Friday, October 30, 2015

MOOMMM!!!! I LIVE IN BRAZIL NOW!!!!

October 30, 2015

MOOMMM!!!! I LIVE IN BRAZIL NOW!!! (I'll include you in an email with
my whole mailing list and you can just edit this email as you see fit
and send it to them; also yes you can post the other email). I opened
my inbox to 32 new emails, so please tell everyone I'm sorry for not being
able to respond to everyone this week, but you´re my number one so
sorry, not sorry. Also sorry for the crazy typos; the keyboards are
different than American ones and I don't have enough time to correct
everything. Yes, I met Elder Smartt on the way here and he´s in our
sister district, so we've talked about our families and stuff. I wanna
send you pictures but the CTM is dumb and we´re not allowed to, so
you´ll get them eventually. Yes, I´m called Sister Curtis and not Irma
(so people don´t get us confused with Catholic nuns who are called
Irma in Brazil). Yes, everything went well with my travels and the big
group of 15 missionaries helped. My district is 42-A Ing. and our
mailbox number is 399 (I don't know how you address that) and it has 6 people
 (2 other sets of Elders and us) and 5 of us are going to Sao Paulo South.
All the Elders are little baby children except one (they just
graduated). My companheira looks just like Bethany, her name is SIster
Hansen, she never stops talking, but we get along okay. We have a lot of
miscommunications but we´re working on it. So far the training here has been
intense, like I N T EN S E. Every day we study Portuguese and prepare lessons
 for about 9 hours with intermittent breaks to teach practice investigators, have
devotionals, and do service and stuff like that. Also they feed us like crazy. I don´t
know what I"m eating most of the time but it"s always good, probably too good.
At the rate I´m going I may be thefirst human to gain 50 pounds in 2 weeks time, but 
it´s all worth it. I came to the CTM not speaking a word of Portuguese, and now at the
week and a half mark, I don´t need the English translation for the
devotionals, and we've taught like 15 lessons. I´m definitely FAR FAR
from being fluent or even pretty good, but I've learned so much in such
a short amount of time that it´s crazy. Don´t worry about my safety
here by the way because the whole building is gated, guarded and barb-wired, lol.
My main teacher Irmao Mello is one of the most incredible, funny,
spiritual people I've ever met in my whole life and we have a lot of
good laughs and cries in class and in the lessons we teach. The very
first Sunday we were here Sister Hansen got assigned to be the sister
training leader, and another set of our elders are our new zone leaders;
so now our whole district has to go to all the extra meetings on
Sunday, which is kind of a drag, but they´re not too bad. There´s no AC
in the bedrooms and cafeteria and like half of the CTM, but we do have
it in the class rooms where we spend most of our our time; but
honestly it´s not that bad. And just as I was getting used to taking
cold showers every day, we got our room moved so now we´re in the
communal showers, which has it´s ups and downs. Last night our service
was to fold sheets in the laundry room and it reminded me of you haha,
so that was nice :) We went to the temple today too and it was
probably the best temple experience ever. I love you
so much and hope you have a great week. I really hope I get your
letters this week that would be the best!!!
LOOOOOvVvEEeE,
Sister Curtis







I MADE IT!!!!


October 21, 2015

MOM!!!! I MADE IT!!!!! Yeah I got super lucky and there were 14 other

missionaries  (5 sisters) at Atlanta and it made it alot more fun and
much much less worrisome. I basically just followed everyone else and
nothing went wrong at all. As soon as I walked into the Memphis
airport they started playing this random gospel song about following
Jesus and doing what He wants and I almost started crying lol. Also, I
joked about having to drag my duffle bag through the airport, and as I
was walking to the gate the strap on my bag literally snapped; and I
just stood there and laughed. Luckily it didnçt break and I snapped it
back on, but I thought it was funny. The flight was very very long and
I slept a couple hours so it wasn´t terrible. I also sat next to a
really nice Brazilian farmer who spoke English and it made me super
excited to be in Brazil (he also was not bad on the eyes and I was
like, well dang,if this is what the farmers look like I´m in trouble!
Chiste, chiste ;) Sao Paulo looks like a mixture of Miami and Hawaii
from what I´ve seen so far, and even though it´s humid and in the 90´s,
theres a breeze and it doesn´t feel that bad. The CTM is starting us
out strong though, there´s no air conditioning and although there are
5 random knobs all over our shower wall (???) none of them seem to
produce warm water, so that´s really cool (badumm tsss). I saw Jaxson
as soon as I got here though so that was cool. They also gave us a
breakfast of ham and cheese sandwiches which were super good and this
weird warm soup that looked like white cheese fondue but smelled
and tasted like captain crunch cereal milk. I could really get behind
it if it wasn´t warm. My companion is Sister Hansen and she was in my
mission prep class at BYU (and she low key looks just like Bethany). I
can´t send pics while I´m in the CTM so you´ll never know that I
didn´t even make it to lunch on my first day before putting my hair in
a ponytail lol oops. I don't have much time because this was just supposed
to be me letting you know I´m safe and sound and I think my first real
p-day will be next Friday, so talk to you then! I love you soo much and
can´t wait to tell you all about life here in Sao Paulo!! (also tell Bethany her 
letter was the best and I would've cried if I hadn't already been emotionally 
drained) .