Matthew posts a lot of pictures for us from his mission. It is awesome, and I love seeing them. I am a little behind on adding them to my posts though.
His last updated I did, he had just gotten to Ibura. He is still there, he is almost done with his second transfer which is 12 weeks. It is a little bit of a crazy area. There are lots of drugs and drug activities. Lots of gangs and gangs fighting. Everything we have heard, and it has been true with Matthew, is that the gangs leave the missionaries alone and don’t want to mess with them.
Shortly after he got to Ibura, he went on a trip by bus with a few dozen other missionaries to a city and helped with a big humanitarian service project. They help load/unload and distribute tons of food and water and basic hygiene supplies to the city. Matt said it was the best week of his mission so far. They had a program while they were there too, the locals did a lot of dance and singing performances. The missionaries sang some songs, there was a few local choirs. They also took the missionaries to do a little sight seeing in some really cool looking places. Here are the pictures he sent from the service project.
On his second transfer in Ibura he got a new companion. Elder Carter. He is an American from the northwest. Matthew has liked all of his companions and gotten along with them fine but he was pretty excited to have an American companion again to be able to speak English- at least at night. He was also pleasantly surprised to realize that he is basically pretty fluent in Portuguese now. Elder Carter is only a few months in and still learning. Matthew thought it might be a little rough since he was now the “Portuguese speaker” of the two of them but he didn’t have any issues. They have kept pretty busy finding people. They work with a lot of teenagers. If they don’t have any plans or ambitions then they usually just join a gang. The missionaries try and help them see there is better things in life. It is a hard mindset for some of the people they work with to overcome. Matthew gets a little frustrated with sometimes.
Other fun times he has between working hard to help and teach people each day it his p-days and Zone Conferences. He is closer to other missionaries than he has been in other locations, so often they get together and have soccer games, or BBQ for p-day. They also go to the mall and eat Popeyes Chicken for lunch. They also have temple days. At the last one he went to he was able to see his first companion on the mission- Elder Waite. He was able to come to there apartment and do divisions with them for a few days too. He is going home in less than a week so Matthew was excited he got to see him one more time. Last weekend there was a Brasil LDS singing group that put on a concert. All the missionaries in the area were able to go. Matthew said it was a lot of fun. Music is one of the things he misses most. He is only aloud to listen to church music. The concert was church music but it was fun to be in a concert environment and sing and dance with almost 2000 other people.
Matthew is working hard and we are very proud of him. It is the rainy season where he is now. Some of the videos he has sent show him trudging down the street in a down pour with a foot of water flooding the street. All day everyday. It looks pretty miserable but he has a good attitude about it. We look forward to talking to him every week and hearing what he is doing. Last week is was heading home early a few nights because a few of the gangs were having issues and solving it by having shoot outs. I hope we are done with hearing about that. He has been out a little over 9 months. We told him he almost needs to start thinking about what he wants to do when he gets home and making sure we hit all the dead lines for housing and school.