Jordan's Latest Email from Brazil

hey guys whats up? so its been yet another week so that rocks. id say the time is going by fast but then i think wait i have a whole pregnancy to get through still haha. ash and mom should know how that feels.

anyway i´m doing good. elder mcknight and i are doing great. we are working well and just having a fun time. ha so new years here was cool. so ya fireworks are legal here too and everyone buys them. its a nonstop thing for 20 mintues at midnight. it was crazy. we filmed it haha and it rocked. we got up on our roof and watched the fireworks explode all around us, literally. one blew up 25 feet from us in the air. some one shot it at an angle haha it was tight but way scary, dont worry mom, i cant do it again because i wont be in brazil next new years, if i was yes i would do it agian haha just to clear up any doubts.

so im happy on the mission still. nothing to new since last week. just kind of chilling and working and stuff since then. um o ya mcknight and i are traveling tomorrow to cuiaba. we have to renew our visas too haha, so that should be fun. i love working with the brazilian government, that was sarcastic if you couldnt tell. thet have way too many police with machine guns and assalt rifles. no worries though it will be good. so ya i should get those Christmas packages tomorrow. so thats good finaly. o tell thanks to the sanchez, they said they sent me a package which i should get in a bit. i will send another letter for josh today, is he getting all those by the way, i send one about every two weeks.

so i want to send you guys tereré so i´ll send a package to you. it will probably cost 20 bucks to send just to let you know, but no biggy it will be worth it! its good stuff. i´ll send instructions in the package. hey so if you guys want stuff from here. you gots to send me money. if you want soccer jerseys, they are about 10 dollars, and stuff, if you want flip flops its like 10 dollars.

so anyway sounds like everyone is doing way good. mom says hunter is in way good shape, thats sick bro, i´m way jealous. i wish i could be!! ha but when i get back i´ll hit it up hard core with ya hunt. and dad got sick, that sucks never any fun, you better start getting into shape too dad if you want to keep up with me and hunt and do fun stuff with us when i get back. you got nine months old man!! swimming is one of the best things for you back anyway so get into the pool! and ash is 32 weeks into the pregnancy, that went quick i guess. i cant believe the baby will pop out soon! way sick! and sounds like everything is just going way good, i´m proud of you guys, keep up the good work, and buy tons of fireworks for me!! ha i love them they are way sick, i´m guessing its like utah where you can buy the ground fire works, or is it bottle rockets too? let me know, its important.

anyway nothing else really i guess, just work!!

love you all and miss you all a ton

love

elder williams

Email from Jordan in Brazil on January 8, 2010

hey guys whats up? so i made it another week, thats good right?? haha anyway i´m doing way good. we had a baptism yesterday! a woman named Fernanda, i´ll send a picture, it was way cool, my comp baptized her but its all good, it was still sweet. her boyfriend will be baptized this week on sunday and we also have two others schedualed for this sunday and then two more for the sunday following that!! its cool. anyway the language is still pretty hard, i can understand about 10 times more now though then when i got here. my pronunciation sucks really bad, i have to speak way loud and slow or people don´t understand me ha, but i talk to a lot of people it seems like, mainly little kids of the members, all the little kids seem to like me so i just play with them while my comp is talking to people about stuff. but they help me a lot with the language and correct me and stuff. also all the members here a really cool. we eat at noon here wich is like 8 in the morning there, and we always eat at someones house, most of the time a members but sometimes at investigators. its way good, big meal and then just small meals for breakfast and lunch. its way cool and i was used to it like the first day just because of the shock and stuff i wasnt that hunger so i never really had to try to get used to it.

anyway i´ll answer some questions now, the money from the church finally came so no worries about that anymore, its all good. we get 120 reis every two weeks which is pretty easy to live off of. i´m in the city of tijucal, its on the outscurts of cuiaba, i live in the state mato groso, just to make finding it easier. there are four of us in our house, its a little brizialan house, a pretty nice one actually. we have one room where we all sleep wich has a swamp cooler in it, its pretty big, about the size of our music room. then a room the same size for the front enterance, which is where all of our wardrobes are, then a kitchen, its pretty samll, 7 x 11 or something like that, then two more rooms with our study desks in them about the size of my room back home. and two bathrooms with showers. its way nice, we have a backyard too with a shower out there, my comp loves to shower out there ha, (we have walls like ten feet high so no one can see him, no worries.)

the language is coming, it will take a while though, but no worries its all good. my investigators are doing good, all advancing, and my comp is good too, he has been out a year longer then me and is actually from az, he lived in gilbert for a while too.

