August 28, 2015 - São Paulo CTM

First off they don´t allow us to send pictures from the CTM, but I can still receive.

 

The time at the CTM is going really slowly. I want so bad to be out in the field, but I also know this will help me teach more effectively.

 

We did a lot of practice lessons this week. We had two TRC sessions, which is where you teach a member for 30 minutes about a gospel topic. This week was Revelation through the Book of Mormon. They´re always a little interesting, because most of the time we have enough material for about 20 min. and we are so happy when we get a guy that will elaborate on a subject and eat away time. They film these lessons and have us watch them. We end up just laughing at ourselves. I misunderstood one of the guys and handed him the wrong scripture to read. We just all ended up staring at each other in silence for 30 seconds(we counted). We also had two mock first visits and one of them went extremely well. Then we also kept teaching our other mock investigator.

We had an area authority of Brasil come and speak to us. They give us headphones to listen to and translator, but the system doesn't work so well and we get a lot of static. The seventy told us that we need to multiply and replenish the earth and not just one or two. As an example he talked about his grandfather who had 22 children. I guess he means to multiply by 11.

Today we had the chance to go to the São Paulo temple. It is just beautiful on the inside. It's cool to be able to say that I got to go to both temples.

 

Portuguese is coming along pretty well. I like some of the ways they phrase things. One example of this is that instead of asking someone to say a prayer you ask someone to make a prayer. It adds so much more meaning to it. It requires thought and effort to be put into it. One way that Portuguese is bad is it's ruining my spelling of everything.

 

Well I only have one more p-day left in the CTM!

Elder Quain

August 21, 2015 - Saõ Paulo, Brazil CTM

Well, most of this week has been a blur so I'll be using my journal to write this.

On p-days we are allowed to go out and explore a little piece of São Paulo after the temple visit. It is so different from home. None of the streets around us are level at all so you have to pay attention to where you are walking, and the drivers are crazy.

 

Happy Birthday Casey!! August 16th right? I hope I'm right. (almost, it's the 14th)

 

The mission president made a special visit to our district on Monday. He ended up just talking to us, saying how we were special and that we needed to ramp up the use of our language. I don´t think he knew that we had planned an English fast for the next day. The English fast was way harder then any food fast. I was so tempted to say or sing things in English. I have seen an improvement in our districts ability to speak the language since we got here.

 

During a devotional that was given this week I had the thought of the importance of the intent behind an action. after thinking about it for a while it hit me, even Laman and Lemuel were obedient to their father, the prophet. That just reinforced the importance of intent of an action.

 

We were able to go out and proselyte this week and it was really cool. Funny thing, three of the people we ended up talking with spoke English. Made me think of the best two years. Some of the people seemed really interested and started reading the Book of Mormon as we walked away. We recommended for them to read the introduction and Alma chapter 32.

 

The bus ride getting there was an adventure. People here have a different perception of personal space with people and with cars. You're standing up in the bus the whole time, never get over about 45km/h, but it made me jump a little. One of the guys made the joke that he couldn't believe the bus driver left a whole 5 inches in-between the two cars.

 

Random things:

• We are all able to understand the Brasilian roommates a lot better now
• "Our Search for Happiness" is a great book
• It turns out Elder Karren´s brother brought the family of one of our roommates back into the church.
• The track here is tiny, one lap probably wouldn't even reach from my house to the Carrs or Wittes, but I'm having a lot of fun playing volleyball.
• I´m getting used to sleeping with a fan on.

 

Elder Quain

August 14, 2015 - Saõ Paulo, Brazil CTM

Touched down in Saõ Paulo, and there´s a little different feel to Brasil, but hasn´t really hit me that I´m in another country yet. We have a few different rules here. One is that you only get 45 minutes for email. not super exciting. The other one is that we are allowed to go out into a little area of SP on P-day! I´m really excited to explore the area. The food here is so much better then the food at the Provo MTC, that's probably because they only have to cook for about 250 people instead of 2700. Also, they have places for you to study outside surrounded by palm trees and exotic plants. I feel like I´m at a resort, with a strict schedual and a lot of studying.

 

The flight here was super long. Some surprising things happened. First off one of the elders saw his girlfriend from back home, crazy coincidence. their flight left from the terminal next to ours. Secondly, I somehow got the comfort class for the 10 hour leg of the flight along with two other missionaries. I am so thankful for the extra leg room. Lastly, I ended up sitting next to a Mormon woman that spoke both Portuguese and English, and had a niece serving in Belo Horizonte. Also, each of the seats had a touch screen so you could view a map of the world and your flight. It was cool and I tried to find the places where all the missionaries I know are serving. It also had games. There was one for learning languages and I did the entire one for Portuguese in like 20 minutes. Then, I played Sudoku and mahjong. I felt like I shouldn´t watch a movie, but then the person in front of me was watching the Book of Life with subtitles and I now know every thing that happens in that movie except how the voices sound.

 

There is a lot more immersion in the language here, but not total syl. The zone is trying to do a zone wide English fast on Monday though. I can already tell that I´m going to learn the language so much faster and better here.

 

We still have a very similar district, same companion and we only lost one of our old roommates. We now have two new Brasilian roommates that don´t speak any English. It has been interesting and we have had a lot of really slow, long and simple conversations. I think it is one of the ways they are trying to help us improve our Portuguese.

