Òla!

This week has flown by. Last P-day was amazing! The temple was great, the food was great, and walking around the streets of Brazil was great. That’s probably the main reason the CTM is so great (besides the Brazilian culture.) One of my instructors, Irma Fabiana, lives a couple of streets down from the CTM. So as a district, we went to her house and made pancakes/waffles. It was nice to have some real breakfast food. Ham and cheese paninis get old pretty quick!

Some other highlights of the week include going on splits with Elder Antonio. He is super friendly, an amazing teacher, and always helps me learn the language. It is awesome teaching with him because if I ever forget what to say or don’t know the vocab, I can just look at him and he finishes my sentence or thought. I am hoping my trainer is similar to Elder Antonio.

The highlight of the week was proselyting. On Monday, we had the chance to go to the busiest street in Sao Paulo and place copies of the Book of Mormon. I think it was called Ave. de Policia, they call it the Time Square of Sao Paulo. My companion and I talked to everyone we possibly could. We tried our best to share a short message of the Book of Mormon and the blessings it can bring if we live the principles in it. We handed out a dozen and had a few people who seemed genuinely interested in knowing more. It is amazing to think that we could have planted a seed in a couple of 27 million people living in Sao Paulo. Proselyting also helped me realize how much further and how much harder I have to work when it comes to Portuguese. I’m excited for the field and to go out proselyting one more time while in the CTM.

It was weird celebrating the 4 th of July in Brazil. The CTM tried recreating the holiday, but they weren’t too successful. For food they gave us cheese filled hotdogs, sloppy joes, and French fries. You could say it wasn’t my favorite meal.

The spiritual highlight of the week was listening to David Bednar’s BYU Devotional on the 20 Mark Note. It is an amazing story about an interaction between David A. Bednar as a missionary and President Packer. I highly suggest you watch or read it. It teaches us how to know if a feeling or thought is through the spirit. It is sad to see all of my Brazilian friends leaving the CTM. In fact, our favorite Brazilian roommates left yesterday. They will forever have an impact on my CTM experience. I hope one day I can have a cambio with them in Portuguese. I love and miss you all. Thank you for all of your prayers! I know this gospel is true and that Heavenly Father and Christ love us all no matter what we’ve done.

Love,
Dave