Week #7

Boom! 

So This week has been pretty darn good. I don't really remember a lot though. It kind of flew by. I found out that I get to conduct the Choir again this next Sunday! We are going to do a great arrangment of "Come thou Fount". I am super excited. I have put some deep thought into how to make this good because the speakers and MTC president really seem appreciate when the choir is good, instead of.... well something else. Haha! I really don't have a lot of stories from this week. Me and Elder Rex are getting way better at teaching and we can really feel the spirit with us in those moments we need it. Oh, I know what to talk about. Volleyball! With the new guys in my class, we now have a 5 person volleyball team! And man, we rock! HAHAHa. We bought jerseys today that kindof match so we can be a team. Mine has Rooney's name on the back. He is my favorite player, even if he is British. 

I love my scriptures. Wow, I love them. I wish I could send pictures of them. They are well used already. I learn so much every time I read them. It just blows my mind. My favorites are Moroni, Enos, James, and Peter, and Corinthians. All great stuff. Thank you for the pizza party you sent through missionties. I will use it next week, MY LAST P-DAY at the MTC. Wow the time here really flew by, but I really need to get out of here and get to work. I will send a ton of pictures when I get to Manaus!! 

Love you all!!!!!!

Week #6

Boom!


So this last week was quite a busy one. First, we went out on Friday to place some books of mormon and try to share our message just in the local area around the training center. It was quite an eye opener! I learned that I have been given the gift of discerment of tongues but not the gift of tongues! I can very easily listen to Portuguese. Its not too hard but some words I dont know. Most of the time I can understand everyone but speaking it, now thats the tricky part. That will just have to take more time and practice. But thats okay, I have 22 months left to figure that out. Also, during this week we finally received some new people in our class. 3 new people! We now have a totall of 6!!!!! Doubled in size. Me and Elder Rex are now a trio with a new elder, Elder Wadsworth. He is walking dictionary! Man, the guy knows all the Portuguese words already. He bought a dictionary before he came out and he reads it every day. Very intelligent and way funny. He is nice guy. He can speak well but his listening is hard because he hasn't been around Portuguese enough. The other two missionaries are Elder Shannon and Elder Anderson. They might be the funniest companionship ever! They are like brothers; always joking and messing around but when its time to work and listen and learn, they are a hard working team. A very good example of how to push harder. It pushes me at least to try to be even better. Its also great to have these guys because now I have a full volleyball team that can actually play. And we are good, dang good! I love playing volleyball but my hurt thumb is still not so nice when I play. Its funny Dad, how you don't like anyone to touch your thumbs because it hurts you. Well I always thought that was weird but now that is EXACTLY how my right thumb feels. So now I can empathize with the curse of a wimpy thumb. Neverless, I play anyways because it is just too much fun. Class this week has been great as far as learning to teach and share the gospel of Christ. My testimony goes every day just from the tender mercies I receive from the Lord. He strengthens me with every step I take in faith. So fantastic! Anyways I love you all!!!!! Also, Mom, I checked into the missing letter from Cheneys and they sent it to the wrong email address. I had him change it and he said he would resend. If you just email him and ask about it, just remind him that I had him mark the message in his system red to remember to resend. His name is William.

Tchao!

Week #5

Boom!

So I have decided that the letters through Missionties.com are the BEST!!!!!!!!! I love getting mail. More than once the letters I have gotten are exactly what I needed to feel better. Thank you for sending that letter from Conor Seat. His mission sounds so good and it motivates me to be even better.

So I do not really have that much to talk about other than my discoveries in the Book of Mormon. This last saturday night I decided I was going to need to read something before I went to bed. Class was hard and I needed some motivation. So I knelt down and prayed for some guidance to help me feel more motivated. It came to my mind to turn on my trusty iPodasaurus and listen to "I Love The Lord", by the BYU Men's Chorus. So I did and I love that SONG!!!! It is just so good. I really love the lyrics and it was just so powerful to me. Well then I remembered that it is based off of Nephi's testimony in 2nd Nephi somewhere. So I looked around in my scriptures and found it. 2nd Nephi Chapter 4. Wow. It is soooo powerful. I read through it and I realized what I was missing. I just needed to trust in the Lord. Never had I read through scriputres like this passage. I love it! Well then I read my Patriarchal Blessing and noticed how much it talks about trust and a few other things. WOW, it was exactly what I needed to hear. Then on Sunday the whole day was about obedience and trust in the Lord. It was just all sooo perfect. It all made sense and the Lord poured out unto me all these things and I just soaked it all in. I felt and still feel so good. Everything is great. Not much else has gone on around here but coming up soon I will have a lot to talk about. Until next week, I love you all!!

Week #4

BOOM!

So this week was another fantastic week here at the CTM! Man, it is incredible how much I have learned, and it has only been a month!!!!! CRAZY!!!!! I can kind of understand most Brazilians but it is hard to speak still. I have to translate what I want to say in my head and that takes a while.

This week I was not able to go to the temple because I had to go tot the federal police to get finger printed and stuff. It was way long! We left at 7 am, but the driver forgot our leader who was going to help us there, so we had to go back for him. Which took an hour to drive back. Then, we had to wait for 45 minutes just so the guy would show up to come with us!!!! We leave and get to the station and it is PACKED! Weird people there... SO we stand in line for a while and we find out that their computer system is messed up and we might not even get registered. Well we wait and wait and wait. Eventually all of us are called up in a big group except Elders' Howard and Torres. Turns out that their paperwork was lost or something so after getting done we had to wait for another 1.5 hours before we could leave. By the time we got back to the CTM it was already 2pm! My whole P-Day wasted. Lamesauce! However, Elder Rex (my comp) is a Brazilian citizen because he was born here in Sao Paulo, so the good that came out of this is he that still got to go to the temple and have a great experience.

