some chords on the violin, so now it´s like I have a mini-guitar with me. Heh, it´s pretty cool. I learned to play A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief with the chords (It only has two, Ab and Eb, who knew? Hard to play on the Piano, Easy on the Violin/Guitar). So anyway, I´m pretty happy about that.

As far as getting adjusted, I think that I´m doing better, both language and culture-wise. As I get better with the language, I find that I can relate to the people better. Last week, some of the guys our age from our ward came over and we played a couple of games of Uno. It was pretty fun, and got a little competitive.

Well, not too much else. Again, P-day is Wednesday now (subject to further change, so if go more than the usual time without hearing from me, just assume that that´s the reason), and pray that my skills with the language will continue to improve with my new American comp.

Thanks again, and I look forward to the mail time. We´ll get some during our next district meeting (Monday or Tuesday I believe), so I´ll see if the shtuff you sent arrives.

Thanks again, and bye!

Well, ´till next week, Excelsior!

Elder =w= Heperi