Spring Forward FALL BACK

Hello everyone!  

I have received a ton of emails this week so I am sorry if I am not able to reply to everyone; but I will get to you all eventually.  

This week was a little slow all things considered.  We had a lot of appointments fall through and it was a little frustrating and a lot sad.  We are hoping to make this week much better since it is the last week of the transfer.  We will probably both stay here (my companion and I that is) since I am still being trained, but you never know.  Sometimes missionaries have two trainers but it isn't common.  

The clocks were changed this week in Brazil, but since the seasons are opposite, the clocks go the opposite way as well... at least I think.  Either way we got an extra hour of sleep this Saturday/Sunday night.  

We also found a place that has free internet access which is pretty awesome even though the Lan-houses aren't really expensive here.  It is usually about $1.50 per hour but all the Brazilians think that is really expensive.  Either way we are saving money now.  

The language continues to be a struggle but if the person isn't old, I can basically understand them now. In fact, we were teaching a lesson last week and a lady thought I had been in Brazil for a year at least, and she was blown away when we told her that I had only been here for a month.  Portuguese is an interesting language. The tonic syllable (the syllable that is accented) can change the meaning of the word. You can't stress words however you want, which is annoying because you have to change your speech patterns.  In other ways it seems almost babyish to me since they hardly every use compound tenses.  For example, you never say "I have been doing something." They just have a different past tense for that more or less.  It seems babyish if you translate it word for word, but I guess it just comes down to the fact that you can't do that.

Now that I have rambled on about Portuguese for a while. I hope you all have a good week!  I love you all!

Elder Russell