1st area Foz do Iguacu

Well Parker has finally written after 2 weeks of anxiously awaiting to see where he would end up. He is in Foz do Iguacu.

 
hey family,
 i have no idea whats going on! i didnt even know today was my p day. my comp is brazilian and speaks no english, its 124 degrees outside and i dont understand anything. hes super bossy and i have to go now cause hes flipping out. now im back.
guy this guys crazy and i dont speak his language so i literally have no idea whats going on ever. hes never even heard of english. hes 24 from the north of part of brazil sort of by manaus. hes brazilian indian which basically almost the same as native american. hes got the appearence of one of those mean muggin native americans from the 1800s.
 um im right next to one of the seven wonders of the world. the city is foz do igauaçu. paraguay is right down the street. literally, i can see it from my apartment. like i said it freakin hot here. around 46-48 celsius. haha ya way hotter then fresno theres humidity also so i sweat all day. i got really sick last week with a sinus infection so i got to enter the mission field with that. i had lost my voice to the point where i couldnt speak at all. for all wednesday and all thursday. meanwhile we still walked about 12 miles everyday in 126ish weather. i was so sick. the first night here we taught a lesson to a lady and her boyfriend. at the end he looked at me to bare my testimony. i have no voice, i dont know what they just talked about for thirty minutes and i dont speak portuguese. but i just went for it, i didnt even think about it, just put my faith in God and i guess i said the right things cause the woman began weeping, i mean crying, tears streaming from her eyes. so that was cool first time i ever bore testimony on my mission a lady weeped.
in case you were wondering i have been blessed with the gift of tongues. a lot of what i want to say i can and i think in portuguese a lot now. basically where most missionaries are in 4 months im there in 1 week. God has not given me the gift of understanding this language though. i understand nothing anybody says to me. ill come up to someone and start speaking to them, then when they finally talk, i wont understand anything. theyll look at me like what the? you just spoke fluent to me. people keep telling me you speak very well very good portuguese but for some reason my mind cannot take the words they say to me and translate them. i dont even get close. i dont know when words end or start. imagine your trying to learn a language but its a country full of tech nines that speak the language. thats what its like.
 this city is relatively big about 200000 but were more on the outskirts. the area is very poor. very very poor. not ghetto, but poor. if it was ghetto it would be a fevela but the people here are nice, we dont have any gang problems but when i say there poor i mean they are poor. were talking homemade roofs out of tin. weve went to teach lessons to families that just live in an abandoned building. broken windows and all.
 did i mention its hotter then you could imagine. our only room with air conditioning is where we sleep so when we study theres sweat dripping off our faces. its that hot just in our apartment.
 ive seen some pretty crazy stuff already haha. its funny you can walk 1 mile to some neighborhoods where the people have never even heard of internet and then only a mile away theres people that have internet. its kinda just live your life and do as you please. garbage everywhere nobody really cares. if we were to get jumped nobody would skip a beat, just still chill on there front porch. everyone minds there own business. just different cultures. like here if you knock poeple will be like whats going on. you have to clap. in america if someone clapped outside your house youd be like take the kids in the back i think were getting robbed. nobody wears any clothes here. most little kids are just topless in there front yard. i witnessed a fat woman playing cards with her boyfriend naked on there porch. different poeple. gotta go love you all. the works going
                                        - Elder Bennett soon to be Elder Parker