I got to be an investigator; Good friends leaving the MTC

Hey everybody!  Hows life in the states?  The reunion sounded like it was soooo fun!  I'm sad I missed it but glad you guys had a great time.  Luckily I'll probably be back for the next one!  Are you guys liking the Olympics?  I remember watching last Summer Olympics 4 years ago when Ryan was on his mission.  Wow the time sure flies by.  Just think about that.  For the next Olympics Kyle will be serving, crazy! 

     Its been a good week as usual.  One of my favorite highlights was when I was able to be a investigator during TRC.  There was a lot less pressure than when you are teaching, and it was fun to be able make up problems or questions I had and to see how the missionaries responded.  The missionaries that taught me were first week missionaries, so it was kinda funny to watch them and remember what I was going through a couple of weeks ago.  But they did really well and got me to commit to coming to church and to keep the sabbath day holy.

      Two of my roommates left for their missions this morning.  I can't believe how fast these 3 weeks went, it seems like they just got here.  The crazier thing is just one more 3 week period and then I'm leaving too.  The CTM is kind of a weird experience because every time you make good friends, they leave right just a little while later, and you know you probably won't ever see them again.  I guess I should get used to that, because that's how its going to be throughout my mission.  My other roommate and good friend Elder R. Santos still hasn't left, but he leaves later today.  Since he is going to Portugal, he ended up staying today and got to go to the temple with all of the rest of the North Americans.  It was really fun and was a great way to spend the last day together.  He is a great guy, and I'm gonna miss him a ton.  He told me that I should stay in Brazil after my mission, and he can hook me up with a job in his father's business :) 

     Anyways, thanks for all of the e-mails that you guys always send.  I'm excited to be able to write some personal letters with MissionTies.  Make sure to send a lot of letters too ;)  Have an awesome summer!!!  Até mais.

Elder

Gee

Jamie is famous!; English "fast"; Shooting in Colorado; Message of happiness

Howdy everybody.  Wow I can't believe how fast this week went by.  It seems like just a couple of days ago when I was writing you last week.  I guess time flies when your having fun, right? :)  I'm not sure if I've already talked about how one of my teachers has been really sick for a while now.  She missed about a week's worth of classes and so we keep getting different subs.  It turns out she is pregnant with twins!  She is really excited but she isn't going to be teaching us for a while, so now we got a new teacher, Irma Pozette.  She is awesome and I already like her a ton.  She used to be Sister Gee's teacher and she says that she is one of the best!  I'm super excited to learn more from her for the next couple of weeks.

     So Jamie, I met another person that knows you.  Her name is Hermana Daudt  Ha ha sorry, you might not even know who I'm talking about because I don't know her first name, and I'm not even sure that that is her last name.  She is from Rio Pardo and I forgot which country she is going to serve in, but I remember it was Spanish speaking.  Wow ha ha, I'm not very good at giving helpful information about this person.  But anyways, when she saw my name tag she came up to me and excitingly talked to me about you.  She said you guys were friends and that you are muita legal!  You must have made quite the impression while you were in Brasil because this is like the 3rd person that has talked to me about you, and I'm still in São Paulo, like what 12 hours from Porto Alegre?  I'm guessing I'm gonna meet a few more in the next two years :)

     So for the last couple of days, our district has been doing a English fast.  It was really hard!  I was surprised by how much I used English during the week, because it felt soooo different.  It was a good experience though, and must be affecting me, because I've accidentally typed some words in Portuguese and then had to change them back to English :P  The best part was when we broke the fast this afternoon by going to a rodizio in the city!  I'm not sure if I've just been in the CTM too long but it tasted soooooo amazing!  I tasted just as good if not better than Tucanos.

    It was really sad to hear about the shooting in Colorado.  Whenever I hear about things like this it just makes me think of how confused people can be and how they can take life for granted.  I think that teaching that life has a purpose is one of the most important things in missionary work, and I'm excited to share this message with others and see the happiness that it brings.  Anyways, I just barely realized it was pioneer day when I was reading your emails.  Its kinda weird to not realize that its a holiday.  But anyways I love you all and hope that your pioneer day is spectacular!! Thanks again for all of the emails!  You're the best!

Portuguese is improving; Talk in church; Brownies!!

   Hey there everybody! How goes it?  I'm really enjoying my time here at the CTM, and I feel like my Portuguese is getting better every week.  Here at the CTM there is actually quite a lot of English being spoken.  My teacher speaks English very well so a lot of the times especially in the first couple of weeks he taught in English.  At meals and activities most of the North Americans are speaking English as well.  Our branch president told us that it is a lot different then when he went to the MTC years ago.  He said that from the day he arrived they were only allowed to speak Portuguese.  We are taught a lot of Portuguese in class, but a lot of the learning comes from the time in which we have personal study.  I have been trying to talk to as many Brazilians as possible, because making conversations with them seems like one of best ways to learn for me. 

