Moore on a Mission in Florianopolis, Brazil: Welcome to the Mission Field

Well family everything is good, I’m in Criciuma! It is in the southern part of Santa Catarina state. It is a big town! It has about 200,000 people. Our area is the main parts of the town and smaller towns north and south of our area, it is huge! We are in Criciuma 1A is what it’s called. My companion/trainer is Elder Johnson. He is super awesome, and he is from Pennsylvania. He is on his last transfer, so I’m only with him for one transfer which stinks! I am learning a ton from him!

Our mission president is bomb! I didn’t get to talk to him a ton but he really seems awesome! His wife Sis Silva helped me with asthma meds and what to do with them when I’m running low, so I’m taken care of, so don’t worry mom!

I will take pics of the house next week and send you those. Just warning you it isn’t a hotel. In fact the Elders say it’s probably the worst in the mission. It is small and a little and worn down. However, I do have a twin bed, so that is awesome. Oh and there is no bidet either, so just tp.

Our apartment has me, Elder Johnson, Elder Cordosa, and Elder Dos Anjos, the other two are Brazilians and they are awesome. They say I’m really far ahead in Portuguese for my first week out in the field and will be fluent quick. However, it is still frustrating trying to talk in a lesson and not being able to say the whole point with the limited vocabulary. I know I just have to keep working at it and the Lord will bless me.

The field is a busy place. I haven’t had a lot of time to take pics and stuff! Also we can’t use dropbox, so I’ll just have to upload and email them to you. We can’t play soccer in our mission, kind of a bummer.

We have been batatao mao (knocking doors a lot) which is where we clap outside the door like a doorbell its cool! My Portuguese isn’t that great, I definitely need to learn a lot but I can understand the majority of stuff so that’s a relief. There is a lot of European culture here. Most of the people are super nice and receptive and randomly someone will drive by and want to talk to us, and we can go teach them. Some of the people are catholic and evangelist when we contact them and they don’t want to listen.

To answer your questions, we get a big water jug of mineral water delivered weekly. Elder Johnson said he has gone his whole mission w/o any problems its super safe in this state. They celebrate natal which is the same day as Christmas. They also feed us good at almoco! In fact one night for Family Home Evening (FHE) at this lady named Ester’s house we ate a ton it was amazing!

General Conference was great! It was awesome, they were all great talks. We didn’t get home to really late Saturday night after listening to Priesthood session. I saw Zac sing that was awesome! There were some great talks, and I look forward to studying them in the future.

Only send mail to the mission home! Missionties mail also needs to go snail mail to Mission Office.

I LOVE YOU ALL SOOO MUCH! You are the BOMB! Until next week.

Te Amo,
Elder JT Moore