CTM Week 3

This week has been great! So a little more about the meals, there are more types of juices here and they are all really good; I get acai each meal though. So I think I am finally getting decent at the finger slapping thing here, now I am working on my other hand. If you come to Brazil or a different place near here you have got to know that. I am so surprised by how much Portuguese I know already, also it feels weird being the experienced American here. Another group of Americans came in yesterday. 27 new Americans, which is a lot for here. My district lost two missionaries who are a week behind us. It is a little sad, but I am sure they will do better not having to be by themselves for a week after we leave. We are also getting 3 new sisters, so now my district has 11 missionaries. We have to change classrooms now, because the other one is too small. So it is funny because in Portuguese, tu, is only used for closeness so we use it in prayers and not anywhere else. Instead we use voce which is conjugated the same as ele which is a little easier and a little harder.

We went proselyting this week. That's something that the other missionaries don´t get to do. It was really fun. They give you 3 Book of Mormons per missionary, and you and your companion go and give them out. For most of the time Elder Porter and I were just walking around, scared to talk to people, but once we started talking to people we gave them out really fast. The people here are soooo nice! If there is someone on their phone they still talk to you. We met one guy who tracked us down later to take a picture for his wife which was really cool.

So apparently if you press a certain key on this keyboard it sends the email you are typing. Anyway, in the CTM there are several different types of missionaries. There are the native Portuguese speakers who are still speaking Portuguese, the missionaries going to Japan and are learning Japanese, the Portuguese speakers learning Spanish, the Spanish speakers learning Portuguese, and the Americans. They have different dots to tell apart the missionaries. Also there were two missionaries learning Dutch who were going the the Netherlands. They were here for 9 weeks, and they had to take a test on Dutch before they could get their visas. I think that is more stressful than what I am doing.

For the devotional on Sunday this week I was asked to sing ``I believe in Christ`` in Portuguese along with other American elders, and it was a really good experience. Singing in Portuguese is really hard, because you are trying to read the words, sing the notes, and sing the right way. As I have learned more Portuguese it has gotten easier though. 

Oh this is something that I forgot about. Before the last plane ride two missionaries (Elder Martin and Elder Johnston) that were flying with me did this fun little thing with their ties. So they rolled up their ties and help them by their necks. Then Elder Martin said ``we are going to race.´´ On the count of three they both let go of their ties, and Elder Martin said ``it´s a tie.´´ So there that is my pun contribution to this email.

The Temple was great today. I have been having a hard time the past couple days staying focused on being a missionary, but the temple helped me remember the promises the Lord has made to me, and it really helped. 

So this week some Americans left, and they gave us a book that was being passed down from missionary to missionary. It was not a good book. My district gave it to President Grahl, and talked to him about it. The reason that I am telling this is because when we went to President Grahl I didn´t really know what it was about. Because I am in a different room than the rest of my district I wasn´t involved in the receiving of the book. My district decided that it was not a good thing. I am just really proud of the district that I am in, and I am glad that they are the great people that they are.

So a couple Sundays ago we were talking about why it is good to ask questions, and I came up with this analogy. When we follow Christ, but don´t know why we do the things we do, then it is like we have our arms on Christ´s shoulders, but we are blindfolded. When we are like that it is really easy to trip and fall away from Christ, but if we find out the reasons for doing the things that we do, it is like we are taking the blindfold off. When this happens we not only can see the things that the adversary does to trip us, but we see where we are going.

--Elder Pettingill