Update

There is one excited niece behind that poster

Ahh...mother & son

Please excuse the blurriness. It was the best one I got.

Elder Frazer returned home from Brazil on Tuesday, December 13. He is on medical release. We are grateful to get spend Christmas with him!

Letter from 12/5/11

Here is Cody's first letter from Recife. He is struggling with some intense culture shock and asked that not all of what he wrote be shared on the blog, so it's been a bit edited. He is in need of all the love and support we can render. Prayers and letters!!

Hey mom.

 

I´m in Recife! The work is not really on fire here... I guess they almost closed the Recife mission a few months ago because of how bad it had gotten. My companion is a great guy. He´s been out for 8 months and he´s from Washington. He´s also like 6´4´´ soooo we´re not going to get mugged anytime soon. We do get a lot of weird looks though. Just picture two white giants walking through a favela full of small Brazilians. It´s pretty funny.

 

I´ve decided that I like being a missionary but I don't like it here in Brazil. It stinks like crap or urine EVERYWHERE. Even our water. Yes our WATER. Our parasite infected, discolored, and stanky water. I barely eat anything because the meat here is just left out all day for flies and whatever else to grow on it. Our bread is handled by the same person who handles the meat and since no one wears gloves or washes their hands or anything, even our bread is covered in rotting blood.

 

I´m not real sure how much time I have left on this thing. I don´t really understand anyone. But everyone understands me. Most of the time. I´ve made a few contacts and passed out a few Book of Mormons but haven´t taught any lessons. The ward here is pretty strong and has some amazing members but my area is the closest to the mission office so missionaries usually come here to end their missions and are not very enthusiastic about the work but are more thinking about going home, so the members do not give referrals.

 

Thank you so much for your love and support through letters and things. You can find the address of our mission home or office or something online. Just send letters there and they get to me. There are not any huge spiders here. It´s pretty much like home. There are spiders but no more and no bigger than we have. The real problem is mosquitos. The are everywhere in our apartment. There are no windows so they pretty much just live with us. I´m covered in bites. We sleep with a fan blowing on our face, not for the breeze but because it´s the only part of our body uncovered by the blanket. We sweat all night but we have to be covered up. It does rain here though and it cools things off. I´m soaked right now. But I´m already sweating again. When it rains bad the sewers overflow and sewage gets everywhere. I´ve already walked through it quite a bit.

 

We eat lunch at members´ homes usually. It´s pretty cool. I wish I could talk to them though. And my companion won´t translate for me because I guess it can be rude to speak in a language that people don´t understand. But I don´t understand anyone so yeah...

 

We got two missionaries emergency transferred into our area a couple days ago because they witnessed a shooting and the shooter saw them. They are fun to have. One is like my east coast equivalent. The other is a Brazilian that is hard to get along with.

 

Hopefully it will stop raining so we can play bball today. We´re not allowed to play soccer because there were too many injuries. I don´t have any time left but please tell Bryn Lockhart that I got special permission from my mission president so I can listen to LotR music in the apartment!

I love you!

Elder Frazer

Elder Frazer has arrived!

We received this email from Elder Berg, the secretary of the Brazil Recife Mission:

Hello Dear Families!

We just want to let you know that your sons arrived safely in the Brazil Recife Mission!

They are such great missionaries and we are excited to see their work.

Elder Lovinger

Elder Bateman

Elder Jensen

Elder Linton

Elder Frazer

Attached are some arrival pictures.

 

*Note: We don't have Cody's current address, but he can receive emails at cody.frazer@myldsmail.net which he can read once a week on his p-day. I'm sure he would appreciate all the English communication we have to offer!