MTC (Missionary Training Center) Week 3 (July 16, 2013)

Oi amigos!

This week has been super packed and at the same time feels like it's flown by! On Wednesday, our district had our first "Solmente em Portuges Dia" (Only in Portuguese Day) where we tried to speak Portuguese for the whole day. It went better than expected for the first six or so hours! It was kind of difficult, but really fun! Cracking jokes is always ten times funnier when you can figure out how to do it in a foreign language! ;) On Friday we got to go to the TRC for the first time! That's the place where they have random volunteers come in and sit in a room with us so we can get to know them and teach them a 20-ish minute lesson. We were pretty nervous going into it, but I'm pretty sure everyone in my district had a great experience! Sister Taylor and I love it! We are so proud of how far we've come with our Portuguese!! We definitely know God's been helping us out along the way. There's no way any normal person could learn this much in three weeks... Things are going great with our other investigators too. Our two teachers, Irma Petita and Irmao Messias have been playing the part of different investigators for each companionship in our district for a little over a week now and the two characters Sister Taylor and I are working with, Geraldo and Edineia, are awesome! I love practicing teaching. It's my favorite way to learn. Preparing a lesson based on my investigators needs helps me get so much more out of everything I study because I get to apply everything!

Anyway, I can't believe I'm half way done with my time here! Time has really started to fly by! I'm already almost a month into my mission!! Oh yeah, and some pretty exciting news! A few more people around here have been getting their visas! At least one or two of them went through the DC consulate like me! Two of them were in their last week at the MTC, so they just stayed until the end of their six weeks and then went to Brazil. A couple more were in their first or second week and are already gone! Crazy! I can't wait to get down there and get to work!! :)

Tchao tchao for now!
Sister Gold

P.S. The first picture is of me on Solmente em Portuguese Dia wearing the colors of Brasil! The elder who took the picture told me it looked like I only had half an arm when I stood like that...

The second picture is of me "snailing" in the hallway outside our room during personal physical exercise. It's pretty fun. Everyone should try it. In Portuguese, we call it "modo de caracol" or "snail mode." ;)