Week 5

Hola familia!

In reply to all of your emails:

I am glad that Bryn could stop over to watch everyone open gifts. Thanks for all of the support you give to her. Tell her that I say hello and “I love you”. I am glad you got those pictures. I think it was my branch president's wife that sent them. I didn’t have a chance to look at all of them. The arm wrestling match ended in a tie.

I don’t know if the buck Adam found was mine. Where exactly was it found? I recall the deer that I shot at being either a small buck or a small doe. Thanks for holding off on the other buck you saw on Bailey Road; I hope it will still be around when I get back just in time for the hunting season.

I haven’t received any emails from Fritz but maybe one day I will. I hope he is doing great and is having a wonderful mission.

I think that the code reader is in the barn on the table to the left of the Harley Davidson tool cabinet. That is where I usually kept it. If it's not there it may be on the second rack down on my doll up cart.

The language is going great. I found out on Monday that what my district leader has told me was wrong about our departure dates. Those were just the dates that we were supposed to leave. My district is leaving all on the 2nd of February. Please start sending mail to my mission after this week because it took Bryn’s first letter 22 days to get here. I got it last Tuesday by the way (December 29th). I didn’t get one this Tuesday but maybe I will get the next one sometime this week. So I think I am leaving on the 2nd of February but the 2nd counselor to the President said they do let people out 1 week early if it's on their transfer date and sometimes they let people out 2 weeks early if the President approves it. I am pretty sure I will be here until the second though. I can’t wait to get out to the field, I heard the Portuguese comes much faster there.

Christmas was great. It was mostly just a free day until after lunch. We watched Life is Beautiful ( I think, or It’s a Wonderful Life, whichever one is about the guy who almost jumps from the bridge, not the one about WWII.) and then we played games and after dinner we watched The Other Side of Heaven. I got a really ugly tie from the CTM and a small bag of Brazillian candy (mostly chocolate) from the cafeteria (which is catered by the largest caterer in the world). The food here is okay. I can’t wait to get into the field though, I heard that it is like 100 times better there! That’s exciting about all of your presents; congratulations and I hope that you have fun with them. Zach and Sarah: Canada sounds cool. You should take a look at the job opportunities in Brazil if you don’t mind living with 2nd world health care. Good luck to you and your family though and I hope that you can find a job soon. If you have enough faith you will be blessed.

Matt: Here is my rough translation of your email using just my brain.
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Feliz Ano Novo!
Acredito que você tem aprendido suficiente para entender o meu e-mail escrito em português. Como tem passado esta semana? Quais são as coisas que você gosta de fazer no dia de preparação? Estou pensando que você tem apenas duas semanas ate você sairá do CTM. Que ótimo! Lembro-me que estava muito animado para entrar o campo missionário e começar os trabalhos. Você vai aprender mais rápido quando deixas de falar inglês. Lembra-se que todos os seus companheiros serão diferentes e que é muito importante de aprender a gostar deles.
Oramos por você todos os dias. Sabemos que o Senhor vai te abençoar na obra missionaria.
Abraços,
Mateus
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My translation:
Happy new year!

I believe that you have learned sufficiently to understand my email written in Portuguese. How has the past week been. Which type of things do you like to do on P-day. There are only 2 weeks until you leave the CTM. That’s Awesome! I remember that I was very excited when I entered the field and got to work. You will learn much faster when you stop speaking English. Remember that all your companions are different and that its very important that you learn to love them.

We pray for you every day. We know that you will be blessed by other missionaries.

--------Was that a good enough translation? It’s a lot harder when the Brazillians are speaking fast and in a Brazillian accent.

I am very sorry about not being to email you all last week. The Internet was down at the Internet café across the street and there are only 3 computers at the other café in our area so I let my companions use the free ones while I wrote a letter. The weeks are going by a lot faster now than they did in the beginning. Dad: we don’t memorize the discussions anymore. PMG seems to be a very effective tool for teaching investigators, but it is still hard for a lot of the missionaries here to realize that the whole purpose for PMG was so the missionaries can teach to the investigators' needs. Teaching is a difficult skill/technique to learn. I feel like I will only really learn how to teach once I have been in the field for at least a couple of months, if not more.

I have so far only received one letter from Bryn. I hope that Chuck's package gets here before I leave the MTC because if it doesn’t they do not forward packages to the mission.

Every Tuesday night we have a devotional. Yesterday night we watched Jeffery R. Holland's talk which he gave to all the missionaries in Provo 3 or 4 weeks ago. It was very good. On Christmas Eve, Claudia something (I forgot his last name) of the 70 presidency, who is also over the entire Brazil area, came to speak to us. It was a good talk.

Thanks for all of the emails family and Bryn. I love you all. I will update you more next week. Oh and last Wednesday we got I think 20 or so Americans. I think about half of them only had a week left and left for their missions yesterday. But there were a couple brand new kids and couple that are in the district ahead of us that are leaving on the 19th of January. One came into our district. So now we have 7 missionaries in our district (6 elders and a sister). I think there are 3 American districts total. Até Mais!

Love,

Elder Steele