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
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