    

 I have some new roommates and all 3 of them are Brazilian.  Elder R. Santos is going to Portugal, and Elder Ararujo and Elder Silva are going to Manaus.  They are all extremely nice and like to talk to us even though none of them know a lot of English.  Elder Santos even comes up to me every time he sees me and asks me a question to see if i know how to respond.  They are really awesome and study a lot in our room to be the best missionaries they can.

    

 All of the lessons we teach are in Portuguese.  I am improving, but its still very hard to express myself the way I want to.  I often think of great things to say, but when I try to say it in Portuguese, I have to substitute it into the limited words that I know and then it doesn't as good.  I also find it challenging to "teach people, not lessons" because I don't know enough to venture too far away from a generic lesson.  Its all good though, I'm just trying to make all the mistakes here so I hopefully don't make them again in Porto Alegre.

   

  On P-days I love going out into São Paulo.  We have a boundary to stay in, but its pretty big and has a lot of different kinds of stores and places in it.  Last week I received those brownie you sent, and they were amazing!  They had nuts in them and were served with ice cream and chocolate syrup on them.  After eating them all of the elders in my district kept telling how awesome my family was.  I definitely agreed with them ;) Haha thanks a ton!

    

 A ton of districts left our branch last week so we are already the oldest district now with a ton of blue dots (first week).  Our district had a ton of responsibilities for the Sunday meetings.  I ended up giving a talk in sacrament, playing piano in sacrament and priesthood, teaching part of the lesson in priesthood, saying the prayer for priesthood, and finally giving a part of the lesson in district meeting.  It was kinda stressful but it was a good experience for me, because I will probably be doing this frequently when in small branches out in the field.  Every week each district is assigned a topic and all of the missionaries prepare a 5 minute talk and then are called up randomly to give the talk during the meeting.  I jinxed myself when I told my companion that I didn't want to give the talk this week because I didn't have as many good ideas as the other weeks, but I ended up doing fine and now I just hope that after doing so much I can just have a week off for the next. :P

    

 

   Anyways, I'm doing great and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be trained here in the CTM, and I'm sooo excited to go into the field and be able to teach people the restored gospel of Christ.  I love you all and wish you the best.  Have an awesome week!

         

  Love,

  Elder Gee 

 

4th of July was awesome; Sad to lose my compainon, Sis. Gee :-(

Oi familia!! Wassapening?? Sounds like you all are enjoying summer vacation!  Here in São Paulo it feels just like summer even though were in the dead of winter right now, so I'm happy :)  Its been a festive week here at the CTM!  The 4th of July was awesome! The cafeteria was decked out in red white and blue and for lunch we had burgers and fries!!  I really like the Brazilian food but I was so excited to have a good ol' fashioned American meal.  The best part was the all you can eat ice cream bar with various flavors and toppings.  It was just as good as it sounds :)  Throughout the day we showed our American pride by belting out patriotic songs and after all of our classes were over, me and a group of elders went down to the track outside because we saw a giant projection of the big soccer game on the side of a skyscraper.  It was awesome and made me feel like I was watching an event at Times Square or something.  We were able to watch the scoreless first half before we had to go to our rooms for the night.  When we were in our room Corinthians finally scored some goals and ended up winning their first copa libatores in their 100+ year history.  I was so happy that they won, because then I got to see my 4th of July firework show, and it was a loooong one.  After a while of trying to fall asleep I was kinda wishing Corinthians had lost :P

     Yesterday was the Independence day for Argentina also.  It was pretty fun and made me realize how many of the missionaries here are Argentine.  Their tradition is to sing their national anthem right at midnight and noon on their Independence day, but the leaders made sure that they all knew that they weren't singing at midnight this year.  They all ended up singing at 10:30 which was almost as cool.

