9-25-07

Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:05 PM
To: Allred, Kevin
Subject: Did I mention that I like candy?

 

Hello to the peoples that I know and all the rest of you too,

 

I passed the half way mark of my CTM stay on Saturday!  As of today I have 4 weeks left.  We went to the São Paulo temple today for the first time.  It´s amazing inside.

 

We go proselyting on Friday again.  I don´t know where we´ll be going, but hopefully we´ll be able to communicate better this time.

 

You guys should hear the Brazilian National Anthem.  It’s pretty sweet.  We sing it every Sunday.

 

Elder Didier spoke to us on Tuesday.  He’s the Area President for Brazil, I think.  He knew five languages other than Portuguese, and then they called him over Brazil and he had to learn a new one.  He’s an amazing speaker.

 

President Cardon gave us 2 rules for when we are out in the mission field.

1- We are not allowed to go to any church meetings unless we have an investigator.

2- We must go to all church meetings.

I thought that was pretty funny.

 

Elder Arslanian and I have assigned every other companionship in the district one day out of each week where we are going to focus on helping them out in anyway we can. 

 

Just to let everyone know, the mail has already been on strike twice since I got here.  I think I’ll still get all the letters, but they’ve been rolling in a little late.  I think it’s taking 2 weeks, mais ou menos, for the letters to get here.  If anyone else has sent me a letter and wondered why I haven’t written back, just let them know I haven’t gotten it yet.  Why doesn’t everyone just move to Brazil?  It only costs 1 centavo (about 1/2 a cent) to mail letters within Brazil.  Foreign is about the same as the US rate.

 

There is a ton of diversity here in São Paulo, but I think pretty much everyone speaks Portuguese.  I’ve heard that my mission is the smallest or second smallest in the world.  Is there anyway of finding that out?

 

I improvised my bed so that my feet can stick off the edge, but I have to change it back every Wednesday for room checks.

 

So this email has been pretty random, but life here it pretty much always the same, and there are only a few random things I can write about.

 

--

Elder Allred

 

9-11-07

Hello peoples (I think that means my family, friends, and basically everybody except for people I don’t really know),

 

We have two Brazilians that moved into our room.  They sure teach us a lot of Portuguese.  The older elder is Elder Arrdengi.  He is 22 an was baptized just over a year ago.  He says that he gave up girls, music, and the devil to come on a mission.  He is the only member of his family.  Everyone else in his family is Jehovah Witnesses.  He knows a little bit of English, but we’ve had to tell him that half the words he knows aren’t very appropriate because he learned them all from American music.  He says he’s going to baptize all the American celebrities that he knows.  Most of the Brazilians that speak any English here learned it from American music, movies, or video games.  One of our teachers learned it by playing video games.  Elder Arrdengi has a tattoo that he got before he was baptized.

Elder Arros is the other Brazilian in our room.  His family has been member since he was 9.  He’s really awesome.

We hear gunshots quite a lot outside our window at nights.  But don’t worry; the MTC is a very protected place.  Yesterday I set off one of the motion sensor alarms when I was walking next to the gate.  They said it’s because I’m too tall.

Boy, whoever put these keyboards together did it all wrong.  It’s almost as if these keyboards were meant to me used while typing some other language.  If I had more time, I would take off the keys and put them back on in the right places for them just to be nice.  But we don’t get too much free time.

Last Tuesday I had to (I mean got to) play piano at the devotional - in front of the entire MTC.  I only had to play the prelude and the opening and closing hymns, but you’d think they’d assign the job to one of the elders who can play good.

This Friday we get to go proselyting out in São Paulo.  We’re going to a place that’s supposed to be the Time Square of Brazil.  It’s really busy.  I have the street contact down in Portuguese, but if they try to talk back and ask questions, I’ll probably have to result to hand signals and gestures.  While I’m outside today, I want to practice giving away a pass-along card before I go back to the CTM.

Something that is really cool is that one Elder in our district going to our mission worked as a network administrator before his mission, so he might get stuck doing all the computer stuff in the mission office instead of me.  Ha!

We went to the Campinas Temple again last P-day, but not today.  The São Paulo temple is closed for maintenance.  We do the sessions in English.

Could one of you guys see which way the toilets flushes above the equator.  Is it clock-wise or counter clock-wise?

There is probably more I was going to write but I always forget.  I had to go through my journal to see what happened these last two weeks so I could write something.

 

Love, me (the name I call myself, fa[r] a long long way to run), Elder Allred

 

8-28-07

Hello my family and other peoples.

 

I've been in Brazil for a week now.  My P-days are on Tuesdays.  We went to the Campinas temple this morning.  They say that between the Campinas and São Paulo temples, we get to go about 7 times while we are in the CTM.

All we do here is eat, sleep, and study.  Because São Paulo is pretty densely populated, it's built vertically.  Up the stairs, and down the stairs, eat, and sleep, and study.  But really, I enjoy being here a lot.

The CTM here is a lot better than the MTC in Provo, because we jump right into the language and the culture.  We go proselyting in Portuguese in 2 weeks.

We eat Brazilian food here, and then maybe once a week, they make an attempt on something American.  Besides that, we eat rice and beans pretty much every meal, but sometimes it’s beans and rice.  They do have a lot of meat and fruit as well.  The recommended rule here is to eat different 7 colors of fruits and vegetables each day.

