Snail Mail!: August 31, 2012

(This is a transcript of the snail mail letter that we received from Elder Cummings today, along with 5 pictures.  Captions on each picture were written on the back of the photo. And, I obviously need to clean the glass on my scanner!--Marie)

Dear Family,

This will just be a short letter but I am sending with it 5 photos each with detailed descriptions on them.

I love getting your letters! Mail time is every elder's favorite time of the day here at the CTM! I didn't realize how much I would love getting mail! It is definitely the highlight of the day to get a letter. Don't get me wrong! I love being here and learning how to be a missionary and speak Portuguese! But getting that letter is just the icing on top of an already great day!!

I love you guys!

--Elder Cummings

 Day 1 at the CTM!  Me and my first missionary companion, Elder S.  He is from Boston, MA, and goes to BYU.  He has 5 younger brothers, 1 baby sister.  He is awesome!  Elder E., Elder S., and I are planning on living near each other once we all go back to BYU.

This is the view from my window at the CTM! Sao Paulo is so huge! And beautiful! It is worth 6 flights of stairs multiple times a day to get this view!

It is 6 to a room here at the CTM.  Elder S. and I are closest to the window.  Elder E. and Elder W. are closest to the door, and our Brazilian roommates (Elder G. and Elder F. for the time being) are in the middle.  The Brazilians are only here for 3 weeks so we will get 2 more sets before our time here is up.

The courtyard at the CTM. This is a beautiful building! It is kind of small but we have a tiny weight room, a basketball court/volleyball courts, and a tiny, tiny track. The plants here are so beautiful! It is kind of odd to see tile everywhere.  Even tile "outside." It is hard to tell when you go "outside" because it is all the same temperature.

Elder S. and I (the only two North American elders going to Londrina) with Elder T., the son of the Londrina mission president! Elder T. is really cool!  He spoke pretty good English, too, and was able to tell us a little bit about our mission! I can't wait to get into the field!!!

CTM Slumber Party: August 29, 2012

Hi guys!!!!

So with the 8-page paper thing, it has a lot of basic rules and stuff and some gospel stuff you won't learn anywhere else. Also I might have made a slight mistake on the pronunciation part for te's and ti's. They should be like chi noises. If this doesn't make sense now it will make sense when you get the language guide and read it. The guide is really good stuff though!!

The reason why the birthday celebration was not exactly mission appropriate is because it has Broadway songs in it. But I mean, he is the prophet, come on! At least we got to watch it. (It is on LDS.org by the way.)

As far at the towel hats are concerned, I did not have my camera with me but my buddies did and they gave me some pictures and I can get the rest of them once I get home and add them on Facebook.

The food is good and everything, you just know how I am with my fast metabolism. And we work so hard every day that it is really hard to keep the weight on even when I eat a whole lot every day!! Thank you for the cookies and cinnamon rolls. Elder S. and I are both very thankful!!! 

Mail is sooooo awesome. I got grandpa's card like my first week here and got grandma's letter last Wednesday and I sent out a response to her today. I got an awesome picture and letter from C.M., F.M., and A.M.!! It totally made my entire day!! I really hope A.J. writes me. That would be sooo cool. (Can you get me A.S.’s and A.J.’s address so I can write them both sometime here soon?) Other than those two, I should be good. I had totally forgotten about all the addresses you sent me with.

I met both Elder G.’s, one of them is on the same schedule as me, and he is sitting next to me right now as I type this email. They are pretty cool guys!

OK, so what was new this week for me?? District 26-a left this week and I am really good friends with all of those guys so that was a sad goodbye but we are going to hang out and all that after the mish and stuff. But...before they left, we had a slumber party of sorts on Saturday night in one of their rooms where me and Elder S. and some other guys from that district all brought our mattresses into the one room. That was lots of fun. (Yes I got a picture of everyone!) It was really funny seeing all the Brazilians stare at us as we carried mattresses down the hallway.

