happy new year!

hey everybody! so this week was pretty good, it was really hard to get in and teach people though because it was getting close to christmas and everybody was out shopping and getting ready for that, but the week was still pretty good. We had two people that were on date to get baptized yesterday, but we stopped by their house wednesday and their mom said that they had left to go spend christmas at a relatives house and wouldnt be back until after new years, dangit! but that just means that 2 more baptisms in a few weeks.
Things with my new companion are goin great, he is really cool and we get along great. He lives close to Paraguay, so he is pretty much american, and he likes all the same music and clothes and everything that i like, so we are always jokin around and havin fun. Plus we have the same vision for our area so this should be a really good transfer.
Christmas was pretty good, definitely not the same since i wasnt with my family, but i made the best out of it. Here where i am at everyone celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve, i dont know why, they just do, so we stopped by a members house that night and ate some food and took pictures and stuff, then the next day we had church, and i got to talk to my family! That was probably the best present i could have gotten, it was really good to talk to them. Then after all the Elders in our house just hungout and played some card games and listened to music, so it was a pretty relaxing day, and this week we have new years, which means crazy parties and a lot of drunk people, so that should be fun! i'll try to snag a few pictures so you guys can see what it is like ha. well i hope everyone has a great new years!!

merry christmas feliz nata!!

Well another good week here in paradise. Well this week was extremely hot, it feels like it keeps getting hotter here, which i dont know if that is possible because it is already like 93 degrees everyday and very humid, but i endure. So today was transfers, i got a new companion, Elder Lima, and i'm remaining in my area, which i'm excited about because i pretty much know where everything is now and everybody knows me, which is nice. But i'm lookin forward to a good tranfer with Elder Lima, he seems pretty cool so far, so we'll see.


So this week we had a suprise/emergency baptism. So we get a call on wednesday from one of our inverstigators who was all ready and excited about baptism, and he said that he was gonna be traveling to Rio and be there for 1 month, but he wanted to get baptised before he left. so the next day we spent the whole day running around and talking to ward members, the zone leaders, and everyone to get a baptismal service ready. but the worst part of the day was when we got to the church and tried to drain the font so that we could fill it back up with clean water. but the freaking drain was broken, so we spent 2 hours using little buckets, running back and forth draining the font! it was horrible. and then we used a fire hose to fill up the font because we were running out of time. but we had the baptism and it was awesome, and we got a call from him yesterday, and he said that he went to the church in Rio by himself yesterday and loved it. he's awesome, definitely prepared by the Lord before we even talked to him. well nothin else i can thing of this week! Hope everyone has a good Christmas!!

brasil week 8

Well another week done with, went pretty smoothly, nothing too exciting, but not bad either. We've got a pretty solid group of people that we're teaching right now, which is good cause we had to cut a few people this last week that just weren't progressing at all, which isnt fun, but it was necessary. i've been learning a lot about the different religions here from some of out investigators, which has basically made me believe even stronger that our church is true. for example in the catholic religion here people have to pay to get baptized(30 bucks) and to confess sins, which both of those are obviously false doctrines. And how the Evangelicals hate catholics, and vice versa. They also have 2 churchs, the Universal and some other church that i cant remember the name of, but they basically rob people dry for attending church. They basically tell people that go their that before they leave they have to give them all the money they have, and they make them pay for books that they have to return at the end of the church meeting, and some make people leave if they dont have any money to "donate", its all just rediculous. And the rest of the churches here are pretty much just people screaming and casting out demons and all that fun stuff, i swear our church is the only one here that makes any sense, but apperantly not to people here, but oh well. Oh so i do have one funny\depressing story to share, so saturday we were teaching this girl named Renata, and her mom, Renata is 16 and has a crush on my companion, basically said that she wants to marry him the first time we met her, so he´d always just kinda joke about it and not think too much of it, but saturday when we got there she was like "so as a missionary you cant date me or do anything like that", to which my companion clearly responded no, and after that she basically got really mad, and would only talk to me the rest of the time, and when i asked if she'd go to church she said no because she was mad at my companion, so i asked her if she'd read the book and mormon and pray, and she said yeah, but that she wouldnt tell us if she got an answer that our church was true because she was so mad at Elder C. Alves, rediculous!!! And even worse i think she has a crush on me now haha, so we'll see how that goes. Oh and i think we fould moses this week when we were tracting, he is old and has this crazy long beard and looks just like moses, he literally lives in a little forest thing next to this sewage drop off, i'm gonna ask him next time if he has the pallets with the 10 commandments still haha. well i think thats all for now! till next week!