     So the one of the saddest things for me this week was that Sister Gee left our district :(  I could tell she really wanted a sister companion as the days went by, and she told me that she felt like my companion didn't like working with her.  I talked to my companion about it and he said that he thought she was awesome and had no hard feelings towards her, but he said sometimes it was frustrating because he felt that he was the odd man out.  I always tried to make ita good trio, but i can see how I could've focused more with Melissa just because she is my sister and we have such a strong bond.  Anyways, a leader saw that the visa for the sister missionary in Provo wasn't coming through still, so he asked sister gee is she would rather stay in our district or move up a week and get new companions.  She said it was a hard decision but just really wanted to associate with some sisters.  She will come back to our district if the Provo missionary gets her visa or for our last week when her new district leaves.  I've talked to her and she is really happy.  Her companions are very nice too, so it's probably for the best, but I still miss her :) 

     This morning I woke up early around 4:30 to send off my Brazilian buddies who are probably in Porto Alegre now.  It was kinda sad to say bye to them, but I'm just glad that I'll probably see them all sometime in my mission.  I want to work harder now so I can speak Portuguese very well when I meet again!  Anyways I have to go now but I just want to let you all know that I love you!!!  You guys are just too cool :)  Have an amazing week!!

 

Elder Gee

Teaching a real investigator; Fireworks for the 4th!; Spiritual experience with the Brazilian elders

Bom dia!  Happy 3rd of July!  Thanks for all the emails everybody!  I love reading each one, so keep on sending them.  So last week I learned how fast the 30 min can go so today I'm just gonna type really fast so I apologize for all the errors before hand :P
It's been a pretty good week here at the CTM and we've been really busy  with all of our studying.  I don't know if I told you about our fake investigator, Lidia who our teach pretends to be, but sadly a couple of days ago my companion and I received a letter that told us that her parent wouldn't let us talk to her anymore :(  One of the other companionships got a similar letter, but the other one got her to commit to baptism.  We're not exactly sure what we should do now, but hopefully we can do something to get back on track.

     We had some more missionaries coming from the Provo MTC this week.  One of the leaders told us that we would get 2 new sisters in our district, but they ended up being in a different one.  I think Sister Gee was kinda bummed about that, but at least she's still companions with her bro!  One new missionary did join our district named Elder Andres-Miller, but we all just call him Elder Hyphen.  He is a good guy.  He's got a big heart and is really easy to get along with.

     One of the most... um let's say interesting thing this week was when we did our first TRC.  We had to teach a whole lesson completely in Portuguese.  We got a paper that told us some things about a man named Edison and we had to decide based off of his description what we should teach him.  We spent a very long time planning our lesson and then basically translated it in Portuguese.  I nervously waited for the teachers to tell us to go to the door and begin, but a leader came up and talked specifically to our companionship.  He informed us that we would be teaching a real investigator and so we should forget our entire lesson that was directed to Edison.  We were all stunned speechless and couldn't believe what was happening.  We started by asking the investigator some simple questions in broken Portuguese, and then he would go off and respond with a long very fast answer that lasted a couple minutes each time.  The only problem was we didn't know what he was saying! ...so we just kept on asking him other questions.  There were quite a few awkward silent pauses, so finally we decided we should just share the message we had planned for Edison, because that would be better than nothing.  I don't know if the man learned anything, but it was a good humbling and learning experience for us :)

     Last Wednesday night, I woke up to loud explosions and yelling coming from outside.  I looked out the window and could see little fireworks going off all throughout São Paulo.  Apparently all of the commotion was from a soccer game, the first leg of the South American championship between Boca Jrs. from Argentina and Corinthians one of Sao Paulos 4 teams.  When Corinthians scored at around 11:15 the city went crazy.  I heard the next day that it was a 1-1 draw so that means that a game tomorrow will be winner takes all.  It should be super crazy because this game will be at Corinthians stadium which is about 15 min form the CTM.  It looks like I won't miss out on fireworks this 4th of July ;)

     One of the coolest experiences I had this week was on Thursday night.  Our Brazilian roommates had gone to the temple earlier that morning so they and their whole district came into our room and shared their experiences.  It was awesome to see the joy the shared, especially from Elder Paula who received his own endowment that day. I couldn't really understand the words they said as they bore their testimonies in Portuguese, but I definitely could feel the spirit!  It was just another reminder that even though here in Brasil the culture is different, the food is different, and the language is different, the gospel and the joy it brings is the same. 

     Anyways, have an awesome 4th of July!  Way to be Justin on winning the championship!  Good luck to Megan and Kyle on your parade stuff. I love you all!!

            Love, Elder Gee 

First São Paulo temple visit

Dear Family,

We are pleased to be able to send you a picture of your missionary´s recent visit to the temple.  The morning they enter as a group is a very sacred experience for them, and it is an experience that is always anticipated with much excitement. We know they will treasure this remembrance. 

It is a great honor to serve with each of these fine young people and to watch their growth as they learn more about their sacred calling of a missionary.  We have a great love and respect for each one of them.

Thank you for your support for them.  They love to receive emails and letters from you, and feel of your love.  We know that your family will feel the blessings of their service.

Sincerely,

President and Sister Degn