First Letter from Vitoria

September 26, 2011

Dear Mom,

Well, first off I’m in Rio de Janero in a city called Campos. It is 5 hours away from Vitoria by bus. It was pretty exciting and I’ll share my first day experience. I woke up at 4:45 to get ready and weigh my bags. We took the bus to go to the airport. We got to the airport and I called you. Then I got on the airplane fly to Vitoria. It took 1 hour; they fed us breakfast, which was weird. I was like - the plane flight is an hour long – freak! We landed and we walked off the runway and in to the airport. In the airport were four missionaries waiting for us. Elder Hill, Elder Leo and Elder Barr and one other. I can’t remember his name. They were smiling. I was like- “thank you”. People don’t smile in the MTC. It’s a depressing place! But Elder Hall is from Lindon, Utah; Elder Barr from Texas; and Elder Leo is from Brazil somewhere, but was born in Italy. He speaks Portuguese, Italian and English, crazy. But then we drive to a chapel where we wait outside for like 10 minutes and then the doors open and out walk 5 trainers and the Mission President and his wife. We all hug, and we have no clue who our trainers are, but anyway we go in to a meeting, we get our mission credit cards and all this stuff and then we eat lunch. Lunch is amazing here! I’m in love with it! I can’t get enough. We secretly plan our day out so we are at member’s houses at night time, because they love to feed us.

But anyways, then we have interviews with President. He speaks little to no English, but he asked me, “Elder Pellegrini, are you keeping the commandments?” I said, “Yes”. “Is there anything you need help with?” I said, “No”. “OK, I’ll see you in Campos on the 12th of October for zone meeting”. OK, then we found out where our areas are. I’m in Campos. It’s in the very south of our mission. Me and Elder Tanner are pretty close. He is right across the bridge from me. Then we go to the bus station. We are told not to tell anyone where we’re going. I was like alright. Then we got in to a huge group of missionaries and started yelling the mission song, which is pretty cool. But then they announce the trainers and new missionary companionships.

Elder Hansen is my new companion. He is from Southern California - Moreno Valley- he is pretty cool! But he goes to some gay college in Southern Utah, it’s called like some gay name. I think its Southern Utah University. Ya, he goes to SUU. He went there my senior year in high school. Crazy right? But anyways, he only has 3 transfers left, so I told him to come to your house for Sunday dinners.
Our house is ghetto, but I’ve learned to love it! We have a ward here. It is pretty nice. The members are awesome, except a guy told me yesterday he was going to gut me if I didn’t learn Portuguese soon. All we do is walk by the way. I’ve taken one bus and that was coming to Campos. We walk everywhere except we are in a rich ward and we get a lot of rides too. I got one blister this week, no big deal!
I love everyone I meet here. We have been teaching a lot i guess. I don’t know what a lot is, but we clap doors a lot. We had no investigators when we got here and we had to start from nothing. We didn’t have a ward list, we didn’t have any numbers and I don’t know Portuguese. That’s a problem!

Mail can’t come to the house. It goes to the mission home and every time we have a zone conference or something I get it. The reason Elder McBarron lives really close to Vitoria like 5 minutes, so he just gets it when ever. Dad I watched your thing loved it and thank you love you guys! Talk to you next week! Keep reading and loving the gospel!!!!

Love,

Elder Pellegrini