This week has been a pretty good one. I got some new roommates, Brazilian again. :-) Their names are Elder Menegaillo and Elder Santos. They are both really cool and talk to us a ton. They don't speak much English so it's been a good experience trying to communicate with them in Portuguese. It is so crazy how my roommates have turned out. The first group had two very good English speakers. The next group didn't speak English as well, and then these guys speak English the least. I've been forced to use Portuguese more and more as time has gone by. I am able to say that I have progressively learned.
Something cool that I heard today is that the São Paulo Temple is going to be closed next week. Instead of São Paulo we will be driving to the Campinas Temple next week! I'm really excited to be able to have a new experience on my last P-Day. I just hope that it's true and not just a "CTM rumor." :-)
I feel like my Portuguese is starting to pick up, so that's pretty exciting. I can usually understand most everything if it is written. The hardest thing is trying to understand the Brazilians from the 'Norteste.' These missionaries have very strong accents and I sometimes even have trouble understaning their basic sentences. Haha, it's a good thing that I am going to Rio Grande do Sul. They seem to have an easier accent to understand.
I only have two more weeks and I am so excited! I think that once I am immersed in Portuguese I will learn even faster. I'm working my harders to learn all I can to teach effectively and with the Spirit. It's pretty hard, but I've learned that if you try your best not to stress out and keep a good attitude it is easier to learn. I know God will help me. I'm thankful for your prayers in my behalf. I love you guys so much! Take care!
Love,
Elder Gee
P.S. Here is a picture of our district on P-Day...
Completely random, creepy stalker guy here. I have a weird request for Greg Gee. I served in the POA Norte mission in the mid '90s and as I was trying to look up one of my old apartments on Google Earth, I Googled "Missionary apartment Novo Hamburgo" (it was highly coveted back in the day so I figured someone had posted something about it on the internet).
ReplyDeleteThat led me to a blog about Sister Jamie Gee who appears to have lived in said apartment in 2010. I clicked on Greg Gee's blogger profile and that led me to this blog which appears to be more current.
Anyway, all of the contact information for people from my mission was lost at some point between me leaving my last area and arriving back in the states. If there is any possible way you would be willing to do me a HUGE favor and email me any possible responses to the following questions (barbaridade@yahoo.com), I'd be extremely grateful. I guess the questions are more for Sister Gee, but since the request is going to Greg Gee, they probably need to be passed along.
1- Does she have the address or remember the street of the apartment in NH? I'm trying to go through and pinpoint all my old areas.
2- Does she know of any Elders who served in an area of NH called Jardim Alcantara (same zone when I was there)? There is someone from that area whom I desperately want to contact, but the only people from there I've been able to track down are now living the in the U.S. and have no contact information (there are about 2 million Brazilians with his same name).
3- By any crazy chance of luck, did Sister Gee meet a guy named Irmao Damasco (can't remember his first name) in Montenegro? 16 years ago, he lived in Montenegro (she mentioned Timbauva in her blog, but this was the other area). The two wards got together a lot back then so maybe they still did in 2010. He was a short, chubby guy who was always laughing and was the life of the party. He drove a taxi in POA for a living. I lived with his family in my first area and I have not been able to track them down since.
4- Did Timbauva ever get their own chapel? They used to meet in a rented house. The house had a pool, though, so we did baptisms there.
When I was there, no one had phones and addresses were often questionable at best (e.g. "third house on the right after you cross Rua Bento Goncalves") so it's been extremely difficult tracking anyone down whom I met on my mission (definitely no email or internet).
Well, sorry for the random creepy request. I just happened to be thinking about my mission today and when I read Sister Gee's blog mentioning both the apartment in NH and Timbauva/Montenegro, it made me really start missing those areas and gave me a renewed desire to re-connect.
My name is Tyler, by the way.