Aug. 27, 2013

I will try and write more.  This week has been pretty good. Sunday has been the highlight except for today.  Sunday, we studied from 7am-8am and then went down to the cafeteria to get breakfast, which was just cereal on Sundays and muffins, it was pretty good.  We studied afterward till 10:40, when we had priesthood, which Brother Jackson, one of the counselors in my branch presidency taught about the atonement and why it matters to us. It was good, and I really liked. We now have a new District Leader, Elder Jensen from Washington.  We call him Cabelo de Fogo ( Head of Fire) because of his bright red hair. Hes a lot of fun and reminds me a lot of Uncle Spencer.  Hes a really good artist as well. I will try to include some of his artwork, just don't ask for the back story, its really long. We're having a lot of fun though. Sacrament was at 2:00pm-3:00. I don't know if you knew this, but they don't assign people to talks before the meeting. They send out a general notice about the topic of the meeting and then everybody rights a talk about it. Its usually something from preach my gospel.  Then one of the branch presidency will get up and read off three names of the people who have been selected and they have to come up and get to give a 4 minute talk about that topic in Portuguese.  Its kinda of cool, but really nerve racking especially if you didn't prepare a good talk. All the hymns we sing are in Portuguese, I even have my own small Portuguese hymnbook. Usually after that we have a Sunday walk up to the temple for about 45 minutes, come back down to dinner and then some of us go to choir practice.  A devotional is given that night,this time by the missionary department head, which was really cool! Then we watch a film put out by the church, there is usually a selection of about 4. We watched as a district this time the Character of Christ by Elder Bednar. It was fantastic! I highly recommend it if you ever have an hour and a half to just sit and watch it. I think its on LDS.org.

Monday we got up and played volleyball as a district in the morning which is a lot of fun.  We do that every Monday morning and its just awesome.  We'll have our entire district playing and a few others and we have a blast. Nobody else has gotten their visa yet.  We're all waiting with baited breath, but we're all probably going to get reassigned. I'm hoping for the deep south or in the southwest, somewhere where it is warm, b/c all I have is Brazilian clothing. Today has been pretty good. We were able to go to the temple and do an endowment session there and I actually saw my Trek parents, Bishop Wentzel and wife there in that session, but I didn't have a chance to go talk to them.  It really is a small world. After that we came back, studied for a little bit and then went to lunch, did laundry and here I am typing out emails. Thanks for the addresses! I don't know if I want to do a general letter, b/c i like to personalize them to the person, even they are short.

Tomorrow we get to greet the hosting missionaries as they come in the MTC and we're really looking forward to that! Its kinda of funny to see them come to the MTC b/c it is a totally fish out of water look when they come to the MTC. When you get to the MTC you get an orange dot placed on your nametag so everybody knows that you are new and is saying welcome to the MTC, and it kinda of overwhelms people sometimes,but it will be fun. It was like that when I got here. Then tomorrow night, my companionship is helping with some of the greeting new missionaries as they get used to the MTC.  

Right now I don't really need anything.  Though if I do, I'll make sure that you know.   I have been taking a lot of pictures, its just mostly nature shots of the MTC if that makes any sense. I figured out how to send pictures, but its a bit difficult and I can only send a few at a time because the files are so large.  I will reset the settings on my camera to make them smaller file sizes. The only thing I think I could need would be some memory cards. One of the elders said that they were doing was just filling up a memory card and then sending it back to their family. They do sell memory cards here, but they are kinda of expensive.  Maybe if I have enough cash left over. I will try to send some with every email though. Jelly Belly jelly beans would be appreciated as well.  Thanks for the ties! If you ever need to send ties again, can they be polyester and not silk, b/c polyester are indestructible in comparison.  Thanks for the food!