Alina's First Email from the Field - 10/6/2015

IM ALIVE!!! hahaha um can you say chaos the past 10 days?? I'm sitting here in Santos, brazil in this little internet cafe (one reai for an hour i think is the rate) and we GET TWO HOURS FOR EMAIL lemme just tell you how glorious that is haha. The firrst 30-40 though is spent reading letters from my mission president and his wife and we have to email them both, and considering my limited knowledge of portuguese that takes a while. We left the CTM at 6 am for Santos (so yes i was exhausted) and arrived around 8:30 or 9 to the mission office where of course the elders that work there took all our bags inside and talked to them for a minute before then getting back in the van for the mission home where we met Presidente Cabral and Sister Cabral, talked, each were interviewed, and had lunch with them before meeting our trainers. My trainer Sister Oliveira is THE BOMB. She actually only has like 5 months on the mission, but she is amazing. She is hilarious and we laugh constantly. She´s definitely a hard worker, but she isn't super intense, so thats been nice to have as a first companion as I'm learning everything. Also, she isn't afraid to do pretty much all the talking since I rarely have any idea what is going on thus far. Seriously, the accents are REAL and I thought I was pretty decent in the CTM, but here in this little area in santos with their thick accents and people with missing teeth I am constantly just standing there confused haha but I'm learning and hoping that i'll be better with the language soon! The first couple days were really rough, not gonna lie. I missed my district and friends there, I had no idea what anyone was saying (including my companion) and that made it hard to want to work and really want to jump into everything, but after good sleep and getting used to everything I love it again. My second day was mission conference (The whole mission is in that photo I think you all saw) and I really didn't get much out of what was said, but it was good and everyone is super nice and friendly. My zone is actually mostly sisters (my area by the way is called Boa Esperança which means good hope in portuguese) but there are a couple companionships of elders, including the ones who are both our district/zone leaders since like i said it is mostly sisters. They are super nice and always offer to do anything they can to help us, which is awesome! Im gonna respond to mom now, so hopefully you guys can read each others and get the full story of my life! haha LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! I did get the package from Elder Bauldauf and the one from the mission home, which they said has been there for a few weeks ahhaha OBRIGADA!!!! Snacks are of course always appreciated;) I loved the letter I got with the pictures of Grandpa Neal and you as a kid and such, so fun. Hope you get my letters one day! LOVE YOU!!!!

Sister NEAL