Hey Family!
So. This week has been pretty darn good. Erica sang in the tuesday Devotional with Sister Caldwell, they did wayyyyyyyyyy good! I don't exactly remember what song it was, but a bunch of people were talking about how awesome it was. Because it WAS awesome. Oh, I got New Roommates!! WHOOP! One is from Brazil & one is from Argentina. They are way cool & seem pretty nice! It's good though, they have been helping a little bit with the language. The Brazillian had THE thickest accent EVER & talks sooooo fast. He's pretty hard to understand and the kid from Argentina is nice. He is 5 foot nothing though. My shoes are literally twice his size haha! I heard about the Connecticut shootings. Sad. We had a good talk about that kind of stuff in our district so that was good too. Elder Wilson got a fever of 102 earlier in the week, that was pretty exciting......sad.........but exciting haha. He felt better the next day though. My teachers are Iramo Ramalio & Irmao Victor. Ramalio is a shyer guy but we make him laugh a lot. He knows a crapload of stuff about English/Portugese structure. I've learned more about English here in a month that I did in all 3 years of highschool! Sad but true. We all really like Piamalio though. He's a good teacher. Irmao Victor is...wierd! I can't decide if I like him or not. We all agreed he made the worst first impression ever but after that he's actualy pretty funny. Like the other day he told us the story about how he lost his license. He said he was driving on the freeway (drivers here are INSANE by the way) & he saw in his rear view a guy swerving all over the road, obviously drunk. So Irmao Victor said, "I'm going to save people today." He slowed down until the drunk driver came next to him & he slammed his car into the driver so he rammed into the side wall & stopped. The police came & the guy was drunk. But they caught Victor on camera doing it so they took away his license! See, like I said Crazy? Or Funny? We're still deciding. Both our teachers were bragging about going to se the Hobbit on Friday & how it was the best movie they've ever seen. Oddly enough, I don't really care! Yay! I thought I would at first but nope! Erica's teacher, Irmao Costa is the BOMB. One of the nicest people in the world! Really though. We both love him. He's way spiritual & SO nice. Erica & Sister Caldwell get along really great it seems like. This week Sao Paulo's team from Corinthians beat Chelsea in a massive tournament, world tournament in Japan. Fireworks went off non stop for 2 days. Starting at 6:02 a.m. on Sunday! It was crazy. We saw a car out our window with like 12 people in it & Corinth flags just hanging out their windows. It sounded like a war outside, b/c the fireworks are just loud bangs. Soooo we'd have fake gun battles all day here haha. I can't wait to actually teach real investigators. I feel like I would learn the language 10x faster in the field. I'm crazy jealous of all the Elders going out when their MTC time is shortened! Ok so as you know we don't get to call on Christmas, BUT we email. All of us. Our district is scheduled for the afternoon. So look for it then. I said bye to Erica last night :(. She left at 4:30 a.m. It was pretty....darn rough. I'm really missing everyone. It all kind of came down on me how much I miss everyone haha! Anyways! Before I get all choked up, I talked to an Elder from Manaus down the hall & asked him what his favorite part about Manaus is. he paused & said "The Waterfalls!" I was surprised! I didn't even know they had any there! Whoop! Waterfall baptism! Haha. The weather here is AWESOME! Has been around 80 all week & rains every other day here & I do so love the rain! :) Still studying charity this week. I'm loving it. It's crazy how deep you can get on one topic. I'll probably just study it for the rest of my mission! The Christmas program sounds pretty GOOD here! I'll tell you more about that next week. on Christmas day..... when I email you :) Tchau! That's all I have to write, gotta run errands. Love my family!
Love Always
Elder Green
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Sunday, December 16, 2012
We are HERE We are HERE!
Oi Everybody!
Helllllllooooo my family! So I just got on my flight to Sao Paulo!!
