Day 18

"...I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content..."

- Paul of Tarsus

I found the quotation key and have also stopped using the accent key as apostrophe, but someone here before me recently changed the keyboard setting to American (but didn't change the actual keyboard), so now I'm even more lost! Still happy to be writing again for a few minutes.

Today's our second weekly trip to the temple in Sao Paulo, about an hour drive. It's not far, but Brasilian drivers are incredibly confident and don't change their minds about where to go. Somehow we haven't seen a single traffic accident while on a bus or van, but I have seen several dozen close calls within minutes. Motorcyclists and scooterists are king, or think so. They scrape between packed lanes with such a comically casual attitude. They do wear helmets, at least...

I didn't expect all of the contracted staff. The kitchen is run by a catering firm, and they do well. I don't actually know if any of them are members of the church.

There's also 10 or so security guards. I assume they're members, but on the other hand, when we went to the Sao Paulo temple there were people from a private security company at the front outer gate.

Speaking of which, the temple is very out of the way, though its actually *in* the city. Where the transports park outside, a casual observer wouldn't even see the temple, far up over the hill. Plenty of pictures, I'll send them once in the field.

There's so much more to write about but I'm already out of time (had less than last week!) I wrote a talk in Portuguese, next week I'll transcribe and send an excerpt. Wish I could do more about the long waits between messages in the MTC.

I know more Portuguese now than the entirety of my time with german, including the german study I did out of class. The roots of the language are more obvious after a few weeks, sometimes it almost looks like actual latin. When spoken it sounds more like an Italian speaking Spanish and also some weird traces of French.

Heavy in "jeh", "jee", "ou" (french "eaux") sounds, put very briefly. Also, "m" is an "ng" sound.

More details later.

For now I'll leave you with a brief words from an apostle whose name I can't remember at the moment:

"Fe exige trabalho"

(Faith demands work)

Atraves os dois, podemos receber muito, como o Dom da Linguas.

Ate mais,

Elder Hopkinson
smith.hopkinson@myldsmail.net