Week 2

Hey everyone!
I have completed my second week here in the Provo MTC and it has been awesome. I have learned quite a bit this week with meu (my) companeirho e meu districto. Last Tuesday night we had an Apostle (Jeffrey R. Holland) come speak to us for our weekly devotional. Dude it was aweessommee! Never heard anything like that before, so powerful.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday I had classes along with the usual schedule and continued to teach our "investigator" Yanick. I put " " becuase he is a fluent Portguese speaker who acts like an investigator. My companion and I have the problem of we can understand most of what the person is saying, we just don't know how to respond back in Portguese soo that is a slight problem. Then again, we had to keep thinking that it has only been a little over a week. One day (Friday I think?) we taight Yanick and it didn't go well at all, meu companeirho and I did NOT want to teach at all that day because everytime we went in we would say stuff then try to leave quickly because we didn't want him asking us questions that would require an answer haha But this time we went in and he started talking faster and faster and we couldn't understand anything! It was bad, we literally had 10 awkward silences and finally we just stood up and said "obrigado" (thank you) and left. How bad is that?! Well as you can see we were not having a good day or two and we were stressing out, we weren't with the rest of the class, but we knew what to teachh..in English but not Portuguese..it wasn't fun at all to be honest. I had no motivation to teach nor did my companion and we dreaded going in to teach the "pesquisador" (investigator) everytime we had to. After the last lesson we taught (abandoned would be a better way to put it haha) we went outside and sat down and just tried to forget about it but we couldn't. We talked for a little bit which helped and then our district leader and his companion (both are awesome guys) came outside to ask what happened. We explained and the district leader took my companierho and I sat and chit chatted with the other elder. It was good because I knew that we had only been there for a week but we felt soo stupid and not being able to keep up with everyone else. He reaffirmed to us that, yes, it had only been a week and he said sometimes it clicks with different people. I told him I always had a hard time memorizing stuff especially church stuff like memorizing Bible and Book of Mormon scriptures and I said language has always been kind of harder for me. I said I could watch ESPN for 5 min and practically repeat all the highlights, scores and stats for each player and team mentioned in that 5 min. easily! He kind of laughed and said "yeah you strike me as that person who does get stuff easily, but maybe this is one thing that doesn't always come easy." Talking helped a lot to relieve some of the stress of the workload we had the last couple of days so I felt better.

Spencer's District

Then to top it off, our "investigator" showed up to our class the next day and is really one of our teachers! So now we have 2 teachers: Irmão (irmão=brother) Porter (who is really cool, served his mission in Brazil) and the new guy (investigator) Irmão Williardson (he served in Portugal). The cool thing was that the first class that Irmao Williardson taught I thought I was going to feel intimidated by having him teach us (well he is 6'6") and that he would be able to see how dumb my companion and I were during our lessons so we wouldn't be good now. Actually, during class I could understand 80-90% of what he was saying! At some points the rest of the guys in my class would turn to me and ask "what is he saying elder miller?!" because at that moment I was the only one who could understand him. It was a good break through and although my companion is a little behind me, he has made progress as well. The first thing Irmao Williardson said to us was "no giving up" (but in portuguese but I forgot how to say it at the moment haha). I took that as a personal challenge so I am not giving up. I know we are not going to be fluent but if you show you are giving up, the investigator will see it and know, but if you are trying your best, they will see that and be easier to talk with. Improve a little everyday and I know we'll be fine.
Other things: during one of our devotionals sunday night we were all hecka bored (church dead after having about 5 or 6 hours of church meetings all day..) so I tried to write all of the Harry Potter characters off the top of my head as this other elder who is an avid Avatar fan did the same with the Avatar characters. I mean uhh..we were paying attention dad I swear! (hahaha) Ya ya ya so what if we are weird..haha (don't hate! haha)
One quote that Jeffrey R. Holland said during his devotional last Tuesday night was "...if it is hard, welcome to life." I thought that was an excellent way to put it. No matter what you are doing, if it is hard, it's not because you are being hated on or that you are the only one in your family or anywhere else that is having problems, it's called life. Everyone has a life so therefore everyone has hard times. Some people's show differently then others that's the only difference. It helped me think about it in a way like: if it's hard, it's well worth it and, you are not the only one so don't be down on yourself. That's what you got to keep thinking. Don't make whatever situation you are in worse by being down on yourself, learn that it is life and start dealing with it in the right way. Be positive and you will get soo much more out of what situation you are in then if you were negative and complaining. Time goes by when you're having fun and I am starting to see that now after only being here for 2 weeks. I miss you all and hope everyone is doing well! Tchau!
Elder Spencer Miller
p.s. I still have my mini foldout A's schedule in my wallet soo I know who they are playing everyday! HA HA HA! Hopefully they win against Kansas City today. My mom and dad are like "ohh greatt.."