Alright so I'm going to tell you a lil about my stay at the MTC. First the Elders (well some of them) in my district, Elder McIntosh was my first comp. He's a really nice guy. Very smart kid. He's picking up the lingua pretty quickly. We joke around a bunch on our little bit of free time and get along great. I was in a trio with Elder Wilson as our third companion. He's from Virginia, but if he'd lived in UT, I'm pretty sure would would have been best friends. He's so funny & me & him & Elder McIntosh get along pretty well, really well actually.Wierd. Anyhows! Elder Perry is from Freemont & Elder Carrol is from Atlanta.....yes where we are flying out of right now. Elder Carrol is just a crazy kid, always laughing, Elder Perry laughs a lot too. Elder Jones is from UT, he's a redheaded big guy in my pics. He's one of those rare people that like never stops smiling. Ya know what I mean? Like you just think how is it even possible for anyone to be that gosh darn nice?! He's one of those people. It's just like C'mon, yell at me!!, when you say something rude. His comp is Elder Frogly who ran track for UT state. He's like the fashion expert of the group b/c he lived in Italy when he was younger but goes back there a lot. Elder Yorgenson lived in Idaho Falls & went to BYU-I . He's like a big jolly ol' boy. He always cracks random jokes & has this awesome really distinct laugh. haha It's pretty DANG awesome. His comp, Elder Witt is the guy in the group that slaps us back into line when we joke around too much. He teaches great lessons. So me, Elder Perry, Elder McIntosh & Elder Witt are all going to Manaus! So yeah, me & all the guys in my (previous now) district are really close friends. We all FLIPPED OUT, when we found out that we would be flying together. It was pretty funny. Alright so I'll just tell you about some stories & what not I guess! I'll just go in order of how I wrote them down in my little notebook. Elder White, who's first name I don't know was at Provo MTC. He was a Guard for North Carolina, played in the March Madness last year, etc. etc. VERY good player. He stopped his career to come & go on a mission! He bore his testimony to the whole MTC in one of the Sunday devotionals. That was pretty cool.
So Elder Wilson tells these cat stories here about how his uncle would kill them. I'd tell you one, but some are too gruesome to tell.....haha. So his uncle, he claims is "sane" but I don't buy it. He has some good red neck stories being from Virginia! Oh! I saw Nathan Stucki, Chrystian Fyffe (spelling) here! So that was pretty durn awesome. Got a pic with both of them. Mom you will be very proud to know that my very last dinner for 2 years on American soil was Pei Wei in the Atlanta airport. It reminded me of HOME!!! MTC life schedule was pretty long. Lots of class time & the classes would be really warm & you just run your mind CRAZY hard all week/all day long. I never fall asleep for more than 2 minutes, i'm proud to say :) But one day I was extra tired & was writing some words. BOY OH BOY, that was fun. I'd fall asleep in the middle of a word then wake up & finish it. OH! By the way. On the flight to Atlanta I sat next to a lady from Mexico, a city near Cancun. We started talking & I ended up teaching her the 1st & 2nd lessons. THAT WAS PRETTY AWESOME. She took the Book of Mormon I gave her & read from it the rest of the flight. SUCH a good lady. She was Catholic & had a husband & 3 kids. She was probably around 40. She said she had seen a few missionaries around her town & wanted to find them when she got back to Mexico. She has a billion questions, but thankfully I could answer them all. They were mostly about a Prophet, how a new one is called, families being sealed, Baptism, work for the dead in the temple, etc. etc. Haha but her first quesiton was, of course, can you guess it? Polygamy! Once I explained it she understood & we moved on quickly through! I hope she finds some missionaries. I offered to find some to send when I get to the MTC but she said she knew where we met for church....Lets hope!! MTC was crazy spiritual. I learned SO MUCH!! That's what it's there for I guess. Feels wierd leaving Utah now though. I finally feel like I'm GONE! It's pretty amazing how many Elders just beligerrantly break the rules there though. Like they aren't rules, just some suggestions. STUPID. Like a certain Elder in front of me is listening to some music off the little T.V.'s in front of us with head phones. Naughty Naughty boy! I had to tell him earlier not to watch the T.V. haha it's just kinda comical! Maybe he'll figure it out along w/a bunch of other Elders here. For those going on a mission reading this, BE OBEDIENT!!!!!! If you're not sure you're breaking a rule, then jus don't do it. You cna literally tell a difference between the obedient ones & disobedient ones really well. The obedient Elders teach very articulatly & smoothly. They are more focused & speak better in every way! The disobedient