brasil week 7

Well this week was pretty good for the most part! Lots and lots of walking, my companion doesnt know how to plan so most days he schedules visits and tracting stuff in completely different places every hour, so we walk back and forth a lot. We we able to find a pretty solid family this week, and one girl named Renata who is 16, who is pretty difficult to teach because the first time we went over there she said that she couldnt concentrate because we were too attractive haha. its actually a pretty cool story how we found her too, so we had been goin to pass by the house of a street contact we made earlier in the week, and we were knocking on the door of the house that we thought was his, but some people outside told us it was the next house over, and as they told us that Renata came out and said "whose calling my name", which was weird cause no one said her name (the spirit calling her!!), so we talked to her and she said she was very catholic but she is willing to give church a shot, and even better we talked to her mom on sunday when we passed by there to get her for church and it turns out she had taken the lessons from the missionaries 3 years before, and had been to church 3 times already, and she said she wants to go again, so that will be good, its just the mom and her so i´m gonna count that as a family! not too much else goin on here, hope everyone had a good thanksgiving! till next week!

week 6

This week was... alright... not the most productive. My companion has a kidney stone so in the last 2 weeks we have gone to the hospital 4 times because of the pain he was in( karma! haha), and 2 of those times we didnt get home till like 1:30 in the morning, so he´s been taking a lot of time to rest and what not, which i guess is part of life, but in my opinion he is kinda being a little dramatic. Like he keeps on telling people that the doctor says he should get surgery but he wont do it and he´ll just tough it out, even though every time the doctor says that they dont need to do surgery haha, but whatever. Anyways, we had one guy that we thought was gonna get baptized yesterday, but when he had his baptismal interview it turns out that he drank coffee that day, and they have to live the word of wisdom for at least a week until they can be baptized, so today i bought him this stuff call cervada, which is like coffee, but it is good for you, so hopefully that will help him to quit and he´ll be baptized next week, and we have one more guy that we hope will get baptized this week too. OH and last Monday we were walkin down the street and this 14 year old girl was like hey what church are you guys from? so we talked to her and set up an appointment to go see her the next day, and when we showed up she had gathered 9 other kids ranging from 10 to 15 years old, so we talk all of them and commited them all to baptism, but sadly some of the parents didnt want them goin to a different church, so none of them came to church yesterday, so we need to work with the parents for sure, get them baptized too ha. I feel kind of awkward when we go there though because right when the kids see me they flock around, some give me hugs, and everyone is asking me questions and stuff, its crazy, i feel like Justin Bieber or something there haha, i guess its cool but i dont like all the attention. Well thats all for this week, Hope everyone enjoys thanksgiving, they dont have it here so i´ll be eating rice beans and chicken, woo! Till next week!

