Week 1

soooo my first week out here on the mish.

 i spent like 30 minutes yesterday writing out what i wanted to tell you guys about but i forgot that we weere going to the temple today and so last night when we left the classroom i just left my notebook in there.. but because we got to go to the temple its locked in the sala de ala (classroom). this week has honestly been really hard and stressful for me. the gift of tounges is definetely not something that comes to you overnight. Elder Tippets got the oppertunity to study portuguese before he came here at byu so he is soooooo far ahead with the language. i thought that him knowing so much would really help me a lot but unfortunatly i kinda feel like it does the opposite at times. everyone here speaks nothing but portuguese (exept us gringos from the ustados unitos) so there a huge language barrior. it makes thing so hard. i can not express in word how stressed and upset ive been this week. the mission is hard. but hey, its only been a week. by next week i will have learned at least 2 times as much as i learned this week. so time will definetly prove itself and i will grab hold of the language before i even realize it. heck, i might have done so already. so with that in mind i decided to fast on suday and prayed to know what else i need to be doing to really start understanding & learn the language faster. the answer came way faster than i coulve even hoped for. it was like a slap in the face!!! in preisthood our branch president talked about developing christlike attributes. so since that talk ive devoted all my personal study and free time to reading, understanding, and truely converting myself to becomeing more like christ. there is no one that loved us more, there is no one else who has felt EVERY SINGLE FEELING that we have all felt in our lives. Èu sei que jesus cristo vivo. 

so the nativos... when we got here to the ctm i really just wanted to shower and take a nap. but when ElderSnyder took us up to our room, it was conpletely trashed! the brazilian elders that we share our room with had it completely torn apart. there were matresses scattered aroound the room and on the floor, cloths everywhere, it was just a mess. Elder Snyder, the secritary to the president, said he had never been so embarrased. he said that he knew that must have been kinda hard for us. so while he went to go find them me and elder tippets went to go take a shower. when we came back there was a complete change in our room. it was entirely clean and the beds were all made and there stood four brazilian elders sweating with half their shirts were untucked. Elder Snyder must have said something to scare them because they got some work done! haha sadley because they are nativos we had to say goodbye to them last night.. that was soooo much harder than i ever thought it could be. i didnt even know those guys a week ago but i didnt want them to leave. last night Elder Pequeno (which means elder small) was by far my favorite brasilian that i met here. contrary to his name, he was a very tall, oversized man. I learned sooo much from him in this last week. Every night, someoe in our room had to give a devotional, in potuguese. so yes people, i gave a devotional in portuguese without saying a word of english. but anyways back to last night. Elder Pequno had the devotional. he talked about Alma chapter 17. alma had ran into the sons of mossiah after many years. alma says that as happy as he was to see the sons of mossiah he was way happier to know that they were still waxing strong in the gospel. Pequeno said that he knows he will see us all again and although he will be super happy to see us, he will be overpwered with joy to know that we are still living and waxing strong in the gospel. it was hard to hold back the tears.

i dont have much time and im trying to type as fast and i ahve sooo  much more i can talk abou, i must go. thank you all for your prayers and emails!! My one word of advise is to read the book of mormon. it is like eating your favorite candy. you dont want to put it down and all you ever want is to have more of it! which btw the brazilian elders in my room loved some of the candy that i gave them from my stash ;) they said they want to live in america just for the candy.