Hello family! How is everyone! I loved hearing about all the stuff that has been going on and sounds like a busy week! Things here have been wonderful. I love it and especially today! It has been raining all day and we got to go to the sao paulo temple, which was pretty cool but under construction. It was really a sweet experience. Its tough though listening to both portuguese and english but its the same spirit like I had said :) I loved it and I hope the family will get to go to a temple out of the country some day. Its a neat experience. Oh and just so dad knows, "sao" is said like "soun" so he can learn some pronunciation. The language is still coming slowly but surely! I can't believe how tough these weeks have been. Tougher then anything I have ever done and that is a sure thing. We maybe get an hour at nights to ourselves then off to bed and up at either 6 or 6:30 depending on the day.
Rest of the day is....
7-8 personal study.
8-830 is breakfast.
8:30-1245 is a bunch of language learning things including computer programs.
1245 almoço (lunch). I just really like that word. haha
130 til 5 is more language/study things with a teacher
5 is dinner
545 til 930 is more class. It is crazy busy in other words!
So I have been loving this whole mission ties thing because I have been getting those letters the same day. They said in the mission field that letters would be delivered within 3 days of you sending it. Thats a lot quicker then 10 days. I have also been getting letters in the mail pretty quick. Yours came within 7 days mom. Way fast! I also got a few others from the family too. Another thing that was sweet about missionties is that the lady owns a cookie place and gave me 4 free cookies for you signing up! Yum! There is like no good chocolate here in Brazil so I am very glad for a good cookie here and there :) Today while walking around the city we stopped by a place and I got my much wanted jersey! I bought a londrina one just for the sake of my mission and it was pretty darn cheap! 20 Realis which is roughly 13 bucks. Not bad at all. Nice underarmor material and everything.
So some fun stuff that happened to me this week... one thing I learned about which was scary/funny was I met someone from Londrina. (another person). They were talking about how there were tons of snakes there. after 5 minutes of conversation and me freaking out about them (you know how much I hate snakes haha) found out he was talking about girls. Apparently the girls that want to marry missionaries here are called "snakes". Actual snakes are referred to as cobras which he said there are none there! Thank goodness! He said there are spiders bigger then my head (which we all know is ginormous). Scary! Another random thing happened when we were playing volleyball as a district and I was asked to go check the time. I walked over and picked up someones watch and picked up a cockroach with it. It was huge and pretty dang nasty! But I am proud to say I have now picked up a cockroach. Accidental but it really happened! haha.
Today, I realized how bad drivers are here. They are crazy so you gotta be really careful when crossing the street. Its scary. You think utah drivers are bad or cali drivers... not compared to sao paaulo drivers! haha. We also saw on the freeways there are street vendors. The traffic is so bad that they have street vendors on the freeway selling things like treats all the way to slabs of meat! Made me laugh. RANDOM.
This last week me and Elder Mcguire got to go and do our first TRC (which is basically teaching fake investigators). We were told last minute that it was ALL in portuguese. We got there and they were 15 yr old kids who did not speak any english at all. Scary moment for both of us. We struggled but we made it through. Got the kids to laugh a good 4 or 5 times with using words that didn't make sense... Talent? I think YES! We also have brazilian roommates I don't know if I told you about. We got them last week and have become super close with them. One is a convert to the church and the other has been a member his whole life. Elder J Silva and Elder Mederos. Both awesome missionaries. Elder M speaks some english but elder S doesn't speak a bit of it! None! Its fun talking to him and we hang out looking out at the city and just point at things and learn the words from both our language. Its really fun and its awesome getting to know things about him. He also says I sing like Maria Cari. However you spell that.... haha. But I thought it was funny becayuse I always make up songs about him in Portuguese. Even though I don't know much obviously... lol. I love it though. They are awesome and help me learn lots!
So last funny story before I need to leave is that I got to do another teaching thing with my teacher. That made no sense... I taught a lesson to my teacher in other words. We taught her and at the end we said "pedimos orar" which is can we pray? And she said yea. So my companion started praying and she raised her hands and started yelling Gloria! Gloria! Praise Prayer! It threw me off guard.... I started laughing so hard though and I feel bad but I looked up and she was dying laughing too. Its a good learning experience for me though because if I were to laugh at a real investigator that would be really bad. Lol. I wouldn't do that though!
Thank you for that letter you sent me mom. We got asked to do that lesson for our district meeting (because I am the assistant district leader which I forgot to tell you about) and we taught it. We had 45 minutes and the CTM president and his wife were also there in the front row. Let me tell you... That was scary. We did really well. I used that talk in it and they really loved the lesson. Good work :)
I love you all and can't wait to hear from you all again! Write lots of letters! I might not have time to write back to all of them but I will for sure love reading them!
Elder Millett!