What else was new?? So I found out this week that Londrina gets up to around 115 during the summer...coolio. One of our teachers served in the Curitiba mission before the Londrina mission split off, so he actually served in Foz de Iguacu for like 3 months, and apparently all my shirts are going to be pink with dark red stains where my backpack straps are...I am still super excited to go out into the field.

This week was a big step for me and Elder S. Our stay here at the CTM switched from scrambling to try and learn the language as our top priority to now our top priority is to become well enough acquainted with the Gospel in order to teach our investigators. It is amazing how fast we have picked up pretty decent Portuguese. Now I just have to get more comfortable speaking it. Just talking with Elder S. or my teachers, district members, or even the other North Americans I can speak just fine, but in speaking with the Brazilians I am so nervous of messing up. That is something I need to work on for sure.

I have definitely grown spiritually while I have been here. One thing that I love is having a study/prayer journal. So whenever I study or pray I always have my pen in hand in order to jot down revelation as it comes to me!!

(This next section is for Aunt P.)

Hey there, this seemed like the easiest way to send a letter to you.

Please let me know how your trip goes! And I am glad that Baby A. is doing better!!! I don't have much time so I'll make this short, but yeah Brazil is so awesome! It is so different from America though. You would be hard-pressed to find a single building in São Paulo besides the CTM that doesn't have graffiti on it! And there are an unbelievable amount of old style Volkswagen buses and bugs on the street--it is insane!!!!

I will definitely try and get pictures back home and tell you guys more about the culture once I get in the field

lots of love, Elder Cummings

(Back to you guys)  Please forward that to Aunt P. for me.

I love being here and I love having the Holy Ghost with me all the time. I am striving to wake up every morning a better servant than the day before! Sometimes I slip up but I always try again and the Lord is blessing me for that!!!

I probably forgot a lot of stuff but I'm out of time...Love you guys so much!!!

Love,

Elder Eldon Ray Cummings

(about a minute later, this shorter email also arrived)  The picture of Baby I. is so cute, by the way!!! She has gotten soooo big!!! Yes please keep sending me pictures via email!!! Thank you!

One of our favorite elders, Elder G., sent us on a treasure hunt after he left on Tuesday, which was really fun! It had scripture clues and everything!! He is such a great elder!!

Ummmm...so as the seconds wind down I am thinking of what else to include...bye.

P.S. Sister S. had some trouble while trying to email the video so if it hasn't come yet that is why. We will try to get on her to figure out how to do it.

Special Exceptions and Pretty Blue Eyes: August 22, 2012

Dear family!!

I love being able to go to the temple every week!!! And, yes, the sessions are in English! J

So yesterday our a capella group performed before the devotional. Sister D. (the CTM president's wife) told us that we could not record our piece because it is against CTM rules to record anything anywhere in the building. L  Buuuttt...after hearing us sing she loved it so much that she made a special exception!!! So we got to sing it again in a classroom and you should be receiving an email with a copy of the song sometime here!  Annnnd she loved it so much that she is going to use it in the CTM orientation video!! How cool is that??!! So when you get the video know that it is a special, special exception! We are not even allowed to tell other missionaries here that we got to record it! When you get it, though, you can put it on the blog and on Facebook (both would be great, please J). We did a really awesome job and it is a beautiful song!!

The Devotional yesterday was awesome!!! I guess yesterday was a day full of special exceptions! So we got permission from Salt Lake to watch Thomas S. Monson's birthday celebration even though it had music that was not mission-appropriate in it!! It was so beautiful and I am so glad they let us see it!! For snack time last night there was another special exception:  we got to have cake with our normal nightly snack!!

So when you guys come to pick me up I should be pretty fluent and all that but you still need to know enough to get to the airport to where I am and so that you can understand a little bit of what people are saying!! So I was thinking about it and I hardly have enough time to write all I want to say in the 30 minutes without trying to teach you Portuguese! So I am mailing an 8 page letter today with a few of the basics for Portuguese (don't worry the pieces of paper are small) It is super important though for you guys to get a Book of Mormon in Portuguese and read it out loud side by side with the English one, one verse at a time as a family every night!! This will go a long way towards you guys learning Portuguese!! Este e muito importante!!

