Oi!!!

This week has been amazing and has flown by. I’ve fallen into a pretty good routine here at the CTM. Every day we wake up at 6:30, do personal study from 7-8 am, eat our ham and cheese panini breakfast, study the Book of Mormon for 30 minutes, study Portuguese for an hour, got to actividades fisicas at 10, play basketball/volleyball for an hour (without jumping), go back to the room, shower/clean up, go to divisions (which is splits with a Brazilian comp), eat with my Brazilian comp, prep a lesson and teach an investigator with my new comp, return back to my tripanship, have grammar lessons/and language lessons till dinner at 5, after dinner we have more lessons and teach 2 more lessons, then we finish the day with planning, go back to the room and have a festa with the Brazilian roommates, and finally hit the sack at 10:30.

The days sometimes feel like forever, but at the end of the day, I pass out. Monday was my first time going on splits with a Brazilian compo. Let me tell you, it was crazy. One could say the CTM is not very organized. So pretty much one of the instructors gave us a paper with a name of our new comp and who we were teaching. Then, they let us have at it. My comp’s name is Elder Antonio. He’s from Sao Palo and speaks 0 English. To my surprise we taught a pretty good lesson on that first day. I also learned a ton from only speaking Portuguese for 2 and a half hours. I think for the rest of my stay here, I go on splits 3 times a week.

My companions are pretty chill. Tripanships are the best. You get to prepare less, you have 3 minds to interpret the incredibly fast speaking Brazilians, and two extremely different people to talk to. Elder Callahan is brilliant. You can give him any gospel topic, and he’ll give you 2 or 3 scriptures memorized. Elder hair is hilarious, and all the Brazilians love him. Overall, we make a powerful tripan that can baptize any “investigator.” It’s sad as the weeks go by cause we loose all our Brazilian friends. Every Tuesday, they ship out the their missions.

The language is very difficult, but I’m learning everyday. I learn the most at meals and at night with our roommates. On Tuesday, we went to our room and tons of Brazilians came running into our room dancing and singing. I think in total there were 25 Brazilians in our tiny room. I am so glad I was sent to the Brazil CTM. The culture, people, and spirit are all so strong. At first, I wasn’t a fan of singing hymns in Portuguese. But now, I love it. It always brings the spirit into the classroom, devotional, or church meeting. My district is awesome, and is by far the most loved American district. We have some amazing district scripture studies. I really love the Book of Enos. Some of the words used in that chapter are super powerful and descriptive like “wrestle before God,” “soul hungered,” “faith began to be unshaken.” The missionary life is hard and learning a language is even harder, but I know that if I have faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, work my hardest, and love everyone around me, the spirit will help me be able to say what I need to say to the people who need to hear it.

Love and miss you all!!
 Dave