Week 2

view from the back window of the CTM

Wow I never thought you'd be able to make all those connections! Yep that's definitely Elder Chamberlain. He was student body president at his high school. He has a fun personality and I love that he's so humble. He became our zone leader this week and Elder Caldwell became our district leader. I'll have to ask Sister Breithaupt if she knows the Shaffers. She is going to the Recife mission along with Sister Barber from Australia, Sister Evans from American Fork, and Sister Dickson from Morgan UT. Sister Porter is also from Morgan UT (she and S. Dickson were friends before) and is going to the Natal Mission with Elder Caldwell and I. I found out that Sister Porter has family in Delta. Also, Sister Evans and Sister Breithaupt both went to BYU before and lived in New Heritage so we've made some connections there.

Yes, Brazil's loss to Germany (Alemania- not sure if I spelled that right) in the Cupo de Mundo was pretty devastating for everyone. And it's especially hard for Brazilians because Argentina, their rival, made it to the finals. The city would go crazy whenever Brazil had a game. Even though we're pretty isolated in the CTM, we could guess the score based on when fireworks and cannons would go off. We were watching out the window once when Brazil scored and it was awesome. All the cars were honking their horns and people were blowing airhorns from the windows of 15-floor apartment buildings. We had a devotional during the Germany game, but the word got around quickly that we were losing, haha.

This week has been another good one! Some missionaries feel like the time flies by here but I don't feel like it does. It feels about normal or maybe a little slow. I'm fine with that though. I want to get the language down as much as I can before I leave. My Portuguese is slowly getting better day by day. It's easy to get frustrated occasionally, but I think I'm probably improving more than I realize. The instructors talk a lot about o dom da linguas (the gift of tongues). They encourage us to always speak portuguese, 24/7. This week I've been doing a lot better at that, but I'm far from perfect. It's hard speaking in portuguese as a companionship because we're all on different levels, but we do a good job! As I was saying in the last email, most of the missionaries here are Hispanic. It's hard to communicate with them too because they speak a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese, haha. I really am making progress though and I can feel the Lord's help. I learn things a lot faster in class when we have the spirit with us. And that's another thing I've learned more about here- how the Spirit works. We can feel the Spirit whenever truth is testified, whether it's with a fake investigator or a real one. The CTM is a special place where the Spirit can always be present. The building is dedicated. Wherever we are- in our bedroom, in our classroom, etc- we're representatives of Jesus Christ.

Most people here call me Elder Igreja, the portuguese word for church, hahaha. It's a good conversation starter.

Again, my time is really limited and I wish I could say more

I've found out that letters from the US take about 12-14 days to get here.

Love you!

Elder Church