My companion is Elder Arslanian.  He's way awesome.  He just became our district leader for while we're here.  I'm his assistant, and so I've had to learn how to remind him to do things instead of the other way around.

Oh, by the way, Arslanian means "Son of the lion" - it's Armenian.  He's from Nampa, Idaho.  His ancestors were converted and came to America about 100 years ago.  Right after they left, their village was massacred, so the gospel literally saved their lives.

The uncle of one of the guys in my room, Elder Christensen, was my Book of Mormon teacher at BYU-Idaho.  My companion in that class, Elder Newby, is also here.  He's going to the Amazon and leaves in just a week or two.

I'm still trying to find one more Elder to sing barbershop on P-days with a few of us.  It just doesn't work with 3 parts.

MY companion and I went around to a few shops today (yep, they actually let us out once a week).  We did pretty good in our broken Portuguese.

I haven't seen any blue sky since we got here.  When we flew in, we couldn't even see the city because of the cloud cover.  It was like a big sea of white clouds, and then we went down into them.  But, now that we're under the clouds (except most of it is pollution), we've only seen grey skies.

Tudo bem.

I love you all

Love, me,

Elder Allred

 

9-18-07

Hello everybody! Stop. 

 

This is Elder Allred reporting in after 4 weeks on the mission.  Stop.

We went proselyting on Friday!  Stop.  It was really awesome.  Stop.

They gave each companionship 18 pass-along cards and 2 copies of the Book of Mormon.  Elder Arslanian and I used our connections to get 4 more pass-along cards. :) We went to a really busy street where it seemed everyone had somewhere they needed to go and they needed to get there faster than everyone else.  We were able to hand out everything, except for one of the cards that Elder Arslanian found in his pocket at the end.  The coolest experience was when we started talking to one man about the restoration and the Book of Mormon.  We gave him the Book of Mormon pass-along card so he could call to get one.  We kept talking for a while, and when we thought he might actually call, we decided to offer him the Book of Mormon right there.  He said he didn’t want it right then, but that he would call.  We got about 20 yards away when he called for us to come back, and then asked if he could have the book.  Something seemed to hit him that he needed it.  We gave him the book, and started going over a couple scriptures with him.  We shared with him the Introduction, the Promise, and 2 Nephi 25:26 to show how the Book of Mormon testifies of Christ and teaches his gospel.

Not everyone was receptive.  Most people just said they were Catholic and had a Bible, and wouldn’t let us explain or share anything.  A couple people just got up and left as soon as we got within a few feet.

We went to the Campinas temple again this morning.  It’s really neat.

The sad thing about today is that our Brazilian roommates left.  They were really neat guys.  Neither of them was born in the church, but both have the strongest desire to serve the Lord on a mission.

Did I tell you guys about the traffic here?  It’s crazy.  Every vehicle, including the busses is stick.  And yet they seem to think they can drive as fast as they want until they get within 5 inches of the car in front of them.  The lanes are really narrow, but just when you think you can’t get any closer to a car, a motorcycle drives in between.  One of our teachers said that the white lines that divide the lanes really are for the motorcycles.  In a city of over 20 million people, there are on average 5 motorcycle deaths each day.  I think the motorcyclists have a philosophy:  The faster you go, the easier it is to get into small places.  ("Uh, oh.  I don’t think we can fit between those two cars just ahead.  We’d better speed up!").  When we were in the bus going to Polista Avenue (where we proselyted), we got stuck in a traffic jam (well it seemed like a traffic jam because all the cars were only about an inch apart, but we were still going at least 40 mph) and there was a emergency vehicle trying to get through.  It was crazy.  All 8 lanes on our side were jammed pack, but the emergency vehicle was still able to weave in and out, and we saw it somehow fit between two lanes at one part and go through like that bus on Harry Potter.

I don’t really have much to write, so I go off on tangents a lot.  The language is coming good and we’re getting the lessons down.  I wouldn’t waste this much time on the computers, but my companion insists on spending the entire allowed 45 minutes on his emails.

 

Q&A:

How did your street contacting go?

Grrrrrrreat!

How many missionaries are in the MTC?

I don’t know.  Maybe 250?

Do you know how many members there are in Sao Paulo?

No idea.

 

Ha!  That was an easy test.  I think I got every question right.

 

Love, Elder Allred

 

P.S.  I like candy.

 

Mission Pictures

Well, my mission date is approaching. I have set up my Picasa Web Albums for you all to view pictures that I email back home. This will be available at http://picasaweb.google.com/elderjasonallred/MissionPicture. Right now, all it has is the picture that I sent in with my papers.
Further updates to come.
--
Jason

Drum roll please...

Guess What!  I got my mission call!

I've been assigned to labor in the Sao Paulo, Brazil South Mission as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I report to the MTC in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Wednesday, 22 August 2007, and I will be gone for approximately 2 years.
I will preach the gospel in the Portuguese language!

- Elder Jason Morgan Allred

14 March 2007 - Pi-Day

This is another test of my automated posting attempts.
As an update, I have started my mission papers, but I still need my wisdom teeth pulled.
I've been really busy with school, and it doesn't look like I'll be able to get them out until after the semester is over.
Hopefully they can be completed and turned in by the end of the second week in April.
--
Soon to be Elder Allred