Arrived in Rio!!!

We recieved an e-mail from Mary Ann's mission letting us know that she had arrived safe in Rio de Janeiro on May 29.

June 4-
So I made it to Rio de Janeiro safe and sound! Flying into the airport here was the most beautiful thing ever!! We could see the Cristus Statue along with the Pão de Açucar (Sugarloaf Mountain) and everything was green and gorgeous!  I love it here!  My new area here is a part of the city of Rio. My companion is Sister D- she is Brazilian and from Parana.  I´m excited to work with her! She is super awesome!  At first I was hoping for an American companion to be able to ease into everything, but I think it´ll actually be A LOT better for me this way - I think I´ll learn the language a lot quicker.... Her birthday is this week too :)  But yeah, things are going pretty good.  She helps me know when to talk and what to say.  Ha - so my first full day here in the area, we woke up and did the normal routine, studying and stuff... and so in companion study, we practiced a couple of invites, including the baptismal invite.  And so during the day at our first meeting with a wonderful woman named Rosane, she had me invite her to baptism!! I did not realize that I would be doing that at all!!! But I gave it! And guess what?! She accepted! ha. the funny part about that though is that I didn´t know she accepted until after we left cause I didn´t even understand her response!!! hahaha. Thank goodness I have a companion!!!  

I´m starting to realize just how much of a blessing that temples are.  We don´t have one here in Rio and the majority of the members here I don´t think have had the chance to go through. We´re definitely praying to have one here though!!  There is actually a temple dedication this coming Sunday for the Manaus temple that we get to watch.  Haha - I wonder if I´ll be able to understand any of it! -Yesterday, we had a broadcasted conference from the conference center in Salt Lake for about a hundred stakes here. and yeah.... It was really hard to understand and follow all of it!!! Super hard. But that´s okay. I´ll eventually learn! 
There is definitely a language barrier! I´m surprised that I can actually understand my companion as well as I do! But the people here talk SO fast and with the Carioca accent too (they use a lot of sh instead of s´) so I feel kind of dumb sometimes when I have no idea what they are saying to me :).