The Furthest Eastern City of the Americas

 

     After one month at the MTC in São Paulo, I was flown 1,700 miles north-east to the furthest eastern city of the Americas — João Pessoa in the state of Paraiba. Soon after we landed, my fellow missionaries and I, “the greenies,” met with the Mission President and his wife for dinner. It was the first home-cooked meal I had for over two months and it was delicious! Their home was ornately decorated with native Brazilian wood furnishings and beautiful carpentry. “Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all,” I thought. I found out the next day how wrong I was.

     The following day, the mission president called each of us into his office, one-by-one, to detail our assignments. When I walked in, he opened two large cabinet doors where hundreds of pictures were prominently displayed of each missionary from the mission. He then rolled out a giant map on an oval table and explained where I would be headed the following morning. He pointed to a tiny lonely city deep in the middle of the state Rio Grande Do Norte—a city called Caicó (located in a semi-arid region of the northeast). The mission president then, with a Polaroid camera, took my picture and placed it among my fellow missionaries. I was now officially part of the mission. I was excited, anxious, hesitant, and overwhelmed all at the same time. I left California thinking I was going to be living in the tropics, but when I arrived I was sent to a place similar to the high deserts of California. Except in Caicó, it’s blazing hot all year round! Not to be melodramatic; but, what I endured during the following 22 months, I can never forget.