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