Finishing up my time at the MTC - CTM Week 6

temple

Hey family!
Email time is definitely one of my favorite parts of the week. And I look forward to having more time to read and write letters once I'm out in the field.
I leave for Natal on Tuesday! I don't know my flight schedule yet, but I'll probably get on the bus to the airport sometime early Tuesday morning. Elder Chamberlain left at about 5 am, but other missionaries have left as early as 3am. I'm excited to leave, but I love it here too. I haven't been thinking about leaving for the field at all because I've been so caught up in working hard here. I'm so lucky to have the instructors that I have- Irmao Benatti and Irmao Brito. When I first got here, it took me a little while to get used to being in class all day (and on top of that, the same classroom). But now I'm definitely used to it. The days don't drag on, but they don't fly by either- it's perfect. I've been doing my best this week to take advantage of all the time I have. Our instructors encouraged us to set really high goals for ourselves on the last week, and to increase them every day. We all set daily goals for memorizing words, phrases, and scriptures. I've really improved my ability to memorize scriptures since being here (all in Portuguese of course). I love being able to have scriptures in my head that I can share in lessons. Our district is doing really well as a whole. It's fun seeing everyone progress. We're starting to get more American missionaries here now that it's in the middle of summer. We also continue to get visa-waiters who served in the US before. I talked to one elder this week who served in another mission for 14 months! How crazy is that!
We didn't end up going to the Campinas temple this morning. A couple other groups of missionaries went there this week. We did get to take pictures this time at the Sao Paulo temple though! Normally they don't allow us to bring cameras, but President Swensen said that we could this week. It's a beautiful temple. I'll send a bunch of pictures from my 6 weeks in the MTC once I'm out in the field.
It's hard to believe that it's August already!
Hope all is going well!
Not sure when I'll write to you next, but probably sometime next week.

Love you!

Elder Church