Hello Family that I Love So Much!
Wow it feels like I haven't written you guys in months! So much has happened!
I spend at least 6 hours a day studying the scriptures, the language, and with my companion. He's still totally awesome and we work hard and continue to progress in the gospel and with the language. We've both memorized the first vision and the purpose in Portuguese! Which is great!. We're always singing church hymns with each other. Today we're singing in a devotional. We're singing "Ye Elders of Israel" in a quartet, Acapella..... (however you spell that) . without the piano, haha. We're pumped. We sang "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" to our Brazilian friends the other day and they recorded it! They thought it was hilarious. I haven't gained any weight. Elder Anderson and I run a mile every gym day and play basketball. He can dunk,... jealous.
Last P-day it poured like Washington pours, and the drainage system here isn't the best so we were soaked from head to toe. Either way there was no way we weren't going to go out. Dogs run loose all over the place, motorcycles everywhere, and every car is a Fiat, or a hatch back with no truck. its weird.
Elder Awesome and I and a couple other Elders were in a convenient store and a homeless lady walked by the store and said "hi" to me. I ended up buying two mini packs of gum cause I had change on me. We went outside the store and waited for one more Elder to buy his stuff and I felt super prompted to talk to this homeless lady who was sitting on the curb outside the store. I did, first I gave her one of my packs of gum, asked her where she was from, her name, as much as I could in Portuguese. And surprisingly I was able to understand a great deal of what she said! I honestly felt such a deep love for that lady, she was super nice, super funny and I didn't want to leave! Some of the other missionaries felt guilty and gave her some of their food too. Then she started chewing the gum I gave her and I couldn't understand squat! So we said "bye" and that was it. That got me super excited to get to know the people!
The other day we had a devotional where a bunch of the missionaries that were leaving bore their testimonies, and after they played "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" and "I Believe in Christ" and then "A Child's Prayer." The spirit was SO strong! I was sitting by a African Elder from Cape Verde.... I started tearing up on the first song cause that's just what I do, but then on "A Child's Prayer" he started to cry and I just lost it. The people give SO much to serve the lord, most have never seen a temple, are the only members of their family and hardly have anything. It strengthens my testimony to see how much faith they have, and how much they LOVE the gospel. It bugs the baggeezes out of me when American Elders act immature, disrespectful, irreverent , snotty or rude.. it seriously kills me, kills the spirit! AHHHH but I have been biting my tongue.
Elder A and I are doing really well, every lesson we get better and better, the language is coming along, our lessons consist of one English notes which we translate ourselves into English, but there are times that the way you say things is SO important and critical that I have to say it in English to makes sure I make sense. Because my grammar is still in the pits! haha.
uh... lets see what else, I'm glad ya'll got the red car back...
OH FREAK! HAS LIZ HAD HER BABY YET!!!!!! WHEN IS THAT GUNNA HAPPEN!@
I'm out of time!~ send me letters people! haha love you all so much!
I'm working really hard and my testimony is growing more and more every single day! I know I'm meant to be here.
I love you All!
Elder Ralph