ones freeze, go off track & say 1/8 of what their comp does. True story. And Blaine you were right that you can tell which sisters are good & which sisters came for the wrong reasons. There's no middle ground with them. The ones who came for the right reasons are AWESOME! We had some amazing sisters (2 of them) in our branch. They really brought a special spirit & strengthened the Elders they were around a bunch. Sister Warburton, from England, and Sister Loftgreen from Utah! They're going to rock it in Portugal, & African missionaries, going to Portugese speaking on Africa....Cape Verde, Mozambique I think. I officially missed my first movie today. Like I really wanted to watch it, O Brother Where Art Thou? I don't know why....besides that movie is stupendously amazing. Besides that I don't miss facebook, or my phone, at all...which was a surprise! But I can't wait to listen to some Mo-Tab at Brazil's CTM. You can't listen to music in Provo's :( Kristin, I miss Anya soooooooo much! I miss you all soooo much! I LOVE MY FAMILY! Mom, by the way, your famous for all the food you sent among the Elders. HAHAHA You should have seen some of their faces when I walked out of the package room with a suitcase. THAT was funny (fyi we sent a suitcase for Erica with stuff for her, and both of their christmas presents, not full of food :)) Jani! Thanks for the Letters!! I hope you find a new better job :)
I'm pretty durn tired. Hmmm..........what else....Friends who are going foreign speaking on their missions, STUDY STUDY STUDY your language!! I studied a lot before I cmae & am so happy I did. It takes off so much stress & you have more confidence when you are teaching the lessons. I can't say it enough, STUDY. Trust me, you won't regret it. There are A lot of Eder's here who were overwhelmed with it. They were really down for a while, SO STUDY!!!!! Also Preach My Gospel. It's an amazing book for missionaries. I've really grown a testimony of that. So make sure that's a priority as well. Gram: SUPER worried about you. Please oh please get better! I carry around one of Papa's hankerchiefs with me everywhere, to wipe my sweat! I like to imagine he's wiping my brow & saying "get up, get going!" So thanks for those :) Big fat ol' THANK YOU to all my supportive family in general. And those friends who are writing me now!! You know who you are. I re-read most of my letters every night before I got o bed. They mean a whole lot. Soooooooo what's going on with planet earth? Anyone important die lately haha? Trump prove Obama's a terrorist yet? Kudos to him for trying....but he's an idiot. Well that's all I got, Love Y'all and miss EVERYONE!! Tchau!
Elder Green
Helllllllooooo my family! So I just got on my flight to Sao Paulo!!
Alright so I'm going to tell you a lil about my stay at the MTC. First the Elders (well some of them) in my district, Elder McIntosh was my first comp. He's a really nice guy. Very smart kid. He's picking up the lingua pretty quickly. We joke around a bunch on our little bit of free time and get along great. I was in a trio with Elder Wilson as our third companion. He's from Virginia, but if he'd lived in UT, I'm pretty sure would would have been best friends. He's so funny & me & him & Elder McIntosh get along pretty well, really well actually.Wierd. Anyhows! Elder Perry is from Freemont & Elder Carrol is from Atlanta.....yes where we are flying out of right now. Elder Carrol is just a crazy kid, always laughing, Elder Perry laughs a lot too. Elder Jones is from UT, he's a redheaded big guy in my pics. He's one of those rare people that like never stops smiling. Ya know what I mean? Like you just think how is it even possible for anyone to be that gosh darn nice?! He's one of those people. It's just like C'mon, yell at me!!, when you say something rude. His comp is Elder Frogly who ran track for UT state. He's like the fashion expert of the group b/c he lived in Italy when he was younger but goes back there a lot. Elder Yorgenson lived in Idaho Falls & went to BYU-I . He's like a big jolly ol' boy. He always cracks random jokes & has this awesome really distinct laugh. haha It's pretty DANG awesome. His comp, Elder Witt is the guy in the group that slaps us back into line when we joke around too much. He teaches great lessons. So me, Elder Perry, Elder McIntosh & Elder Witt are all going to Manaus! So yeah, me & all the guys in my (previous now) district are really close friends. We all FLIPPED OUT, when we found out that we would be flying together. It was pretty funny. Alright so I'll just tell you about some stories & what not I guess! I'll just go in order of how I wrote them down in my little notebook. Elder White, who's first name I don't know was at Provo MTC. He was a Guard for North Carolina, played in the March Madness last year, etc. etc. VERY good player. He stopped his career to come & go on a mission! He bore his testimony to the whole MTC in one of the Sunday devotionals. That was pretty cool.