So to answer your block of questions:

• Yes, Spanish helps some with structure and verb conjugations and certain words but it does not help a ton (And it doesn't help that I was never very good at Spanish, but at least I don't have to unlearn Spanish rules to learn Portuguese rules)
• Yes we keep the same teachers the whole time!! J
• The other 2 Americans in our room are in my district (Elder W. and Elder E.) but the other 2 are Brazilians that come and go every three weeks, we should get a new set of Brazilians tomorrow. And this is great because most of the time they know zero English so you really have to try and apply your Portuguese when you need to talk to them.
• Elder S. is from all over but most recently he is from Boston. 
• Yes, we got a photo with Elder T. before he left left last week.

I'm going to save the 4 free photos for you to be able to send me photos. Elder G. is showing me how to send pictures home. I would prefer just normal photos instead of photos from when I got set apart.

While I'm on the topic of photos! Elder S. and I wore Princess Leia towel hats while getting ready for bed on Saturday night and they were such a HUGE hit with the elders!!! We probably posed for 30 different Brazilians to take photos and we taught it to Elder G.'s entire district and a dozen other elders and got lots of photos with Elder G.'s district!! It will be sad next Tuesday when Elder G.’s district leaves! They are such great guys and really great friends!!

Ohhhhh boy... I am scared to see these "Stylish" shirts that Jason got. Luckily Kristen and Brittany have good style! Please tell me it was a typo about the fedora!!!!! And please tell me he is not planning on wearing it to school and in public because if he is it is more like "scare off all the ladies" (which might not be a bad thing J).

OK so I learned a great tip for making sure that packages get to me in one piece once I get into the field (hint hint). Apparently if you get stickers of the Virgin Mary and put them on the seams of the boxes they won't cut them open! Even if they are not Catholic they just won't steal the items because they respect the Virgin Mary so much!! (hint hint) Also when it comes to letters, the more the merrier!! They actually are not that expensive so I would love to get lots of letters! I am sending a few out today, but I don't have like any addresses. So if in your next letter could you put a list of a bunch of family members and other people who would like to get letters from me that would be great thanks!!!

So Last Thursday we went to the police station to get our fingerprints taken and all that jazz so we are now completely legal to be in Brazil!! It was kind of funny because all the women that helped us get our paperwork filled out probably thought we spoke zero Portuguese because we had the deer in the headlight look on our faces, so they would constantly talk about us to each other. I am ok at speaking Portuguese if given enough time to think of a response but I can hear and understand Portuguese really, really well!!! So I understood pretty much everything they said about us! And that made it really awkward! They were all talking about our pretty blue eyes and nice blond hair. We got a good laugh about that on the way home. But that also reminds us all that we have to be careful because (not to brag or anything....but) we are apparently very attractive!!!

Well I'm out of time! I got the important stuff in at least!

Love you all, I love being a missionary, I love being able to live focused on the gospel 24/7!! Being a missionary is truly amazing!!!!!

Campinas Temple Trip: August 15, 2012

Hi guys!!!

It doesn't seem to matter how much I write in these emails but I always forget soooo much to include! So last week as you saw in the photo, we go to go to the São Paulo temple which was awesome!!!  And, today we got to go to the Campinas temple, which is super cool because the Campinas temple is the temple for the Londrina mission. Since it is so far away, once we go into the field we will not be able to go to the temple at all. So that was really cool today!!! The São Paulo temple is about 40 minutes from the CTM and the Campinas temple is just under an hour and a half from the São Paulo temple.  This is a picture of our district outside the Campinas temple today.

São Paulo is soooo huge!!! It is the 3rd largest city in the world!! There are three other cities that are inside of São Paulo. There are 33 million people in São Paulo and people are crazy drivers here!! I highly recommend that if you guys come to pick me up that you do not drive! Motorcyclists drive up in between lanes right on the lines and everyone is swerving in and out and tailgating like nothing else I have ever seen! (Also every 10 minutes on average a motorcyclist dies in São Paulo!)