to answer grandma´s and aunt vicky´s questions, the people are nice here, anyone you really stop on the street will give you there address so you can come by and teach them, they probably wont be there when you come by though ha, i try and speak the language and it is doing ok, i can communicate but its getting better. i eat rice and beans everyday for lunch, its good. its white rice and pinto beans but the beans are more like a bean soup so there is a lot of flavor. also meat all the time. enjoy the cold because it is hot year around here, only difference is that we are in the rainy season. so thats nice, there are usually clouds around and the rain comes in like 20-30 minute bursts. but, when it rains, it rains, you go out in it for litterally 5 seconds and you are soaked, its crazy.

we don´t have food storage that i know of, maybe but we just get an allowence every two weeks to buy food and stuff, we basically fend for ourselves. its good though, sounds like yuri is liking being with the missionaries, way cool!! i´m not in the jungle,but i´m in the jungle if that makes sense. i´m not in the amazon but, its basically like a jungle, its green everywhere where there isn´t a house, building or road!! and the roads are half and half, main ones are paved, and a lot of others are just dirt, and the paved ones might as well be dirt because they are destroyed. if you thought utah was bad, come to brazil. and its flippin humid. when its like 80 in a house i still sweat, ridiculous, but i like it!!

anyway i´m going to send this email real quick and make another one to continue where i left off.

PART 2

anyway to finish up, this week we taught about 5 lessons a day, we have to basically start from scratch but its all good. we baptized a woman and that was sweet!! oh my roomates are elder harrison, elder onoles and my comp elder rubalcava, all are way cool.

so spiritual part i guess, yesterday during church, (church here is reverse order, sacrament last) i was asked to bear my testimony during sacrament, so i said i would, so i got up there, not knowing what in the heck to say so i told them my português wasn´t good but i would try ha, but it ended out being way good, i hardly stumbled on what to say and just bore my testimony on Jesus, it was way cool, i think most of my grammer and stuff was correct, it was way sweet. then after sacrament i was talking to fernanda, she dosen´t really talk a lot, and she said she liked what i said, and i said thanks and that potuguês is still way hard, but then she told me she thinks its beautiful when i talk, first i was surprised that i understood what she said and then i was surprised at what she said ha!! it was way cool i was way happy about that.

well anyway i´ve been reading jesus the christ a lot. i´ve read about 150 pages in the last week and a half! and i love it, it's such a great book and my testimony on Christ has grown so much because of it, that is what my testimony is based on right now, that and the book of mormon, which i love reading too by the way, i never really thought about how incredible our Savior was and reading this book has made me think about it a lot and how amazing He was, i love Him and what He did for us with all my heart. what i´ve realized in the last month is that our whole church is very simple, we have a prophet so we can be taught the gospel of christ, which is faith, repentence, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end, and through these we use the atonement of Jesus Christ, the atonement is what it is all about.

anyway the church is true, i´m alive and its hot in brazil.


love you all tons!!! have a good week! i´ll write more next week!!

Love elder Williams

here is my address to send letters and packages too, it takes about two weeks to get stuff to me

Eder Williams
Missão Brasil Cuiabá
Cx postal 10264
CEP:78050-975

Elder Jordan Williams is Finally in Brazil

Jordan called on Monday, December 21 to let us know his Visa to Brazil finally arrived after 12 long weeks in the Provo MTC. He was pretty excited. He told us he would call us from the Salt Lake Airport the next morning.

The next morning came and went, and we heard nothing. Wednesday came and went, and nothing. By Thursday, the day before Christmas, I finally emailed him, as would any other good mother, and asked him if he was still alive.

Thursday afternoon we finally received a call from him, to inform us that

1) he was alive, and
2) he was now in the Cuiba, Brazil.
3) To inform us he would officially call us tomorrow on Christmas. I guess this call Christmas Eve call didn't count.

It took him 36 hours top get to Brazil! He went from snow on the ground to 100 degrees in a sauna. A bit of a shock to one's system.

Elder Williamms called home Christmas morning to tell us what time his official call would be. We chuckled that he called home to tell us when he was going to call home.

As it ended out, a missionaries mother from Ohio called us around 5 PM and told us it was our turn to call this crazy 1 billion digit number in Brazil, but we had to wait for 15 minutes for the phone to cool off and get charged again. We're not in Kansas anymor Toto.

We called and finally got to talk to Elder Williams officially. It was awesome to visit. He already loves it there. He said that they really thought they were learning Portuguese quite well in the MTC, but since they arrived in Brazil, they found that is far from reality. He can understand much of what he hears, but can only speak a bit. His teachers in Provo spoke Portuguese from Portugal, so they had a Portugal accent, not a Brazil accent. Big Difference.

Anyway he soudned great, and is absolutely chomping at the bit to get out and meet the people.

More later . . .