Weekly Update!
Yesterday I got a letter from the fam! It took about two and a half weeks to get here and it was pretty great I loved it. We are very busy here at the CTM. We teach two of our ´investigators´ everyday then twice a week we do TRC which is practicing teaching a `member´ and it is recorded so you can watch yourself afterwards which is always interesting to see yourself try really hard to speak Portuguese! We also have to teach the new elders in our district who pretend to be investigators twice a week also. The new Elders we got this week are elder Whitting, Marsh, and Gibby. They spent two weeks at Provo before they came here. They are very nice, at first it we didn´t really want to share our classroom space and teachers but now that we´ve got to know them it´s nice. I´m super excited to go into the field, we just hit our halfway mark here at the CTM (my companion counted) and tomorrow we will take a bus out to a different part of the city and proselite! We each will get 4 Book of Mormons to pass out which is very exciting. Not sure how well the Portuguese will work but it will be great practice. This week we got a lot more American missionaries here. There is also one sister from Finland which is extremly cool! She says she is the first person shés heard of to come to the CTM. My mom had bought me Swedish Ikea coookies and so I was able to give her the last of the cookies because I knew it would remind her of home and she really appreciated them. I am sister Training Leader here this past week and next week because our trio has been here three weeks so weve been here the longest because the turnover here is so fast. Missionaries coming from the field are only her for about 2 weeks and the Brazilians are here for about two weeks two so lots of new people everyweek and goodbyes too. The Hispanics get the whole 6 weeks like the Americans who get their visas right away, but the last wo weeks they get a Brazilian companion.
It was raining here and the Brazilians are all wrapped up! This week there was a Holiday like Fall Festival. There is also a church here called the Universal Church that is a very rich church here. My teacher was explianing that the church tithes a lot and built a temple that was 5 billion reals and that every person who comes in has to pay 100 reals each time! Our church is truly lead by inspiration, with unpaid clergy and free temples and church services after our tithes.
Today we went to the São Paulo temple which was very nice, but it was raining so we didn´t take many pictures.
I´m still liking the food here and the people too! we have a choir session twice a week and we sing for the Presisent and his wife and if there are any speakers. The Brazilians and Hispanics sing with such heart it is very nice, but let´s just say the tune is so off the CTM choir will never be invited to sing at General Conference ever. It is very funny sometimes the last note that we all hold is about 5 different notes in various keys. Still learning Portuguese! It was a good week!
