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!!!!!
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