Hello family!

Well im real rushed today in regards to transfers, so its going to be
a little short but still good.

mom, im sorry romney lost. but i know that the lord wont let the US
collapse, because its in the book of mormon! also, im excted for the
package! the other package came, but the secretaries of the mission
called me and said that i have to pay a 205 reais (100 dollars about)
in import tax to liberate my package. so electronics make it pricy.
thats cool that you guys had joes farewell. it sounds like the maloney
family has changed alot since they left pittsburgh, and im very happy
for joe!.

dad, i loved the story that you sent me about tim bird. its those
kinds of stories that make me even more excited for the mission and
such! im sure that experience also helped you to prepare as my dad,
which helped me be here as well. also, im sorry psu lost.

so onto everything else

well first of all, the church department has officially approved, and
i am now 100 percent ending the mission august 27th, as opposed to
july 14th. my mission has been extended. i repeat. it has been
extended! but now that we know this we can get on the plans for you
guys to come out here, the earlier the better,  in both cost and
logistics, so i would get on it as soon as possible! plan to be out
here for 4 or 5 days, however seems better, most expensively buy the
plane tickets first to see what days we will have, and then i can plan
some city to city sorts of logistics, and we can get it all planned!
but i am way excited to be here another month and a half

SO transfers, i am staying here! as was predicted. but something not
predicted. my new companion is Elder Thomas. he is one of my, if not
my, best friends here on the mission that i have made. seriously. and
now that my mission is extended, we are in the same "group" because i
am now leaving with him. so that is way exciting!

i wanted to tell you probably the strangest and grossest story of my
mission as of now. well, i own a copy of jesus the christ in
portuguese, its 800 pages, as you know. it sits on my study desk, with
an equally large dictionary and another sound box on top of it. well i
went to get it one morning this week, and what did i find?

a cocroach had entrered IN MY BOOK, between two of the pages, a fully
grown cocroach. he supported all of the weight of that book, and the
other, and the sound box, and manged to sneak in between two pages of
my book. is that just disgusting, or what? HORRIBLE. how can it enter
into a crevice like that? are you kidding me?

you could see the tiny gap that his body had created, it was gross. i
cant even describe it right, but i cant get over the fact that a
cocroach entered into a freaking heavy book, with weight on top of
it.ridiculous.

thats all i can throw down for this week! i love you guys, and until next week!

Elder Hoskin