One Month in Brazil

Well, Tuesday marks one month in Brazil! Pretty exciting!! I don't think I've lost my English yet, but only because I've been emailing people and helping my companion learn English.

First item of business: is letters. Heads up, it takes about a week and half to send me a handwritten letter and another half a week or so to reach my hands. I love getting letters, and they should be send to my mission office. I can send letters back, but it may be kinda expensive and it's a lot harder for me. But I gladly will!

This past Sunday, we had a stake conference, and the beginning was kind of hilarious. The microphone wasn't working and there was a whole slew of people trying to fix it in a tiny room on the stand. An American in our area leaned over to me and whispered, how many stake presidency members does it take to fix a microphone? Afterwards, they gave up and started hauling all this equipment and cables and jury rigged a new audio system. Pretty hilarious.

I'm choosing to talk about houses today. I don't know how much longer I'll be in this area, two weeks, or 8, so I figured I should do this now. I'm in a slightly poorer section right now, called a favela. There are tonnnnssss of tiny houses jam packed in. Nobody has a dryer, or dishwasher, they're too expensive. Everyone hangs their clothes to dry. Gas isn't built in, so everyone has a tiny stove with a propane tank attached. Nobody has a yard, only about three feet of driveway and then a gate and then their car and then their house. And that's if you live on the street. Lots of people live in fundos which are behind the street. You have to take a little alleyway to an area in between streets where even more houses are packed in. Also, here at least, you don't buy a house. You buy a lot and build a house. You buy a cheap dirt lot, pay for a concrete foundation if you can, then pay for a big

truck to deliver thousands of large brick. You lay your piping in, and if you have money, your wiring. Otherwise your wiring is floating on walls and hung from the ceilings and everything is exposed. Then you take your bricks and make a house. Usually three or fours rooms, sometimes one and a bathroom. then, later on, you can add more. a second story, or expand out or something. TI's actually kinda cool. Then you lay concrete over the bricks, and paint it or cover with tile. Everything here is tiled. There is no carpet, there is no fancy wood flooring. It's concrete or tile. The roofs are generally flat and made of either brick or metal sheeting. It's crazy. But it's life.

This week as well, we've had miracles. We learned in training last Tuesday to pray for miracles and expect to see them. Elder Marciano and I did just that this week and boy did we see them. One lady was a referral from a stranger, adn she said in our first lesson, that as soon as she opened the door, she felt this huge overwhelming feeling of happiness and peace. And this coming from a lady in the Congregation of Christ, which loves to debate with our church generally. She said she had imagined us giving her a bouquet of yellow roses. We explained that this was the Book of Mormon, which is very precious adn has gold writing on the front and was originally written

on gold plates. It was amazing. Thats all for now though! See y'all next week! 

 Elder Ashford