These weeks are starting to go by faster and faster. It's weird to
think that I'll be out in the field in a couple of weeks.
Getting enough sleep each night is rough. I'm grateful I've got good
Brasilian roommates who want to go to bed on time, but sometimes they're not so
great when they wakeup. The Brasilians have their P-day on Thursday and the bus
for the temple leaves early in the morning, so they wake up before us. They are
SOOO LOUD! It's funny because it's as if Elder A, Elder H and I don't exist.
This past Thursday they even turned on the light and started messing around.
Luckily I was already up by then, but the other two were still trying to sleep.
Other than this, my Brasilian roommates are awesome. I don't think I've had one
night here where I've slept through the entire night. It's either too cold (surprisingly),
too hot, someone wakes up to go to the bathroom, or someone starts talking in
their sleep. I always wake up in the middle of the night. I'm also waking up with
little tiny red bumps on me and we're pretty sure they're bug bites. I've only
got a couple so I'm not really worried. Although, I do have one on my right
butt cheek. How this happened . . . I have no idea.
This past week, we've been giving an elder a taste of his own medicine.
It's seriously been the highlight of my week. This is about the one elder that
I was struggling with at the beginning of my time here at the CTM. For some
reason he loves to steal and hide everyone's stuff. Multiple times he's taken
my pen, scriptures, and books when I haven't been looking. And it's not just
me, he's done this to everyone in my district. A couple of elders in the next
district thought it'd be funny if they hid his bag. So they took it and placed
it on the ledge just outside of our window so it couldn't be seen unless you
leaned out of the window. Once this elder realized his bag was gone, he snapped
and it was probably one of the funniest things I've seen. He started to go off
on elders in our district and blaming it on them, even though we had no idea
who did it. He threatened us multiple times, with things if he didn't get his
bag. Elder R and I were busting a gut because of the way he reacted. To top it
off, he said, "It's one of my biggest pet peeves when people touch my
things and especially when they hide it from me." After crying about the
whole thing, he went and got a teacher to talk to us about it, but we had no
idea who did it. We didn't know who did it until after the bag was given to
him. You really had to be there! :)
Thank you SOOOO much for that candy loot you gave me :). It definitely
made my day! Even though we didn't do anything different for Halloween here in
Brasil, I still felt like a little kid while digging through all the candy to
see what I got. Too bad I don't have Parker here to pawn off all my gross candy
on for better stuff :). No worries though, I went through all that candy to
make sure I didn't get any of those orange prescription bottles with animal
crackers in it. (Background info - Several years ago a woman took her old
prescription bottles and filled them with animal crackers and gave them to the
children at the church trunk-or-treat. Thankfully the parents discarded them
before the kids ate the contaminated crackers.) Oh the weird stuff you get at
Trunk-or-Treats. I guess the lady at Chenney's is using my picture to advertise
for that special package thing, so you should try to look for that.
FHE idea of the week: There are three videos on the lds.org website
that are about three minutes each. It's with Elder Bednar and they're about the
light of Christ and the Holy Ghost. I'm pretty sure they're one of the newer
videos on there, so they shouldn't be too hard to find. I was very impressed at
how well the church made these videos. I hope you haven't already seen
them!
Here are the
videos Connor referred to:
We just found the most horrible thing in the scriptures. The word
"burnt offerings" in the Portuguese scriptures is "holocaustos".
That translates to holocaust. Terrible :(.
So this past week (only Monday and Tuesday so far) I've been waking up
at 5:15 am so that I can get more personal study time. I wake up, roll out of
bed, grab the chair from my room, and go out in the hall to read my scriptures
for a good 45 minutes before I have to start getting ready. I've actually
started to notice a difference by doing this. First off, I hit a huge wall, get
super tired, and eventually fall asleep at around 2ish. But it's only about a 5
minute power nap and then I'm good to go again. Second, I really do think
waking up earlier has helped me throughout the day. For some reason I'm more
willing to open my books when everyone else is messing around. I've also found
that I've had better/more effective study sessions. Coincidentally my morning
study sessions match up with what I'm taught in the afternoon by my teachers,
so I get a super helpful review, along with help if I didn't understand
something I studied that morning. I thought it was super awesome! Awhile ago
when I was up at school, I wrote a quote in my scriptures. "Put your trust
on the altar of God and quietly walk away." I'm honestly trying my hardest
to do my part to study the language and to gain a stronger testimony. I'm
trusting in God that by taking that blind step and waking up earlier, I'll be
blessed with help in the language.
For any potential missionaries who are going to Brasil, please read
this. I guarantee it will help. I wish I would've known this before I got into
the CTM, but for studying . . . Make a goal each week to memorize a column of
irregular verbs on the yellow verb conjugation card they give you when you get
here. Also, during your language study time, start in the green book with the
world on it. Even if the topic doesn't make sense, study it anyways and do the
questions that come along with that topic. If something doesn't make sense or
is really confusing, ask your teacher in the next class that you have with
them. Good Luck!
We had devotional last night and they played a video of Elder Bednar when
he spoke at the Provo MTC a couple of weeks back. It was an amazing talk. He
spoke on the pattern of teaching effectively. Sounds kinda weird, but it was
super good. He asked us to go through the General Conference Ensign and
highlight the doctrine taught, the invitations sent, and the promised blessings
if we do those invitations. I really want to do that, but they only have Portuguese
Liahonas at the Distribution Center. I don't know how this would work, but if
you could figure out a way for me to get one , that'd be really awesome!
So about washing my clothes - I do it like any normal washer and dryer.
They have a machine here that
automatically pumps the detergent. They have four washers and four dryers for each
floor. The dryers are a little too powerful so I think I'm going to start hang
drying my pants. Everything else is fine, but they chewed up Elder A's pants a
little bit a couple of weeks ago.
Love You!!
Elder Steed