Thank you so much for the photo! I was just thinking the day before it arrived that I needed a photo of you guys!! That made my day! As far as me sending photos back I am not allowed to attach photos to my emails while here at the CTM. One of the other elders is going to take us to a place where we can print them out and tell us how to send them home the best way! So hopefully you should get a photo or two from me soonish.

To answer your question about district leader responsibilities:  I am in charge of picking up the mail every day, unlocking and locking the classroom that we use, helping run classroom time and keep people on task while in study time, conduct a weekly district meeting on Sundays, and attend a weekly district leader meeting with the branch president every Sunday as well, and to pass out and collect the weekly reports to all the members of my district.

As far as sending emails to others, I don't have time to write more than the one email, so if anyone wants a copy I leave that to you to forward it to whoever wants it.  (BTW Elder S. <my companion> is the tall one next to me with the dark brown hair in the photo from last week.)

Sundays are sooooo nice!! We have a three hour block in the morning then I have a 20 minute district leader meeting then lunch and from lunch to dinner is free time. This Sunday I shined my shoes and took a three hour nap!!!!!!! And then after that there is always a fireside in the evening. For firesides and devotionals everyone sings in the choir but Elder S. convinced me to join an extra optional choir as well. So I will be performing in an a capella group in a few weeks singing the song: “Prayer of the Children” by Kurt Bestor! It is soooo good!

I am glad that Grandma is enjoying the books; they are some of my favorites!!  It was so good to hear that Baby A's first test came back negative!  Please keep me updated me and my roommates want to hear how she is doing as well. I added her to the prayer roll at the Campinas temple today! :)

Sorry it is all jumbled up.  Tell Sister G. thank you from me of course!! And yes I have enough sunscreen, I brought 2 tubes and I only need to put sunscreen on my arms and neck/face so I won't use very much at a time! (and if I need more I can get it here!)

Trying to make sure I don't miss anything big...

Oh! My Portuguese is coming great! My companion and I spoke Portuguese like the whole day except meal times and that was a huge blessing!!! A word of advice for you guys if you are going to come pick me up is to start learning a little of Portuguese now! Like learn one or two words every day and practice at dinnertime. Learn how to pray in Portuguese for dinnertime!!! That helps so much!

The CTM is so awesome! There are so many great missionaries here! It is such a wonderful place to be! I am so blessed to be here and have such a great companion! And from talking around we got the two best teachers in the CTM for our district! SCORE!! They are amazing! The spirit here is just so strong all the time. We still have so much to learn but we have come so far.  I just hope that my district can stay focused and be the best district in the CTM. (Our district speaks better Portuguese at the end of week two than most districts do at the end of week four!!!)

Seriously though start learning Portuguese now!!

Oh I almost forgot!!! This is super important! You need to make sure that all the young men in the ward know how important it is that they serve missions!! It may seem like there are tons of missionaries in the world and that one less won't hurt but it will hurt so much!! There are just over 4,000 missionaries in Brazil right now! In order for there to be a pair of missionaries in all the areas that are currently made (some mission areas have no missionaries, just members) we would need over 7,000 missionaries. in order to fill all the areas, and make the areas to the size that they want them to be we would need over 8,500 missionaries in Brazil! Over double what we currently have now!! Make sure they know how important it is that they stay worthy of serving missions and that they start now! The work needs them!!!

I probably forgot a lot of stuff in this letter but I'm out of time...

I miss you guys but I'm often—well, most of the time—too busy to miss you guys too much! I love being a missionary! I love the other missionaries in my district and at the CTM! I love my companion! I love this gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ! I don't even know the people that well yet but I love the Brazilian people so much! This work is so hard, but it is so rewarding! And I wouldn't trade it for anything!!