brasil week 5

Well this week was much better than the last few. It was the first week of the new transfer so my companion was pretty focused on making this transfer a good one, so hopefully that will last! We got a few more solid people that we are preparing for baptism, and we had another baptism yesterday which was cool. His name is Tiago and he is 11 years old, the cool thing that happened with him was he pretty much just came up to me one day and said that he wants to get baptized and he wanted me to baptize him, so needless to say, it was pretty easy to teach him. He has an older sister and brother in the church so i´m not too worried about him going inactive like most younger kids do. My new goal for this transfer is to get the number of people in church attendence at both of our wards to at least 75 people. Right now in both wards in fluctuates between about 35-45 people, not good. Sacrament meetings are pretty bland and the other activities in the church are weak, so before i leave this area i want to make some big changes in church activites. So this week we´re gonna do a lot of finding and reactivating of less active members, should be an exhasting week! but well worth it. No new drama this week with my companion which is always good, we had 2 new missionaries move into our house this transfer, and they are both brazilians, naturally. Every other american missionary that i´ve talked to says that they always have at least one other american living with them, or a brazilian that speaks english, so i guess i´m just lucky haha, they are pretty cool though, they both really live saying my last name though, every time i walk in the door they pretty much make a song just using "Powers", at first it was funny but not it is just annoying haha, but things could be worse i guess haha. Oh and i started teaching an english class to some members in the ward this week, it was pretty dificult, brazilians have a very hard time pronouncing things in english, but its pretty cool, this week i´m teaching a little girl how to sing a hymn in english, which should be interesting since i cant sing to save my life, but oh well. Well nothin else to report really, oh yeah Elder David A. Bednar is speaking to our whole mission today, which will be really cool, i´ll get to shake an Apostles hand, so i´m pretty excited for that. Well until next week!

Brasil week 4

Well this week was... interesting... so this week was the last week of transfers, which according to my companion means that we pretty much don´t do much, I guess thats how it is mission wide, so it was a really slow week because we didn´t really get much done. But none the less we still had some success. Oh and I didn´t get transfered, no suprise their, and I guess I´ll probably be here till Febuary because the next transfer date is right around Christmas so I guess the Mission President doesnt really make and changes, so I have a least 3 more months is this area ha, which is fine, I like it here. This week was especially cool for me because yesterday I was able to perform my first 2 baptisms ever! It was so cool, I was a little nervous though because the people hear have really long names so I was afraid I would forget but it all worked out, and the Bishop said that he was impressed because most missionaries on their first few baptisms mess up and have to redo them 2 or 3 times, so I guess I´m just a natural baptizer haha. The 2 people that I baptized are super awesome too, the first is a kid named Tharleson, he´s 12 years old and loves rap music, so he is always talking to me about music because I love rap too, he´s like a little brother to me so it was cool that he was my first baptism. After the baptism he whipped out his For the Strength of Youth booklet and started reading it, then took out his Book of Mormon and started reading that too, he´s is so excited about church so thats cool. Oh and as we were leaving he told me that I was a second father to him, so that made me feel pretty good. The second person is named Junior, he is 15 years old and loves soccer(as does every brazilian so thats not really a suprise) and he is also really excited about joining the church too. Definitely think that these 2 are future missionaries. This week we´re thinking that we´ll have 4 or 5 more baptisms as well, so that will be really cool as well! Hmm lets see what else... oh so heres a little missionary drama for you guys, its about my companion, so my comp. has a girlfriend/future wife that he met in our area, so we stop by there usually once a day and talk and what not, which I don´t think is allowed but we get referrals from her so i guess its not a total waste, but anyways so my companion also has these 2 other girls that have a crush on him(snakes) and they found out about him and his girlfriend thing, so they confront Pricilla(girlfriend) and basically tell her that she is ruining my companions mission because she is distracting him(kinda true in my opinion) so Pricilla gets really upset so we had to spend like half a day running back and forth trying to settle this conflict and deal with crying girls. It was very frustrating, and that is why you dont have relationships in your mission, lesson learned haha. Hmm not much else for now, a letter from anybody would be nice, make me feel loved, thanks!

