P day #2

Oi!

Tudo bem? The MTC is going great.  This week has really flown by.  It feels like just yesterday is was last p day which is great.  P days are so relaxed.  The Temple is closed right now so we have and extra couple hours of personal time.  We have class at five and meals, but other than that we use our time as we please.  We just get our laundry done super early.

    The language is coming really well.  After a week and a half I know so much more than I expected.  We can speak entirely in portuguese if we want--but it's choppy.  My companions and I have 2 investigators.  There names are Miguel and Emanuel.  They are our teachers acting as investigators they taught, but we teach one every day and we treat it as real situations.  Emanuel is 17 and asked to see pictures of our families and is now set on marrying Elder Hutchins' 17 year old sister.  When we asked him to pray about the first vision he also asked to marry her which was hard not to laugh during the prayer.  Miguel is much harder.  He is Evangelical and he knows his Bible.  He quotes Galatians and Ephesians on us all the time.  It's hard to answer all his questions with our limited language.  Yes we teach entirely in portuguese and we teach one lesson a day.  We've been teaching since about last Tuesday.  Our teachers tell us our portuguese is very good.  We had an "investigator" at the TRC tell us our language was better for one week than any other district he's encountered in the 2 years he's been coming.  Sister Smith is so good, but she took 16 credits of portuguese at BYU before coming.

    The Sisters always tell me I'm hilarious and I'm not even trying to be funny.  Sister Ricks can't even look at me without laughing.  I really don't understand.  Apparently people don't speak the way I do.  Our teachers are excellent.  I really like both of them.  Irmao Brough is so good at teaching and he loves it.  He and his wife just found out she was pregnant.  Irmao Jones is harder to understand when he speaks, but it's good for us because we learn more from the challenge. 

   Our district is getting so close.  They're all from the West coast pretty much because apparently they go through a different office and tend to get their visas faster.  Speaking of which on Saturday Elder Manning and Elder Morrey got letters from the MTC.  So seeing as my companions and I get the mail we took it to class and left it on their desks.  We were joking about telling them it was their Visas.  Irmao Brough suggested we write Visa! on them so we did.  They freaked out and it was so funny.  It wasn't their Visas.  I probably shouldn't be telling you this.  We don't pull pranks other than that.  So later that day we got travel plans for Elder Onskt and Elder Kline who actually did get their Visas.  So we did the same thing writing Visa! on them.  They didn't believe us at all, but then they opened it and they got really excited.  So they leave a week from tomorrow.  Sister Smith just got her online.  A lot of us haven't done that yet.

     I have lots of pictures so I would appreciate a new SD card so I can send the one I have to you.  I would also appreciate some bleach, new sandals (mine broke--the shower was too much for them), and my old seminary/book of mormon scriptures. (they're the ones without tabs).  Oh and Elder Head wants a girlfriend to write him so he told me to ask.

  The sisters were teaching their investigator and tried to say "Temos um mensagem sobre Jesus Cristo" but said "temos um massagem" which means massage.  It was really funny.

I love you all and miss you.

Time's up

Love you too,

Elder Sudweeks