Love,

Elder Cummings

TWO More Letters: August 8, 2012

This is the snail-mail letter that he sent the first day in the CTM.  It had a Salt Lake City postmark and U.S. postage, so it obviously was sent back via pouch and then mailed from the States.

1 August 2012

Dear Mom and Dad…and Jason

Today was such a long and brutal day.  First off I almost missed my flight in Dallas, but luckily I made it in time, unlike one unfortunate Elder who didn’t and had to go on 2 additional flights and didn’t show up until after 1:00 today.  The MTC or CTM is such a blast!  My companion for the next 9 weeks (we are in the CTM for 9 weeks now) is super legit!  His name is Elder S. He went to BYU also and he is like Salmon only 2 years older, and check this:  Of the 9 elders who entered the MTC or CTM this week he is also going to Londrina!!!  We have a pretty awesome district overall.

You should see the view from our room.  We are on the 6^th floor out of 7 (108 steps up) and the view is amazing!!!  I took some pictures and will send them to you at a later time. 

There is really no rest here.  You hit the ground sprinting!  We had our first Portuguese lesson today and on Friday we have to be prepared to give a 25-minute discussion entirely in Portuguese!  Yikes!  We can do it though, my companion is really good and we work great and have lots of fun!  I am so excited and have such a long way to go.

I’ll still email you guys on my normal P-day (which will probably come before this letter) once I find out what day my P-day is.  It will either be Tuesday or Wednesday.

Gotta go, need to write in my journal still and lights out is coming up fast. 

Lots of Love,

Elder Cummings

This is the e-mail letter that we got about an hour after the scanned letter and picture arrived.

Hi Guys!!!

Yeah I got the mission ties letter and that works great because then I can read your letters when I have some free time and then I can make drafts of letters back so that way I can write more to you guys!!  So all the other missionaries were so jealous that I got a letter on the second day!!  No one else got anything until Monday! 

So I was the only missionary on my flight from SeaTac to Dallas, and I almost missed my flight in Dallas cause my gates were on the opposite ends of the airport! But I made it just in time.  There were 3 other missionaries on the flight from Dallas to São Paulo. One of them is now my companion and his name is Elder S.  He also went to BYU (he lived in Heritage).  We are the only American missionaries going to Londrina in the whole CTM.  It is just us and one Sister and 2 South American missionaries going to Londrina.  Elder S. is a great companion.  We get along very well and get a lot of work done!  He is like my best friend here at the CTM.  Oh!  Elder T. (son of Eldon's mission president) is right next door to us so we get to see him almost every day which is cool.  He speaks pretty good English so it is good to be able to talk to him about Londrina.

The food here is actually really good!  It is like home cooked Brazilian meals and today on p-day one of our instructors Irmao C. took us to this place that is like Tucanos only way better and like half the cost. Everything in São Paulo is so expensive but it is supposed to be really cheap once we get out into the field. But right now everything is about 1.5 to 2 times the cost of what it is in the United States.

The weather has been great it has been in the 70s like every day and clear all but yesterday it was a little bit cloudy. The view from our room is so amazing!! We look right towards downtown São Paulo!  It is amazing and we never get tired of looking out of our window. That is when we have time to look out our window.

You asked me what a typical day looks like here in the CTM so here it is:

7-8                Personal Study

8-8:30           Breakfast

8:30-9:30      companionship study

9:30-10:30    LAB (computer language program study time)

10:30-12       GYM

12-1              language study on our own

1-1:45           Lunch

1:45-3:30      language classes

3:30-5:15      lesson prep/teaching lessons in Portuguese

5:15-6           Dinner

6-9:15           language classes/more lessons/planning

9:15-9:30      snack

9:30-10         planning/getting ready for bed

10:30            lights out

This first week has been so busy! I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow at night, but it is the most fun I have ever had as well!  Portuguese is coming really fast and our district after one week knows more Portuguese than most districts do after 3 weeks!!  So we are a really good dedicated group of guys!!  Our district is I think the best about working hard the whole time and not skipping study time and for it I think we have the most fun here out of any district as well.