brasil week 3, 10-31-11

well this week was much better, not sickness, which is always good, and we were able to get a lot more done because i could actually walk around haha. we hit the jackpot this week on investigators. the guy that we just baptized last week, felipe, introduced us to like 4 more of his friends, and we got them all to come to church yesterday, and i will probably baptize them in the next week or 2, so that should be awesome. one secret that i´ve learned here if you wanna find good investigators is referrals from members, my companion told me that in this mission you won´t suceed very much by just knocking on doors(well here its actually clapping in front of doors because they don´t really have doors here) the real sucess comes from help from the members. he said that almost all of his baptisms here have been from referrals. although we have had a little success by knocking on doors, but its definitely a lot easier to teach people that have been referred. one thing that i think is kinda weird here is that fact that most of the baptisms here are of kids like ages 8-15, cause like we´ll go in to a house to teach a family, and we´ll finish and invite the family to pray and come to church and get baptized, and the parents usually say no, but that they want their children to go to church with us and stuff, and that is weird to me! but i hope that we can get a few families baptized soon. the portuguese is still pretty rough, its improving though, i´ve accepted the fact that i´m gonna feel stupid for a few months, and thats okay, most people around here know now that i don´t really understand what i´m saying, so they talk a little slower for me, but a lot of them try to mess with me too, or they like to have me try to say certain words because they think that my accent is funny haha. they food is the same...every day... rice, beans, and sometimes chicken, i´m pretty much used to it now though, so its all good. one thing that i think is sketchy though is that they don´t refrigerate their milk or eggs, so i´m kinda afraid to buy that stuff, i pretty much just eat cookies and chips for breakfast, cause its the only thing i trust haha. the weather here is rediculously hot, and we have to walk like 12 miles every day in it, on the brightside i wont come back fat like a lot of missionaries. one thing that i´m really afriad of though is losing my hair because the sun is so strong, a lot of missionaries here get the little receding hairline on the sides of their head, so please pray for me that i return with a full head of hair haha. not much else goin on here, today is halloween, they don´t really do anything around here for it, a lot of the people i´ve talked to think that it is evil and don´t like it, so thats kind of depressing because i like halloween haha, oh well. oh and i´m gonna rewrite my address because this is the more correct way of writting it, so use this one to send me any letters.

Missão Brasil Fortaleza

Av. Santos Dumont, 1789 - Sala 1612

Aldeota, CEP 60150- 160

Fortaleza CE

Brazil

he is finally in brazil! 10- 17-2011

The keyboards here are a little different so i apoligize if i dont type very good! Well i´m finally in brasil! woo! man is it different here! when we first arrived President Souza did interviews and all that jazz, and to determine who our companions would be, and i think that he thought that my portuguese was the best, so i got a brazilian companion that doesnt speak engish at all, while the other 2 got american companions, so it has been difficult, but it will probably help me learn faster. He is really cool though, and we get along great. the area that i´m in is in the city of fortaleza, but probably the poorest part, so i´ll try to explain what it is like here a little, so we live in a little apartment on the second floor of this building. its really weird because all of the houses here a just like attached, meaning there is no space inbetween them, and they dont have like shopping centers or anything, so the shops are in between houses and stuff. in our apartment we have a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a place to do laundry. in the bathroom there is just a toilet, shower, and sink, but the shower is just out in the middle, so after i take a shower i have to sweep the water into the drain, oh and they only have cold showers here, so i wont have a warm shower for 2 years ha, its all good though, it is so hot that i wouldnt take a warm one anyway. the water here is too unsafe to drink out of the tap, so we have to go out and buy tanks of clean water. oh and the dont really have indoor plumbing or any real system for getting rid of ´bathroom business´ so when we are walking around outside there is poop just floating down the street, and at one part that we walk by there is like a huge lake of crap and stuff, it smells SO BAD! oh and another think is they dont really have trash cans here so everyone just throws trash on the ground, so trash is everywhere ha. we have to walk everywhere, so i get super sweaty ha, and everyone stares at me because of how white i am, so thats fun. but none the less i like it here, once i can understand what people are saying it will be good. i dont think they have a school for kids here so they are always just running around, people here wake up and are outside in the streets at like 7 in the morning, cause it is all bright and stuff by then. the language is really hard to understand and speak here, but i´m getting better, hopefully in a few weeks i´ll be able to understand. my first day here i tryed teaching part of the first lesson to a guy in portuguese, i think he understood ha. their is a family here that we always stop by and say hi to, they are really cool and are trying to help me with portuguese. they are always making us eat though, everytime we go there we have to eat a big meal. its weird cause we pretty much just eat one time a day, at lunch time, but i´m never hungry, i still feel like i´m getting fat though ha. the church here is really nice, probably the nicest building in our area, and it is airconditioned, so its like my favorite place here ha. its like 2 miles away though so yesterday for church we had to walk there and back twice, cause we have 2 wards that we have to go to, so each time i got really really sweating, probably not the best first inmpression but oh well haha, everyone is sweaty here. oh and yesterday we were walking home from church to our lunch appointment, but we had some time so we stopped by that families house, and of course they made us a huge meal, which made me full, then right after we had to walk over to our lunch appointment and eat again, i almost threw up haha, the people here are super nice though, they love missionaries. one thing that i think is cool here and people are very up front about stuff, like when we teach lessons we are pretty much just like hey you need to do this, and so they do it. oh and they love american music here, like justin bieber and stuff, so thats like all they listen to, but they dont know what it is saying haha. oh and for washing clothes here they just have a washing maching and then they hangdry everything, so that is fun. i really just need to send pictures so that you guys can understand. well anyways i think that is it for now, this week we are going to another church to preach to like 50 people, so that should be cool, and we´ll probably have 2 baptisms this week, so should be a good week! till next time!

