FINALLY I get to talk to you guys, after two weeks. I did receive your package, Mom, and let me tell you it made my day for sure. My first full day in the field and I already had a package in the mail!! I've developed a lot more self control and patience here in Brasil, and thus have only eaten HALF of ONE package of jerky over the past week! Including having shared with my companion(s)! Which brings me to my new companion, Elder Millaqueo: I love this guy. He's 19 years old, been serving for 9 months (in the field) and 6 of those months have been in this same ward. So he pretty much knows the ins-and-outs of every single person in the ward. He does not, however, speak English. At all. Except for "My goodness" and he knows which words NOT to say... There are two other Elders in our apartment, Elder Martinez and Elder Diniz. None of them know English... Except Elder Diniz learned a bit from a past companion, but forming complete sentences is difficult, and he can't say anything that I can't already say in Português. Elder Millaqueo is from Argentina, Elder Martinez is from Guatamala, I believe, and Elder Diniz is from Brasil. I wish I had pictures of them, the apartment, and much more, but I don't because the camera was not working. But I'll try my best to use some great imagery: BLEH. It smells funny in the apartment, only one of the two toilets has a seat, and the one without doesn't flush well, but we have a bucket to pour into that toilet that does the flushing for us. There is one small washing machine, no dryer, the mattresses have holes, we can only drink water we purchase from the store or when offered water that we know is purified from members. Only one of the two showers works, luckily the one in the opposite bathroom of the good toilet, and thank goodness it is filtered, warm water from that shower. However, there is no designated "shower" only the faucet in an open bathroom (I mean there's a door to the bathroom, but no separate shower, it's just opposite the toilet) and so you have to use a squeegee to push the water towards the drain when you're done showering. To sum it all up, I love this place :D and I will never be able to be disappointed by an apartment in the U.S. The demography of heights here is either below 5'3" or above 5'9"... Like no one is in between... There's not much to be said about my first area, yet, because I haven't experienced it much... It's about 1 hour to walk from one end to the other, the members are all great (One family, Irmão Barbi and his wife Irmã Melissa [the men here are Irmão Surname, but the women are Irmã First Name] have been really great to us... They even bought us football (soccer) jerseys for the two teams here (Corinthians for me and São Paulo FC for Elder Millaqueo)... Um, I have a lot more to say, but we were just told that this LAN House closes in 5 minutes and the computers are about to shut off. Until Next Week! 

Elder Beatty