about Concordia . . .

I know a little of Concordia. That is a mean place to start off right out of the MTC. First it's one of the furthest areas from the mission, and it has the most hills. In fact in certain areas of that city they don't have roads, per se. They have stair cases with houses built off the side. And the houses there have staircase addresses as opposed to street addresses.

I myself never served there, but it was in one of my districts. So I did several splits there. Most of our district meetings were held there. As I recall correctly it normally took us an hour to get between cities via the bus--and they were crappy buses. But if you missed the right bus it would take closer to two or three hours, because it went on a very round-about loop. Also I think there was a total of four buses daily that would pass between the city where I was working and Concordia.

Its awesome though that he's there. He'll get into shape quickly, get off all that MTC fat. While I was there, it was still a branch, but they did have their own ward house. There wasn't an official stake in that area yet either, it was still a mission district. So all the local congregations were branches, despite their size.

Now if the area boundaries are still set up as they were 5 years ago when I was there, he has a very unique oportunity. In one of the local cities close to Concordia, and I forgot the name of the city, he will find the oldest congregation of saints in Brazil, or rather, when the church first arrived in Brazil, via a family of German immigrants at the end of the 1800's begining of 1900's it was in that city where it started.

So in the way of Church History in Brazil your brother is serving in one of the richest, and yet, slowest growing areas of the country.

Hopefully things have turned around since then.

-JP (a friend of Spencer's who served in the Brazil, Florianpolis Mission several years ago.)