he is in south dakota!

So i've only got like a half an hour to email right now because I dont have a library card yet cause i need to get a letter that confirms my address, so i gotta make this fast ha. Well lets start with leaving the mtc. So I woke up at like 5 in the morning so that i could get all ready and go the the travel office. We were on the road by about 6 headed to the airport, it was so weird finally getting out of the mtc and seeing the world again. When i got to the airport it was weird not being surrounded by other missionaries. We had like 2 hours till our flight so i got to call home and talk to family, which was really cool. The i pretty much just sat around until it was time to board the plane. A lot of people were coming up to me and asking me where i served my mission, and i was like oh i'm just going out to the field right now, i guess i look old enough to have already served a mission, guess thats what 2 months in the mtc will do to you haha. The plane that we took to Rapid Springs was the smallest plane i've ever been on, we had to like go outside and walk up stairs to get on, and i swear it only held like 30 people. Plus i sat next to a family from France so i couldnt understand them at all haha. When we landed at the airport in Rapid City i was really suprised because it seriously just looked like a huge field with a little building in the middle of it. There were only 2 baggage claim stations, and there were probably like a total of 300 people in the whole airport. We were greeted by President Layton, and the AP's, then we headed off to the mission office, where i met like 6 other Elders from the area, and met the elder's who i was gonna be with. Originally President Layton told me that i would be in Rapid City till tuesday, then i would go down with the zone leaders to wyoming. So after we had lunch i headed out with Elder Kocherhans and hopped on a bike and started doin some missionary work. We went to downtown and did a little street contacting, we met this guy named Swag, he pretty much told us his like story about how he gets money from the government because he was dropped on his head when he was 4 and how he used to smoke weed and stuff, he was kind of off, but we taught him the restoration, i gave the first vision part and the book of mormon, it was pretty cool because i didnt expect to be teaching that soon! but i think that i did alright. Swag wasnt in our area though so we gave his info to the other missionaries. After that we went to another part of town to make appointments with some investigators, a lot of people here are pretty poor, so a lot dont have cell phones, or house phones, so the only way we can contact them is by biking all the way to their house. Another cool thing about Rapid City is that it is like 50% Native Americans, they are pretty crazy,and i swear everyone here is drunk by like 10 in the morning, but the people here are the nicest people i've ever met, and they are so simple, they all dont really have anything in terms of like money and stuff, but they make do and seem pretty happy. My second day i had a little orientation thing and president Layton told me that instead of going to Wyoming i would be staying here with Elder Kocherhans and Elder Cooper, and they would be my trainers, witch i was really excited about because these guys are awesome and we're pretty close already. All the other elders are really cool here too, the only bad thing about staying here though is that our companionship is the only one in Rapid City that doesnt have a truck, we're all biking, luckily the weather has been pretty good still, like in the 80's everyday, i've heard it could change any day though and be like 50 degrees ha. I dont have like any time to tell more stories this time, but things are goin great, i love South Dakota so much, its true what they say that it doesnt matter which mission you go to because you love it either way. Plus the field is like 100 times better than the mtc ha. Well anyways here is my address for while i'm in South Dakota:


Elder CJ Powers
2525 West Main #311
Rapid City, SD 57702


make sure every thing that is sent is through the post office, because they can forward mail or packages for free that way.


well i'll write more next time!

CJ GOES TO SOUTH DAKOTA

well here's where i'm goin(drumroll)............ The Rapid City, South Dakota mission.... woo haha, its the biggest mission in the united states, it has all of south dakota, all of north dakota, half of wyoming, half of minnesota, a third of nebraska, a little bit of iowa, and a little bit of iowa. look up the mission boundries, its huge haha, when i first got it i was kinda like "south dakota... what the heck is in south dakota" haha, there are seriously 25 church buildings in my whole mission. luckily its not cold their or anything... haha not! i talk to an elder who lived in north dakota and he was like yeah you'll need a nice warm jacket, and i was like oh for the winter time? and he was like no for like right when you get there, during the winter your gonna want to wear like animal skin cause with wind chill it can get to like -60 degrees haha, so luckily i brought no warm clothes or anything haha, i'll have to let you know how it is when i get there, i might have to go buy a jacket though haha, he said i'll for sure have a car though which is good, but he said that it is really hard to go tracting because houses are so far away and you only have a limited amount of miles you can travel, but nevertheless i'm excited, i know that their is a purpose for why the Lord wants me in this area, i just wanna get out and make a difference. everyone in my district is going to either california, or north carolina, we all joke around about how at least they arent goin to south dakota haha, so anyways i fly out on the 29th at like 9 in the morning, so i'm just excited to get out and do some work. oh and one more thing, i wont be able to recieve mail here at the mtc after the 27th, cause they will be giving our district mailbox to other people, so if you send anything after the 27th i wont get it haha. well anyways thats whats goin on here, i should still be able to call you at the airport, but only for a half hour, i'll let you know if i find anything else out, talk to you later! love you!

9/5/2011

hello all! another glorious week here in provo. the temperature is starting to cool down, which is really nice, even though i need to get used to the hot weather, but i'll cross that bridge when i get there ha. So good news, i got to fill out the electronic portion of my visa this last week, it doesnt mean that i'm going to get my visa soon necessarily, but it means that something is happening with it, which is good enough for me, so who knows, i could be down in brazil any day now ha. one really cool thing that happened this week was we had elder holland, of the quorom of the 12 come and talk to us at our tuesday devotional, so that was really cool, he said a lot of good stuff! hmm can't really think of anything else significant that has been happening here. I play a lot of soccer in my free time, except i play it more like football cause pretty much just knock people over when i play... i dunno if thats legal but oh well. I talked to a guy from brazil this week and was asking about fortaleza, and he said that the food there is so good, especially that fruit, he said that i'll probably gain weight, which hopefully wont be the case, but only time will tell. so in two weeks if i havent gotten my visa by then, then i find out where i'm getting reassigned till i get my visa, which is actually pretty exciting, mainly just cause i'm ready to get out of here haha, ate proximo semana!

8/29/2011

Hey all! Reached the 1 month mark on saturday! Its crazy how fast time has gone by, some days still feel like they drag on forever though! Everything is pretty much the same here, I heard that there is like a big hurricane or something that is supposed to hit the east coast soon, thats crazy! someone needs to update me on that! I saw my good buddy Elder Ayala this last week when he arrived, took some pictures with him. Oh and I got a haircut today, I feel much better now, my hair was gettin a little too wild for missionary standards haha. Things here at the MTC are startin to slow down, because school is starting so less people are coming in, which is good, because the lines for waiting for food at meal times were getting rediculous! We're still teachin the same investigators that we have been for the last few weeks, and we start teaching other guys in our district today, so that should be loads of fun ha. We watched the Joseph Smith Story movie last night in portuguese, and I could atually understand it pretty well, so that was uplifting, but if i get reassigned for a few months while I wait for my visa then i'll probably forget a lot of it haha, but if I do get reassigned then I hope i go somewhere on the east coast, i think that would be cool. Well thats about it for now!