This Sunday I was made district leader for my district!  Big surprise and I didn’t really want the job but I know that I am supposed to be the DL and know that the Lord will help me in this task. I am in District 31-A because we were the first district to arrive on the 31st week of the year.  Our mailing box is box 35!!!

Some miscellaneous thing that happened this week:

• Our bathroom has been out of toilet paper for the past 3 days so we have to hunt around for a bathroom that isn't completely out.  Tonight me and Elder S. are going on a toilet paper raid to get a stockpile in our room.
• We have two really cool Portuguese roommates and two really cool American elders as well. Our district really is amazing!!! The Portuguese elders only are at the CTM for 3 weeks so they are not in our district but they are really nice and a blast!! Oh and just in case you didn't know I will be in the CTM for 9 weeks so I have 8 more weeks to go before I go out into the field (Thank goodness!!!)
• Missionaries are not allowed to play soccer because they have had too many injuries and fights amongst missionaries so for Gym I work out with Elder E. who is one of the guys in my district and is also in the same room.  He is a diver for the U.S. Army and is really fit! I am so sore from our workout yesterday.

So on p-day we are allowed to roam around the streets within like 5 blocks of the CTM but there really isn't much to do.  But it is nice to be able to take a nap or do laundry and write letters.

My testimony has grown so much this week! I have come to rely on the Lord so much! Especially in my language study! I know that I would not be even near as far as I am without the Lord's help. I know that this is the work that I am supposed to be doing. This week flew by in ways and crawled in others. This is going to be the hardest two years of my life but they will be the most rewarding of my life also.

Can't wait to get your next letter! (oh and if people ask they are free to send me letters it just may take a while for me to respond because as you can see we don't get much free time).

Again, love you guys!!

Elder Cummings!!  :)

First P-Day, Brief Message: August 8, 2012

Message received via MissionTies.com today. (Hoping for a full e-mail later today.)

Hi guys!  It's my first P-day and if I send this letter I get a free cookie!!  About to go and explore the city!  Can't wait to email you guys all the fun stuff I've done this week!  Love you guys a lot.  Send some love to Grandma and Grandpa for me!

Love, Elder Cummings

At the CTM!

This is the letter that we received from the president of the Brazil MTC this morning.

Dear Parents,

We are happy to send the good news that your missionary has arrived safely at the Brazil MTC. What a great joy and privilege it is to greet each missionary as they come through the front door of the MTC for the first time. We promise to take good care of your missionary.

Elder Cummings is on the top row, at the very left. 

They now have companions and are settled into their rooms. They are assigned to a district with capable and caring instructors for language and lesson study. The branch presidents and their wives, will soon give them a second greeting. These couples are rewarded in their callings through the love they always develop as they embrace and watch over the missionaries.

The MTC has a full time live-in physician to care for their health needs. He is assisted by his able wife. We are also happy to report that the Cafeteria food is abundant and very good. Your missionary will be able to e-mail home on Preparation Day after a morning at the Temple. This will be either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on individual assignments.

Your very important young person is about to make an eternal difference in the lives of others. We hope you will be encouraged and comforted by this quote by President Lorenzo Snow: “ There is no mortal man that is as interested in the success of an elder when he is preaching the Gospel as is the Lord who sent him to preach to the people who are the Lord's children".

Please accept our love, President Ralph Degn and Sister Mary Ann Degn

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION . . . DO NOT SEND PACKAGES to the Brazil Missionary Training Center. All packages must be sent directly to the mission where your missionary will be serving, not the MTC. If you have already mailed a package to the Brazil MTC and it arrives after your missionary has left for the field, please understand that the package cannot be forwarded to his or her mission and will be returned to you. WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE SENDING HAND WRITTEN LETTERS. Please write your missionary´s first and last name. Your missionary will provide you with his district and box number. Also, please DO NOT SEND ANYTHING BY FEDEX, DHL, UPS, or other private carriers. The cost to get this type of correspondence is exorbitant.