However, the highlight of this week was an allergy attack. Sorry mom but this one is a good one. So on Monday I woke up with a pink eyeball and my nose is runny! Terrible! Going through the day I was sneezing and coughing and my eye hurt so much! It was like my face was going to explode!!!!! I had a huge headache and could not focus. I went to the doctor here in the CTM and he gave me some really strong drugs and it seemed to help. Well, that night I got into bed I grabbed my pillow and I grabbed the second pillow I had discovered hiding in our room and had used the night before. Then it popped in my mind very clearly " don't use that pillow". So I threw it away from me. The next day I was symtom free! Like nothing had ever happened. There's something about that pillow I must be very allergic to. Anyways now everything is all good. Evil pillow! I definitely gave thanks for being saved from the pillow.

Mr. Cheneys! WAY COOL!! (*see the note at the end) I get the mail so much faster! I love it! Yesterday I received three letters! Two were snail mail from home and one from Cheneys/Missionties telling me about the care package and letters that you sent. Kati I got your letter/pictures. Please tell me if you get my letters I sent from Cheneys today. I have sent 2 or 3 letters by snail mail so far, and 1 long one today via Cheneys. I think 2 to the family and one just to Kati. Anyways, I LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH! Sorry I couldnt skype home on Mother's Day. Happy Birthday Roman! Happy Birthday Taylor! Happy Birthday anyone else!

*There is a mail and care package service just in Brazil through a site called Missionties.com and they are associated with Mr Cheney's cookies, which is the only American type cookie store in the whole country of Brazil (and happens to be right across the street from the MTC). You sign up online and buy a certain amount of letters each month that you want to write (we bought 20 letters for $20). You write the letter through their site. They print it and send it through the Brazilian mail and it gets to the MTC or any other location in Brazil within 2-3 days (not 1-2 weeks like letters from the US). The missionary can then write you back via paper/pen, mail it back to the Missionties office (taking 2-3 days), where they will scan it into the computer and post it as a pdf to your user account on their site. They also offer care packages so you can send of things that they can't normally get in Brazil like Skippy peanut butter, maple syrup and Dove soap. You buy them online and they ship them within Brazil to where ever the missionary is located and there's no issues with your package getting stuck in customs or stolen. The items are a little more expensive than if you bought them here, but WAY less expensive overall if you don't have to pay shipping from the US to Brazil which is outragious. If your interested, go to their site and look through the FAQ's tab and learn more about the services they offer and browse the rest of the site to see the care package products. So far we are very excited to use this service!

Week #3

Boom! So first,  I cannot call you on Mother's Day from the MTC. I am sorry! There are too many elders and not enough phones here. Anyways, on to this week... So in reality, I did not get to conduct for the member of the 70 because the President of MTC thought it would be better to sing a piece most of the other missionaies had already sung before. Lame... But I was fine with it. So instead, this last Sunday for devotional I was able to conduct and arrange "How Firm a Foundation". It was amazing! I had a violin player and a mens duet sing a verse. It was wonderful!! I loved conducting the choir and they responded to me very well. A lot of missionaries know me as the guy who conducts. Most of the Brazilians think I am Harry Potter because I used a baton to conduct the piece! Ahaha right? Well afterwards the Presidents wife came up to me and told me she was sorry and that she wished we had done my piece for the General Authority. It really didnt matter to me. I just really felt the spirit teaching and singing with all the missionaries. Hopefully they let me do some more pieces. So this week my best brazilian friends left to their mission field. Oh it was so sad! We love those guys. They helped me so much with the language and they were a bunch of fun, even if brazilians dont ever sleep. I will miss all of them but new missionaries come in tomorrow. Some of them will be japanese! Way cool! So for lunch today I went out to a brazilian grill and had a TON of meat. SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOODDDD!!!!!!! I even tried......... chicken heart! It was so weird. The texture was smooth and slimey. It was okay, but I dont think I will have it again. Anyways, my portuguese is growing every day. A lot I think. Last p-day I was sooo lost outside the MTC, but today I was able to listen and sort of respond in little, broken sentences. But hey, improvement is improvement! I'll take it!!
This past week we gained a sister into our district. She really changed the dynamic in our class. Before, we were flying as far as our speed of learning, but she has difficulty with the language. Its been great though because personally I've had to step up my personal study, as well as help her catch up. At first I thought it was going to be a problem but in reality, she is a blessing; an oppurtunity to grow and develop patience, charity, diligence in study. Basically Christ like attributes! I sent another letter home this week, but not priority mail. So I dont know when it will get there. Hey, before I forget, you should look at missionties.com, or missionaryties.com (I forget which one). Anyways, it is a service that you email them your letters to me and they mail them to me and I get them in 3 days. Then I mail my responses back to them and they scan them and email them to you! WAY COOl. But I dont know all the details. So look it up! BTW, I give you permission mom to gramatically correct this email (which I always do anyway - haha). I heard about Osama. Very interesting. Anyways. I love you All.!!!!!!!