8/22/2011

Hello all! or should I say Oi! Tudo Bem? thats how you greet someone in portuguese, its just means Hey! all good? and then you respond by saying tudo bem, just thought i'd share a little culture with you guys. Things here a still goin good, i got sick the last few days though, and i'm startin to get over it so thats good, if someone gets sick here it spreads super fast, so that kinda sucks, especially cause you still have to go to all the classes and stuff ha. Other than that though things have been good, the letters have been slowin down though so everyone needs to step up their game a little bit haha. I've got 2 investigators now that we teach every day, its gettin a lot easier and now i feel like i can speak well enough in Portuguese to teach almost any lesson, the language is comin slowly, but surely, and can really notice improvement each day, still can't really make small talk in portuguese so its kinda weird, cause when we try to make small talk with the investigators it is really bad portuguese, but when we teach we actually sound pretty legit haha. Oh and we learned a really cool word in Portuguese this week, its paralelipipido, which just means cobblestone, but it sounds pretty funny, so we always ask the portuguese speaking teachers here how to say cobblestone and they start laughing cause they know its funny haha. We had a pretty cool fireside from Brother Allen last night, he was talking about the mission rules and the moral of all his stories was pretty much you will either die or get put in jail haha, so that was uplifting. There has been kind of an ongoing prank war goin on in our district these last few weeks, so i'm tryin to stay ahead of the game on that. I've also been workin on my soccer skills a little bit so i don't get made fun of in brazil haha... if i ever make it to brazil! One guy in my district got his visa last week, and my companion filled out his electronic portion last week so he might leave soon as well, so hopefully mines comin! Well thats all for now! keep the letters comin!

8/15/2011

Oi! Survived another week at the MTC! Things are goin good still! Portuguese is gettin easier and easier. I thought that i was understanding pretty well until a native brazilian came up and talked to me and i didnt understand a word he was saying! haha, but in due time i guess. I'm starting to get really sick of the food here, i've heard they cycle to menu every 3 weeks so this week we should start getting the same stuff as we did the first week, yay... haha not. i guess it could be worse though, i'm not used to eating 3 big meals each day though, and we're pretty much sitting around all day, so i've been workin hard to maintain my weight haha. At least we have an hour to work out each day so i pretty much jog most of the time, and play a little foursquare. We've got new investigators now, the guy that we have, Diego, is really hard to teach because he's always falling asleep while we're teaching him, and texting, I would ask him to stop texting but i dont know how to say it in Portuguese haha. No word on the visa yet, and i havent heard about any other elders getting them either so its kinda worrying me, i've got 6 weeks here still though so i guess their is still hope! If i do go stateside though then i want to go to florida! By the end of this week i was super tired so i was falling asleep during our personal study times haha, but i think everyone was feeling that way, its crazy though that i've been here for 3 weeks already, the days go by slow, but the weeks go by fast, its weird. Besides that nothing new has really happened, its pretty much the same thing every day. Oh but my district and I are gonna try to start a new tradition at the MTC of "Purple Tie Tuesdays", each week when the new missionaries come in we tell as many as we can to wear their purple tie on tuesdays, we tell them that its because its President Monsons favorite color, so if we all wear purple then he might come and talk at a devotional haha. We really have no idea if thats his favorite color, and we know he's not gonna give us a devotional, but its a pretty good way to get people to wear purple haha. Well that about it for this week!

