I now hail from Timon!

Dear Everyone,

First off, my P-Day is now on Monday. So I´m emailing one day earlier than normal this week.

I´ve arrived in Teresina safe and sound after a not-so-bad of a flight. The thing that threw me off though was my connection from Brasilia to Teresina. I went from São Paulo to Brasília then from Brasília to Teresina. But the second flight had two destinations; Teresina then Fortaleza! I´ve never heard of that before! But I guess it saves money because Teresina is a smaller airport so taking a pit stop their then continuing on is better than having an individual flight.

My trainer is the most beautiful man in the world (he told me to write this if you couldn´t tell). His name is Elder Harmon. But! I also have a second companion because I came in alone and that made the number of Elders in the mission become uneven. My second companion is just as beautiful! His name is Elder Cook. And oh my goodness they´re so much fun. I love them! They work hard and they teach me a lot. Elder Harmon finishes his mission at the end of this transfer. Elder Cook has been out for 8 weeks already. He was stuck in Provo for 10 weeks though so I never got a chance to see him at the CTM in São Paulo.

I came in on a Friday and had an interview with my mission president, President Dias. He´s an amazing man. And his wife is so wonderful! He gave me some great counsel. I know I will love it here. After a bit of training about logisitics, I worked with the assistants to the President. We taught about 4ish lessons if I remember right. They we´re smart (but I didn´t think so at the time) and had me pray before each lesson. And they would turn to me in the lesson and give me a look that said "here you go pick it up from here". I hope I didn´t mess things up too badly. I actually really appreciate how they did it because it really helped me out. It gave me self-confidence, and got me speaking. If I´m afraid to try to speak Portuguese, I´m not going to learn it. I have to be brave and open up my mouth and make a million mistakes. That´s how I´ll learn.

On Saturday I had lunch at President Dias´ home. They found out it was my birthday so they surprised me with a cake. It was pretty much delicious I´ll be honest. After that he assigned me to the area of Timon! It´s just west of Teresina on the other side of the Parnaíba river. I can see the city from a few places in my area. It´s a wonderful first area too! The members of the ward are so awesome! They´ve given us all sorts of referrals. So we´re always doing something. It saves us time too because we don´t have to go out and do the finding ourselves.

Yesterday was Sunday, and I had a fun time trying to understand everything at church. I could understand about 2/3rds of everything that went on, but I didn´t even try the last hour. Instead I studied a lesson plan that I felt I was a bit unprepared for that we would be teaching later in the day. Then we ate lunch at a member´s home. I´m not sure what it was, but it tasted good! I think it´s better this way too. I´m not going to ask what it is, I´m just going to eat it.

My favorite thing that happened on Sunday was a lesson that we had in a bakery. It went so well. The husband and wife said they know our message will help their family become the happy family that they used to be. Even if nothing comes of this, we´ll have at least helped them as much as we could. At the very least, we´re planting seeds.

Because there´s three Elders in one companionship (which is not normal, Elder Harmon finishes in two weeks and this is the first time in his whole mission he´s been in a trio), we had divisions. Elder Harmon and I went off and taught some investigators while Elder Cook and a member from the ward went off and taught some other investigators. We were able to get so much accomplished. I enjoyed it. But not the rain or the mud. Everything else except for that.

Everything is going great! These next 22 months are going to be hard, but they will be worth it!

Love you all!
Elder Rackham