Week 4

Hello All,

Tudo bem?

I hope everything is going well. It sounds like the wedding went smoothly! Also I'm glad the U.S. did well in the Olympics! This week has been a pretty normal week at the CTM! Another week of studying portuguese and eating beans and rice. This week we got two new elders in our district from the Provo MTC. They left the same day as us but they had to wait on their visas for a while in Provo. I expected their portuguese to be worse than ours but its actually better! From what they said classes are a lot more structered in Provo. Here everthing is mostly self-taught. The two guys from provo are named Elder Wade and Elder Chauncey, they also moved into the room that Elder Jensen and I are in. We also got a new afternoon instructor. This is our fourth afternoon instructor! The last one took a phone call in the middle of class, then he told us he had an emergency to take care of, he walked out and we never saw him again! Our new instructor is Irmao Ramos and I think we will learn a lot more from him anyway. We also had another TRC this Friday and Elder Jensen and I received very positive feedback again. On Monday I had to say goodbye to some of the Brazilians that I had become friends with because they were left for the field. They were all very excited. When they left they were given an english workbook so they can try and learn english during their missions. The CTM is made up of 1.Americans serving in Brazil learning Portuguese (9 weeks) 2. Brazilians serving in Brazil (3 weeks) 3. Brazilians serving in other South American countries learning spanish (6 weeks) 4. Other South Americans serving in Brazil learning portuguese (6 weeks). On Sunday we had an area 70 come and give us a devotional about the importance of our missions.

Here are some funny languages failures that I've experienced so far. When we were teaching our investigator about the restoration it was a very spiritual experience and we lead into the first vision. We said "when Joseph went and prayed to ask God which church he should join this is what God said" then we tried to get him to read Joseph Smith History 1:15-16 but Elder Jensen accidently gave him Joseph Smith Mathew instead and since the scriptures were in Portuguese we didn't notice until after. This is what he read " 15 Neither let him who is in the field return back to take his clothes;16 And wo unto them that are with child, and unto them that give suck in those days" hahahahahaha. He was extremely confused and we laughed so hard after the lesson. Another was when we were teaching our new investigator named Alfredo and we accidently told him that we were Jehovah's Witnesses hahahaha. We didn't get very good feedback on that lesson.

Once again thanks for the emails and I hope all is well!

Eu amo voces!

-Elder Caleb Anderson