8/9/2011

So this is the second time i'm having to write this cause the computer locked me out! so its gonna be shorter cause i'm tired of writing the same thing. But anyways thanks for all the mail, I went and looked for those self enema kits in the bookstore after i read that story, they didnt have them haha. But anyways sounds like things are goin pretty good there! Tell chase good like, i know that he can do it! That cool that you guys finally have a bishop though!
Things here are going pretty good! I wanna be out in Brazil already but I have a lot to learn still, but its still pretty good here. Its been warm everyday, which has been nice, but hot cause we're in church clothes the whole time. We finished teaching our first investigator, we got her to commit to baptism! we were the only ones in our district to get that far, so that was kinda cool ha. We're teaching our second investigator now, its one of our teachers so its kinda weird haha. I taught him the restoration yesterday in all portuguese, and it was actually pretty good! My portuguese is progressing so fast, its amazing! I''ve been seeing the blessings of faith so much since i've been here! everything else is goin great, we get gym time almost everyday so that helps a lot, four square here is crazy competetive, i've played a few times and the other elders get so into it haha. but most of the time i just run and lift weights(they have like 6 weight machines around the track, and they're all almost about to break, but its better than nothing haha). Well thats all thats new here, Its pretty much the same thing everyday so nothing really interesting happens haha, my emails will get more exciting once i'm actually out in brazil. Oh and keep those letters comin, all the elders in my district get mad because i get letters every night, so i think its pretty funny haha.

first letter from the mtc

Hey dad! So we only get 30 minutes for email so i'll try to cram everything in! haha. So things here are goin pretty good. When I got here I was greeted by a host, and he took me all around, and brought me to my classroom. Right when I walked in I met my district, and we got started right away learning Portuguese, its soooo hard to learn a new language! Luckily I have a pretty good spanish background, so that helps a lot. My companion is pretty cool, except he is always wanting to practice Portuguese, which isnt a bad thing, but my brain needs a break sometimes! My district is really cool, we all get along really well and all joke around together so its a really good atmosphere. The second day we had to give our first lesson to an "investigator", shes not a real investigator, but she pretends to be one. We figured she'd speak a little english, but we soon learned after we went in to teach her that she spoke NO english! So we taught our first lesson in ALL Portuguese on our second day here! Its crazy how fast you learn here, but its still really hard, I know I need to stop stressing and let the language come to me, but its hard cause I wanna be fluent now haha. About 24 missionaries that were all supposed to go to the Brazil MTC came it last week with me, and a lot of the missionaries have been getting reassignments as the approach the end of their 9 weeks here, so I'm thinkin that I'll probably be goin stateside for a while, but I'm stayin optimistic! I was really homesick the first few days here, but things are gettin better and I'm starting to really enjoy myself. So yesterday, Sunday, it sacrament meeting when they were passing the water around, I was bringing the cup up to my mouth, and somehow I dropped it, and water got all over me, it was really embarrassing, but its whatever, I dont think anyone really noticed haha. Oh and I realized this morning that I lost my temple recommend... while we were on our way to the temple... but luckily they were able to look my name up, so it all worked out okay. I'm doing my laundry right now, its my P-day, which was much needed! I needed a break to just chill and have fun with my district! But we have to give our 3rd lesson to our investigator at 6 tonight, so I get to relax until then! Its amazing how much Portuguese I know already!

      Well more updates to come, but thats about all thats happened so far! I only get to email once a week on P-day for 30 minutes, but you should get all the kids to write me letters through dearelder while I'm here cause I get mail everyday, and mail is like the best thing ever here! Its what all the missionaries look forward to at night haha. Good luck with chases football though, your still coaching right? man i dont know how your gonna do that! your gonna be so tired! your awesome though so you'l be able to handle it. Oh and i'm not sure it you got my first letter, but it had my address, and some stuff that I forgot listed on it. I forgot my temple bag in my closet, my retainers in my bathroom, and something else that I cant remember, but it should be in that letter! well got to go! tell everyone to write me a lot of letters!!! Love you and mom so much and I miss you guys! talk to you soon!