Friday, November 16, 2012

Time is flying by!

Hey everyone,

 Time is flying by so fast! Two weeks and then my journey starts!  The CTM is very cushy and our lives are spoiled. Don't get me wrong we work very hard here, but we have air conditioning and we have three meals a day, so we are quite spoiled!

Thank you everyone for all the Birthday wishes and the Pizza party! I'm having it this Tuesday with all of my buddies! Thanks to Emily for the Birthday card! Oh and by the way Kyle and Doug would you write to me? Brian I got your letter, thanks! I sent one to your email and also put one in the mail.  I'm sending it to your school address as well. Kyle check your email. Oh and Happy Birthday to Elder Wardle!

Slowly and surely I am beginning to love Brazil more and more.  The people are unbelievably kind here! Portuguese is such an awesome language.  I am definitely starting to forget some English though. I'm going to miss the guys that I've made friends with here. They are super awesome!

Last P-day was great. I didn't get to talk to much about if, but we got all of our candy and letters sent and then we had a District Volleyball game.  We split up 5 vs. 5 and it was Belem Vs. Brasilia, we lost by only a couple of points. It was hard caught though. That night we had a devotional and we watched a folk that Elder Bednar gave in the Provo MTC a few weeks ago. He spoke about the best way to study is to follow this pattern: 1. Find the Doctrine 2. Find the Invitation 3. Find the Promises. I've tried to apply that, but I have a lot to work on.

11-7

Not much happened today.  We did a lot of language study on the computers, they have an awesome program called Tall Lab. It is so great and you can learn a lot from it. I also started my personal study on the attributes of Christ. Hopefully, I can add some to myself so I can be a better person.

11-8

Halfway during my class my teacher started making impressions of Sponge bob that was hilarious! They have it in Brazil I guess. That was it for the excitement of that day.

11-9

I woke up early and worked out.  As much fun as volleyball and basketball is, I need to start lifting again. I miss it a ton! Later, after all of our studies one of the Elders in my group and I invented a game of ultimate golf. You take turns tossing an object to get to the final destination in the fewest amount of strokes. It's stupid games like these that are so much fun here! That night we had 3 more hours of study time on top of the long day of study that we had earlier, it was amazing how much we accomplished.

11-10

Another long day of study! Although I do love Saturdays, because we made it through the week. We had a workshop that night about better ways to teach our investigators. The day ended off well, we had tow hours of free time and I wrote my talk in Portuguese.  It has to be 5 minutes and I chose to talk about Christ's attributes.  I hope it goes well!

11-11

Well, I sure am glad that I prepared my talk! I had to give it in Church today and I was the first speaker.  Speaking and giving a talk in Portuguese is so TOUGH! WOW! I didn't get to finish all in 5 minutes but I talked about virtue, humility and obedience. Before I got started talking about obedience my 5 minutes was up, so I was obedient and closed. The President from another mission was there and he thanked me for being obedient and closing. He also expounded on how we all need to be obedient. It was a cool experience.

11-12

Nothing to much exciting happened.  It rained most of the day so gym was tough. We read and studied Mosiah 15 in class. I wish sometimes I was English speaking because they go into deep doctrine studies but, we only touch the surface because of the language.  I definitely learn a ton here though. The CTM is such a neat place to be.  I've been doing a lot of grammar study lately so that I can piece all my vocabulary together. A language is such a super difficult code, but once you figure it out it feels great. We learned the word to burp- Arrotar, so if you wanted to say "I burped", it would be Eu arrotei.  That's is it's not irregular, but that I'm not sure about.  Oh, before I end I find it very different in Brazil, when teaching an investigator in Brazil, you invite them to be baptized on the very first visit. the second visit you set a date.  I feel like that is so different from the USA. Oh one more thing, we started a new goal, to say something nice to a specific person everyday. So we all said something nice about one of the Elders and it was really cool and we ended on a good note!

Bye love you all!

--Emily check your email

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Hey everyone back home!

Hey everyone back home!
 I sure miss all you guys! I hope everyone is well and enjoying the cold weather. I heard West Virginia got 3 ft. of snow from the hurricane, that’s crazy. I sure wonder what the election will be like. It’s going to be crazy here when we find out who will be President.

 I’m doing great here in Brazil. We talked to a teacher that got back from his mission in Brasilia and he said he loved it. He said it’s not to hot but of course it still is. There’s very low humidity. He also said the city is beautiful. So I’m pretty excited for it. There are also a lot of wealthier areas in Brasilia compared to the rest of Brazil because of the Government there. So I hope I will have some cool experiences. I didn’t realize it but the world cup is going to be hosted in Brasilia! I’m bummed but happy at the same time. I won’t be able to see a game but I’ll be kept up to date on the scores I’m sure! 

Now for events that happened this week

 10-31

 We are still learning a lot of Portuguese and we learned how to invite members to come to church. I can’t believe it was Halloween! I missed out on it because they don’t celebrate it here. You guys will have to tell me what you all were.

 11-1

 We had a sweet basketball tournament and yes John, Brian, Doug, Nick and Kyle I have gotten better and can make lay-ups now! Oh, so in class we gave our teacher a Hershey kiss. He had never had one and he loved it. He later was messing with a kid in the class and cut him off while he was talking and our teacher was like “I could give you a kiss to make it better!” And then he was like you’ll never forget this kiss! It was pretty comical. That’s the kind of things we think are funny now. Also, Portuguese is so weird sometimes. Words like avo and avo’ mean Grandpa and Grandma and are said exactly the same but apparently they aren’t, so it’s words like this that really throw me off. I have definitely learned a ton of Portuguese since I have been here. Also, our teacher said this “ The Bible is to convince and the Book of Mormon is to Convert” great quote!

11 -2

 We had TRC and this time we were the investigators. We actually got to wear normal clothes, so I wore my Sperry’s and J-Crew shorts and a batman shirt. The kids from the West Coast made fun of my outfit. But what ever they have no style in Washington and Wyoming! Just kidding they are a bunch of awesome guys! We were nice to the 2nd weekers that were teaching us. It made me think about how little I knew when I first got here.

 11-3

 We played more basketball and it actually got pretty intense. That was so much fun. I studied grammar most of the day. I still hardly get English grammar. I’m trying to take everything in so I can speak perfectly. In class we read Alma 42, it’s a great chapter to read. We had a workshop that night and studied verbs. After that we had free time so we hung out and wrote letters. It was so nice to just relax! 


11-4

 Sunday was great we had Stake Mission Conference in the morning. There were a lot of talks given about obedience and how we need to follow the rules. There was also a classic talk by one of the Mission Presidents about how his Young Men’s leader loved him and never let him stop going to Church and if it wasn’t for that leader he wouldn’t have served a mission, married his wife, had kids and be where he is today. It’s pretty cool what we can do if we are persistent and help others. Most of the rest of the day I relaxed and wrote letters.

 11-5

 My Birthday was pretty sweet for not having everyone I wanted around me. I got up early did all my personal study. I studied the Lamb of God and what it means. I still don’t know everything about it so if you know something cool please share. Today our teacher gave a lesson and used an analogy of stairs to help our investigators progress. The flat parts are easy but they need the missionaries to make it to the top of the next stair. We had spam burgers for dinner, they were gross, but I think we are going to the BBQ place for lunch. Anyway, we closed off the nigh and all the guys sang to me and wend around the room and said one thing they liked about me! I’m definitely going to start that tradition when I get home! That’s about it. I’m still hanging in there and only 3 more weeks in the CTM. It’s so crazy to think about!

 Well, take care.

 Love, Elder Norton