Oi! Tudo Bem!
Week 5: check. This week has been good, ups and downs but I think this week I have been beginning to realize that: the more you know, you realize the more you don't know. Faz sentido? (make sense?) I don't know if that is the best way to put it but from learning more and more about Portuguese, I am now realizing how much more I have to learn..there is sooo much!..haha
Tuesday devotional was great, we had yet another apostle! I am 3-4 in apostle attendance average so far. Pretty good huh? They must love me or something..keep bringing on the big men, I'm cool with that haha Russel M. Nelson (was the apostle) spoke about O Livro de Mormon (the Book of Mormon haha) and mainly about some historical facts and stuff. This month's Ensign (a mormon magazine) was allll about the Book of Mormon, cover to cover, and the importamnce of it, how we can use it in our everyday lives, as well as how it came to be through porphets and Joseph Smith and about Chirst himself visiting the Americas. Dude, it's really got some great stuff in there so I HIGHLY recommend checking it out. If you don't have a copy and want one, ask my dad. It's hecka good. Russel M. Nelson himself was hilarious! He was soo sarcastic with the crowd and kept the mood light but also hit you with some great info sobre (about) the Book of Mormon.
Let's see..que mais (what else)..oh ya! So you know the little stickers that you get on apples, oranges, bananas, and other fruit? So we (some guys in my district and I) have started collecting those and putting them on the back of our black name tags that we wear on our shirts. Seeing as how we don't have much of a variety of fruit here in the MTC we are limited on our collectible stickers. So far I have: Dole from Ecuador, Golden Delicious apple, Red Delicious Apple, and a Valencia Sun Pacific one from an orange haha on my other tag I have a "I go bananas!" one off a Dole banana haha It keeps us entertained during mealtimes and it's funny to see how many we can get. Ya ya laugh all ya want but we are kind of limited on what to do hahaha
We also had a MTC Conference on Sunday and that was pretty neat too. We all go into the giant gym area, where we meet for the Tuesday devotional, and we listen to some of the MTC presidency and others speak and give us advice. Something cool I got out of it was the Quote from former prophet and president of the church Spencer W. Kimball. He is pretty well-known for the quote "Lengthen your stride." I love that one, to me it says you got to go a little further then you did yesterday, do more then you think you can and you'll see it's possible. Another cool quote that I got from this guy (Stephen B. Allen, Managing Director of the Mission Department of the church) was: "It's not 'you can't do this', it's Satan saying 'I don't want you to do this'". I thought that was actually really cool because honestly, we can do anything that we put our minds to, I mean, just think about it; with school, work, home, friends, family, anything that you have and that may seem difficult, you can do, of course you can. it's Satan tellin' ya that he doesn't wnat you to do it. I just thought these were some good things to think about and I hope everyone can use them. Hanging them up in your room or on your refridgerator that way you can always see it throughout your day.
Language is going well, but I want to "lengthen my stride" on it though, I want to learn more and more and it's not that I am slacking off haha it's that I just know that I can do more if I really work at it therefore I am going to work harder at it. Our teachers tell us to only speak in Portuguese and we did for about 3/4 of the day and wow, I could see the results. At some points I am not even translating the words in my head, I am just hearing them as is, in Portuguese, and that's the cool thing about it. If you want to swim it helps to actually jump right into the pool ans start swimming instead of sitting on the side watching the water and thinking about how you could be swimming, you just got to do it. It helps me a lot so I am going to try to do it more often.
I hope everything is going well with everyone and it is sad (for me) because MLB season ends this week, infact, talvez hoje? (maybe today?) I don't know, but I believe the A's are playing Seattle so hopefully the A's end on some good notes..haha Tchau!
Elder Spencer Miller
