Maceio Brazil Mission Assignment

Maceio Brazil Mission Assignment
Serving in God's Army

7/31/2012

7/31/12 Week 3

I'm an Uncle! I'M AN UNCLE!
Hey Momma!
   Yay! I'm glad to hear that everything turned out well for Liz! Sure do wish I could be there to see her first baby girl! Congratulations!
And tell Samuel that I said happy birthday and that I'm proud of him becoming a Deacon! Go Samuel! Have fun driving to Utah without me Dad, bahaha, don't die!
   This Week has been interesting.. its been full of ups and downs, there have been numerous times when I think.. dang I'm awesome at Portuguese or shoooot I'm a good teacher, but then there are even more times when I think, crap.. I have so much work to do. And in one week I'll be halfway done with my time here in the MTC or CTM, crazy. But every lesson we teach to our investigators I learn something new, what to do, what not to do, how to ask the right questions... HA just yesterday I accidently said.. thanks for letting us into your bed this afternoon. "Cama" instead of "Casa".... I had to leave for a second because I was laughing so hard.
   Going to the temple every week is such a great experience, it seriously restarts me spiritually...
I've started to become great friends with a bunch of the Brazilians... they bring out my crazy side and they love that.. the only problem with becoming such good friends with them is 1. its really hard when they leave.. Elder Santos, an elder in our room, left this morning to Cape Verde.. he was a super spiritual guy. He said our prayer this morning and was crying the whole time.. love that guy SO much. He sacrificed so much to be out here. 2. the stinking Brazilians teach you bad words or try and get you to say something mean to another elders when you become good friends with them, that's something that I've seriously tried to avoid learning unlike some guys in my district. idk. I don't find learning them necessary. The Brazilians are awesome and I love them.
   This past week we went to the Policia Federal and I am now a citizen of Brazil! woot woot that took a long time... and the place was packed with police officers that looked like civilians but carrying cowboy styled guns, haha. This week I've been seriously struggling to sleep because there's like ten dogs who like to have conversations in the middle of the night right outside my bedroom window...
   Our district played volleyball this morning and me and Elder AWESOME kicked trash! mostly him cause he's like... a tree. but I still love that guy and were working really hard and really well together. were stepping up our game for sure, our whole district is. We've set a lot of hard core goals and so far we've been able to reach a lot of them. Every day a companionship bears their testimonies in Portuguese, no complaining, only Portuguese all day, memorize first vision and D&C 4 in Portuguese, cool things like that....The room that we study in is getting smaller and smaller every day but we've managed to come up with a few games/ crazy things to do to keep us sane, haha. I've been kicking trash at the Movie guessing game thanks to my awesome family, haha. Miss you guys.
   Me and Elder Anderson sing a lot together, in the shower, going down the stairs. were hoping to sing, me and him, on our last Sunday here at the CTM for a fireside thingy! on our last fireside the AC broke and it was HOT! not comfy in a suit...
I feel like I'm growing, being a missionary your faith is seriously tested because you get asked the question "WHY" a lot, and before you answer you have to ask yourself "why"... "why do I believe that", you then find proof in the scriptures or in your own life, or you bear your testimony. Then you have to persuade yourself that what you know is convincing, if that makes sense. AND THEN YOU HAVE TO TRY AND SAY THAT IN PORTUGUESE! crazy.. but I've grown a lot in myself knowing that the gospel is true, that God lives and loves us, that we are his children. I've had the seminary/mission experience where my companion was dominating a lesson and he was asked a question that he couldn't answer.... it was actually a good question because in the Portuguese BIBLE it says that God rested on Saturday instead of Sunday.. weird huh? so I remembered a scripture that I learned in Seminary in Genesis and I totally killed that question! it was awesome.... I've learned a bunch about which scriptures are effective and which ones ain't, haha.
Love ya'll got to go! write me LOL
Elder Ralph
Hey mom can you correct my grammer haha