1^st Email from Elder Johnson

CTM in BRAZIL!

Received March 23^rd 2010

oi from sao paulo! i won´´t be using the capitalization key seeing as it is in a weird place on the keyboard and i can~t type fast enough to say everything that i will want to say!

mom i~m not going to do an e-mail for family and friends today, just one e-mail to you and if you have time to take out any info or messages that would probably be for family only then you are welcome to take it out and send it to friends. as, they say, the days have been looong and now i can~t believe that i~m at the end of my first week´!

i hope you received my e-mail saying that i got here safely, i didn~t know off the top of my head whos e-mail to write down so i tried to remember mom~s gmail account and \i don~t know if i got it right.

but i~am here and it has been an adventure! brazil is beautiful and the weather has been amazing here in sau paulo! a good portion of the hallways in the ctm are outside because the weather is pretty much always awesome. today has been the hottest and most humid day yet, but that is just boring information! for our pday today we went to the sao paulo temple which is about 45 minutes away by bus. we took about 100 missionaries this morning, such an awesome experience! mom, if you love the oquirrh mountain temple, then you would be amazed by the sau paulo temple, i know they are all beatiful. but this temple is amazing! just across the street from the temple you have tons of street shops, old houses, grafiti, and tons of cars. Little does everyone know, the amazing peace and quiet in the temple. A true haven from the world, i only wish i could have had my parent to talk to in the celestial room!

The best way to descibe brazil, and particularly sau paulos is simple...´people´ there are SO many people here, it~s ten times crazier than LA. 22 million people...and they all seem to be trying to get somewhere at the same time. Dad i apologize for ever telling you that you tailgate people....even though, for utah, you do. You have no idea what tailgating or being cut off is until you drive here. when traffic is at a standstill....you probably have 5 seconds in between each motorcyle that flies by, just inches away from cars on either side...we contemplated opening our car doors just to see what happened, but thought better of it. there is one death a day just in this city due to motocycle wrecks. ENOUGH of this! you can find out anything you want about this city on google!

My companion is Elder Waldron, from So. california. we get along great and simple enough, he is a great guy. very quiet, sort of like a bradley johnson, but sometimes i can get him to laugh pretty hard. i~m loving my district, they have become my family away from home! i don~t know that it will be the best way to maximize my success as a missionary, but i seem to have taken the role of entertainer in the district. sometimes you just HAVE to laugh, and if i don~t.... i start to go crazy and get all tied up inside...much like bob and doctor leo marvin...laughing is simply a baby step.

all my instructors are brazilian and have a+ senses of humor. the language is tough, but it is coming along....it was very hard at first to lose something that i found so much confidence in. i always had confidence in my ability to have a conversation with someone and genuinely care about what they were saying and avoid any hint of áwkward´, but that was instantly stripped when all of the sudeen i could only say hello, goodnight, good morning, good afternoon, hey! and very cool! you learn to trust in the lord, and even thought

i can~t see myself speaking this language fluently, i have to trust that if i put forth my very best effort than i WILL eventually be able to speak it. I have 5 roommates, 2 natives who speak basically 0 english so we have learned a bit in trying to speak with them. it helped to have pictures of family and friends to show them and talk about. I know that you were all curious as to my amazing ability to jump, but it has finally been explained. all the natives that know we are going to brazil tell us that we are going to become black and we are ´going to meet the sun´ . . . so combine that with the fact that my room is on the 6 floor here and we aren~t allowed to use the elevator, and you will understand why i will be able to dunk like ronnie price when i come home. i would seperate these lines and makes this e-mail look better but i don~t have an enter keyo n this keyboard. we only have 30 minutes a week to spend with our e-mail so i~ll do my best. i don~t know how effective hardcopy mail will bet, but if you write me i will do my very best to get back to you....we have no random freetime to just sit down and write a letter...from 6ç30 in the morning until 10ç30 at night it is go go go go. because of all the worldly updates, i~´ll give you my spiritual thought for this e-mail... earlier in the week i heard a bit of advice that i loved. it goes like this.

we only decide one time in our lives. if we had to decide EVERYTHING, EVERYDAY than life would be miserable.... so decide ONCE that you are going to go to school or work or pray every morning, or study at night, or whatever it may be....but make that decision ONCE and then, you never have to decide again.. you don~t have to wake up and wonder if you~re going to go to church, or if you are going to get on your knees to pray.... it~s been decide, then you just do it. i love and miss you all, and i think about you everynight. friends can e-mail whenever they want, but i just can~t email back. hales, i look at that picture of our family you gave me everynight...not to encourage home sickness, but to remind me of why i~m here and the joy that the gospel has given me, especially in my family, and i want to share it with others. i love you all and i can~t wait to here from your and update you next week.

with all the love in my heart - Elder Johnson