ARRIVED CUIABA!!!

The people in the Mission Office said that I could have 10 minutes to write and say that I am alive.

I am alive and well. I don't really have a ton to say. The mission president and his wife seem very nice, they took all the new missionaries to lunch. 

The Mission President and his wife pick us from from the airport, the Cuiabá airport was not extremely big.

Coxipó is my first area, it is about 20 minutes away from the mission office and is a neighborhood in Cuiabá.

Good news! Soccer (futebol) is not outlawed in my mission. And they do have peanut butter that I can buy, but is is like 20 reais a pop, so like $9 or $10 American dollars.

The president said that we came in on a good day and it is not to9 hot. 

Here we don´t flush our toilet paper down the toilet. We put in a little trash bin next to the toilet. Basically all of Brazil is like this.

Finally here!

With President and Sister Reber

May 21 - At the Brazil MTC

Thanks for the B-Day card, that was a nice suprise.

 

Yeah, so our P-Day is today, Wednesday, but we are not going to the temple. The Area President for Brazil shut down São Paulo because the "bus system for São Pualo shut down and there is supposed to be riots" so no missionaries in whole São Pualo can´t leave the campus today. That also means no shopping, I wanted to go out and buy some tasty Brazilian candy.

 

I really have not heard much about getting to Cuiabá, I think they will be flying me in and I think I leave on Tuesday.

 

The food here is alot better then Provo, we are still allowed to eat as much as we want. Is is all "ethnic food".

Typically Breakfat or Desjejum consists of fruit, cereal, and panini grilled sandwiches. Kind of strange. And I was really liking the sandwiches, they kind of get old after eating them for 8 mornings straight. And the Brazilians call them "sandwiches", the same word in English, but with a heavy Portuguese accent.

Lunch (Almoço) and Dinner (Juntar) are more or less the same meals. We typically have some kind of protein for the main dish, like chicken or a pork chop thing, with some link of mash potato or corn starch thing. They also have a salad and fruit bar. And they always have rice and beans, always. For drinking  they have lots of different kinds of juice I had never had before. They also have Guaraná on tap.

Overall it is pretty tasty. My stomach has had to do a bit of adjusting. Not to bad. 

We like to sit with the Brasileiros (Brazilians) so we can talk to them. I can understand most of what they say if they don´t talk too fast. Some time I am able to pick up on what they are saying and give a funny comment or two.

 

My companion is Elder Sharp, he is a good missionary. He is also really funny. He also looks exactly like Incredi-Boy or Syndrome from the Incredibles.

 

We have 6 people in our room, 4 North American Elders, 1 from Capo Verde and and 1 from São Paulo. The other two elders don´t really speak English so we have to talk Portuguese to them. It is good practice.

 

This week we did "Prosilitismo", we took the São Paulo bus system to the "Theater Municipal" (google it), where we we street contacted people and tried placing books of Mormon. It was alot of fun, the people are a bit tricky to understand. We ended up giving away two book of Mormons. and having a prayer with a really drunk, really high man. São Paulo is totally nuts, like really crazy. I don´t know if they have street view for the Teatro Municipal, but worth looking at.

 

São Paulo is HUGE, like really Huge, the sky scrapers go to the horizon way bigger then any city in the US.

I am doing pretty good.

Love you all!

- Elder Gibb

May 14, 2014 - 20th Birthday.

Birthday and First day at Brazil MTC with President and Sister Swensen. 

I made it to the Sao Paulo MTC!

São Paulo is absolutely nuts. It is soooo big. It is a lot of big buildings and a lot of ghetto stuff.

There are so many cars and motorcycles. Going from the Airport to the MTC, I swear we were going to get in an accident 3 or 4 times.

The 9 hour flight was a drag. I couldn't get into a comfy position to fall asleep in, thus I am super tired today. The flight was delayed about an hour because one of the pilots did not show up.

The weather is fantastic here. All windows open, all the time. Not too hot, cold or humid. The view from our room is super cool, I´ll send a picture on Monday.

We have not had a meal here yet.

 

Love, Elder Gibb

May 12, 2014 - Pictures for mom

Making a mother's day gift on p-day

May 5. 2014 Elder Anderson

I don't need anything. Were you able to get your hands on the Lindsey Stirling Deluxe album? 

I did send Arden a Birthday Card, I did not get the picture from your phone.

I will probably have to end up Skyping on Sunday for Mother's Day, I will see if we can use some iPads or something. I will want to make a Skype, when you get it made you will want to email me your Skype name so I can find you. If all else fails I will just call and we will set up a way to video from there.

We should be getting a third missionary tomorrow, nobody is really sure. This last week had been a mess for mission leadership. The president was out of town for a while and Elder Anderson came to town. No other Elders that I know of are leaving the mission to Brazil with me. Elder Gillespie is staying in this area. Not even the zone leaders are totally sure on transfers.

I don't know when I will be heading to the airport,. If nobody tells me I probably end up calling President.

I forgot my card reader, hopefully someone has one I can borrow for a moment. I am just worried about some of my less-handsome pictures ending up on facebook.

Arden had told me much about prom and Mormon prom, I got the prom pictures. Arden looks really good.

This week was a pretty good week. On Friday everyone got a call from the Assistant's saying that Elder Pieper, Elder Matinez, Elder Parker (from the 70) and Elder Anderson (yeah, the apostle) would be coming to talk to the Missionaries on Saturday. So the Mission got scrambled together on Saturday at the Knightdale building. Get got to shake hands with and be taught by 3 70's and a Member of the Twelve. Elder Anderson shared some enlightening things on serving in the South and how they assign missionaries. He also told us to use the Book of Mormon to convert people. Nothing extremely revolutionary, but still very good. I learned a lot.

Other then Elder Anderson coming, this week was pretty normal.

Sorry about ranting about Sister Missionaries last week. I was just a little jealous because they are just better at doing missionary work.

Today for Preparation day we are planning to go to Duke Gardens and the Duke Chapel and Q-Shack. We have a part-member family feeding us fajitas for Cinco de Mayo. 

Love Elder Gibb