handwritten letter December 11

Dear Family,
My language training is progressing. I was able to write my lesson two plan with just a dictionary to aide me. I had the teacher edit it afterwards. He corrected only slight grammatical errors. It was less red inked than most of the papers Dad edited for me.
My first time proselyting was on Friday, but you should have heard about that in an email by now. Now that I have got a taste of the language it makes speaking the language not the problem but the understanding what we hear.
I spent the day mainly cramming my brain with Portuguese and then smacking it against a wall because I can’t speak English anymore. My mission so far has been going as I expected. I am not really struggling with the language but I am having trouble with it. (If you know what I mean). I am about #4 of 11 in language skills. Elder Karr and Wiess are both well above the rest of us, then there are 4 that are doing okay and 2 that are really struggling. It is humbling to have a huge task in front of you that you couldn’t beat in a year but they ask you to do it in 2 months. When we registered with the Police Federal we met some missionaries that were renewing their registration. It was great to hear that once you get out in the field it gets easier to learn the language, by necessity. We have to much of an opportunity to speak English so it is hard to force yourself to speak the simple and pathetic amount of the language you know. But things are going well and my spirits are up. Some of the missionaries are breaking down, one missionary that came in with us, but was not in my district went home. I was sad to have him go. I don’t know the exact reason for it and don’t plan to find out. You can tell the difference between the self-motivated and the external motivated missionaries. I am at the point that I laugh at my trials and think of how funny it would be to write a book about them. Some of them included 2 coughs, athletics foot, language, companion troubles, lack of country music and bugs. But I am sure it can and will get worse.

That is all for now. I love you,
Elder Reed Risenmay