Dear Family, Friends, and whoever else is reading this,
Well today is my frist p-day! I guess every pday you do a session in either the Campinas or São Paulo temple. Today we went through the campinas and it was sweet. Brasil is awesome. The air is pretty nasty and there is always a haze over the city. There are TONS of people riding motorcycles and they all have a death wish! I am starting to have fun, the first few days were pretty rough. But I remember the missionaries at home telling me  ´´just make it through sunday..´´ haha. The food in the ctm is actually really good, they have rice for every meal J They always have tons of fruit and the drinks are soo good. I guess everyone gets sick at least once during their stay in the ctm, and lots of people always are. So I am being pretty hardcore about always washing my hands and taking a shower every morning when I wake up at 6:30. My companion is elder snowden from Hurricane, UT and he is really cool. After I got off the flight from San Diego to Dallas he saw me and we had lunch then met up with some other missionaries, pretty cool how we ended up being companions. The language is pretty easy for me, those 4 years of spanish REALLLLLY came in handy. There is another guy in my district (there are 8 guys total in my district) who speaks fluent spanish. The one thing that gets me with portuguese are the r´s which you say like h´s and if the word ends in a m, its silent. But I am getting better. Church was fun, especially becuase it was a change from 3 four hour classes every day. I love talking with the brazillian elders, they are all so happy and energetic. It´s funny though when you talk to someone who speaks NO english, I just say ´´no falo portugués muito bem´´ (i don´t speak portuguese very well) On pday we get to walk around outside with our companion and go to internet cafes and grocery stores. There is a set boundary which we can´t go out of though. As you can tell I am quite scatter brained, but I am slowly figuring everything out. Right now we are learning to say our prayers and testimonies in portuguese and I almost have them down. Its amazing how it hasn´t even been a week and I can pray in portuguese.. I love that Ryan is here! I see him all the time and it helps alot. Quite a few times we have sat down and had good long talks. Well I have to go buy some snack food or else I will starve! Até mais!

Love,
Elder Boyack

(This is Connor, Parker’s older brother.  I will be updating his blog for him for the next two years with letters and pictures that he sends home, so that friends and family can stay updated.)

We sent Parker off to Brazil yesterday morning.  His connecting flight to Dallas was cancelled at the last minute,  so we had to scramble to get him on another flight so he could catch a later flight (and the only other one of the day) to Sao Paulo.  We had to call the missionary travel office to notify them of the two hour delay in his arrival, but it seemed to not phase them (as this is probably a semi-frequent occurence).

So, now we’ll wait to hear from him on how his first few days are going.  As he sends letters, emails, and photos, I will update this blog with portions he wants to release for public consumption so that everybody can stay up to date.