So Elder Wilson tells these cat stories here about how his uncle would kill them. I'd tell you one, but some are too gruesome to tell.....haha. So his uncle, he claims is "sane" but I don't buy it. He has some good red neck stories being from Virginia! Oh! I saw Nathan Stucki, Chrystian Fyffe (spelling) here! So that was pretty durn awesome. Got a pic with both of them. Mom you will be very proud to know that my very last dinner for 2 years on American soil was Pei Wei in the Atlanta airport. It reminded me of HOME!!! MTC life schedule was pretty long. Lots of class time & the classes would be really warm & you just run your mind CRAZY hard all week/all day long. I never fall asleep for more than 2 minutes, i'm proud to say :) But one day I was extra tired & was writing some words. BOY OH BOY, that was fun. I'd fall asleep in the middle of a word then wake up & finish it. OH! By the way. On the flight to Atlanta I sat next to a lady from Mexico, a city near Cancun. We started talking & I ended up teaching her the 1st & 2nd lessons. THAT WAS PRETTY AWESOME. She took the Book of Mormon I gave her & read from it the rest of the flight. SUCH a good lady. She was Catholic & had a husband & 3 kids. She was probably around 40. She said she had seen a few missionaries around her town & wanted to find them when she got back to Mexico. She has a billion questions, but thankfully I could answer them all. They were mostly about a Prophet, how a new one is called, families being sealed, Baptism, work for the dead in the temple, etc. etc. Haha but her first quesiton was, of course, can you guess it? Polygamy! Once I explained it she understood & we moved on quickly through! I hope she finds some missionaries. I offered to find some to send when I get to the MTC but she said she knew where we met for church....Lets hope!! MTC was crazy spiritual. I learned SO MUCH!! That's what it's there for I guess. Feels wierd leaving Utah now though. I finally feel like I'm GONE! It's pretty amazing how many Elders just beligerrantly break the rules there though. Like they aren't rules, just some suggestions. STUPID. Like a certain Elder in front of me is listening to some music off the little T.V.'s in front of us with head phones. Naughty Naughty boy! I had to tell him earlier not to watch the T.V. haha it's just kinda comical! Maybe he'll figure it out along w/a bunch of other Elders here. For those going on a mission reading this, BE OBEDIENT!!!!!! If you're not sure you're breaking a rule, then jus don't do it. You cna literally tell a difference between the obedient ones & disobedient ones really well. The obedient Elders teach very articulatly & smoothly. They are more focused & speak better in every way! The disobedient ones freeze, go off track & say 1/8 of what their comp does. True story. And Blaine you were right that you can tell which sisters are good & which sisters came for the wrong reasons. There's no middle ground with them. The ones who came for the right reasons are AWESOME! We had some amazing sisters (2 of them) in our branch. They really brought a special spirit & strengthened the Elders they were around a bunch. Sister Warburton, from England, and Sister Loftgreen from Utah! They're going to rock it in Portugal, & African missionaries, going to Portugese speaking on Africa....Cape Verde, Mozambique I think. I officially missed my first movie today. Like I really wanted to watch it, O Brother Where Art Thou? I don't know why....besides that movie is stupendously amazing. Besides that I don't miss facebook, or my phone, at all...which was a surprise! But I can't wait to listen to some Mo-Tab at Brazil's CTM. You can't listen to music in Provo's :( Kristin, I miss Anya soooooooo much! I miss you all soooo much! I LOVE MY FAMILY! Mom, by the way, your famous for all the food you sent among the Elders. HAHAHA You should have seen some of their faces when I walked out of the package room with a suitcase. THAT was funny (fyi we sent a suitcase for Erica with stuff for her, and both of their christmas presents, not full of food :)) Jani! Thanks for the Letters!! I hope you find a new better job :)
I'm pretty durn tired. Hmmm..........what else....Friends who are going foreign speaking on their missions, STUDY STUDY STUDY your language!! I studied a lot before I cmae & am so happy I did. It takes off so much stress & you have more confidence when you are teaching the lessons. I can't say it enough, STUDY. Trust me, you won't regret it. There are A lot of Eder's here who were overwhelmed with it. They were really down for a while, SO STUDY!!!!! Also Preach My Gospel. It's an amazing book for missionaries. I've really grown a testimony of that. So make sure that's a priority as well. Gram: SUPER worried about you. Please oh please get better! I carry around one of Papa's hankerchiefs with me everywhere, to wipe my sweat! I like to imagine he's wiping my brow & saying "get up, get going!" So thanks for those :) Big fat ol' THANK YOU to all my supportive family in general. And those friends who are writing me now!! You know who you are. I re-read most of my letters every night before I got o bed. They mean a whole lot. Soooooooo what's going on with planet earth? Anyone important die lately haha? Trump prove Obama's a terrorist yet? Kudos to him for trying....but he's an idiot. Well that's all I got, Love Y'all and miss EVERYONE!! Tchau!
Elder Green
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