 

My companions favorite time is snack time. At 9 p.m. they come around to all the classrooms and hand out juice boxes and Brasilian candy. It´s pretty good. The fruit is so good here. On the first night they made pizza, it wasn´t at all like the ones we have at home, but it was really good. One of my favorites was the dessert pizza. It had chocolate, icing and super sweet bananas. And every breakfast they have fresh homemade bread rolls.

 

We were able to go to the Campinas temple today. It´s about 1.5 hours away, so I was able to get some studying in along with seeing the city and some sleep. The city is huge!!!! and filled with sky scrapers as far as the eye can see. The view from our room is amazing. It is especially beautiful at sunset. We are 5 stories up and there are two more above us. I have never done so many stairs in my life. And I´ve only been here three days.

 

The track here makes me laugh a little. I don´t think it can be more than 100 meters. I end up spending most of the time playing volleyball, because there are no Frisbees and we are not allowed to play soccer. They say it's because the Brasillians take it too seriously and things can get violent and people get hurt.

 

Elder Quain

 

P.S. I am writing this on a Portuguese key board, so it has all the accent marks on it and a few keys switched around.

Elders Nelson-Karren-Santos-Hollingshauos-Quain

 

August 12, 2015 - Brazil CTM - Centro de Treinamento Missionario

Hi,

They are letting us send an email saying we are alive and well. It was a long travel day. By the time we had arrived in our new room it had been 24 hours since we left our old room. Sao Paulo is giant. There are huge buildings rising up everywhere. We still have pretty much the same group in the residence as we had in Provo, minus Elder Nielson. Oh, I still have all my bags, I think I forgot one of my shampoos, but I'm doing fine. Was able to take a nap. The beds are a little small, but that's to be expected. I like the food here better then the Provo MTC so far. It is so much fresher and doesn´t weigh you down.

 

Well thats about all my new news,

Elder Quain

August 10, 2015 - Provo MTC

Well, this week has been a blur, but I'll try to write what I can remember. To start off we have had many more mock discussions and it kind of is a rollercoaster on how well I do with the language. It is difficult but I am seeing improvement. It was kind of fun to find out that our first mock investigator became our second teacher. The hard part about it was that I'm pretty sure he only said maybe 5 words in english the entire 3 hour lesson. Surprisingly I was able to understand most of it, saying anything was another matter. I have mixed feelings, I can't wait to get out in the field, but I'm happy I still have 4 weeks to learn the language, or as much as possible.

On Tuesday Elder Nelson gave a devotional here. We got there early, but didn't make it into the room and had to watch from a different room. You pretty much had to be in the choir to make it in, but it was still a good talk.

The most different day is Sunday. We are able to take a break from studying. We still hah more that 3 hours, but we also got to walk to the temple and go to church. It was fun walking the temple with all the guys in my district. It's the last big event we got to do as a whole district. At sacrament meeting they randomly call on two missionaries from our branch to speak in Portuguese. They expect everyone to prepare a lesson, which I did, but I am so glad I wasn't called on. The talk assignment was obedience and my vocab is limited to " God gave us commandments to protect us."

We went to a missionary travel seminar to prepare us to head out to SP. It wasn't supposed to be memorable, but there was around 400 people there and they asked people from the congregation to speak. The guy in front of me and my companion volunteered. They proceeded to put a camera on him which caught me and my companion in the view. Simply put neither of us know how to act naturally. We had quite a few people cracking up as we tried to hide from the camera. I guess we lightened the mood a little. After that we went to dinner and it was better then normal, tostadas. I saw Sister Carr and we said bye. She's heading up to the Kobe, Japan mission and I know she'll do great. Then we had a devotional and watched a talk from President Utchdorf. His talk was really good and talked about the long term affect of missionary work bringing families together. Me and my companion sat down and I noticed we were right next to Elder Abernethy. He is just super positive and seems to be loving the language (Russian), then I went to sleep.

Random thoughts:

• I'm getting used to shaving every day
• I'm not as tired as I was last week 
• About to leave the country for the first time
• I want to know more of the language to be a more effective servant of the Lord
• Apparently I am doing good scripture study, because my roommates caught me asking, how something came to pass? 
• And I'm not really used to being in a classroom this long, I was just sitting there and the Newsies song Santa Fe kept popping into my head "I want space, or just air. give me wind in my face I don't care." this kind of made me laugh.

Elder Quain

Elder Quain's Provo MTC district

August 4, 2015 - Provo MTC

Well, lets start off with the big news first, I got my Travel itinerary for the Brasil MTC! I will be heading out on the 11th of August and spend the remainder of my time at the MTC down there. It has been really cool having the opportunity to come to the Provo MTC. I got to see quite a few people form Vacaville and talk with them. I think this has helped my adjustment to being away from family and friends. I could not have asked for a better district or companion. I just feel so blessed. My district is super dedicated and we are all trying so hard to improve in not only the language of Portuguese, but also the language of the spirit. I am also appreciative that my group is one that actually goes to bed at 10:30. We couldn't fall asleep for awhile because the other districts were running around outside and laughing like a bunch of girls. I heard somebody washing their face and made the joke that they were just out there splashing water on each other. One of the guys went out to use the bathroom and when he came back he told us all to look outside. They were splashing each other with water! We all broke out laughing. My district leader is Elder Neilson, he is from Texas and is really funny. My companion is Elder Nelson, which confuses a lot of people outside the district. I keep finding more similarities between me and my companion. We both play piano and trumpet, and want to be engineers.

Now to talk about the language. It is very difficult and challenging, but I am already more confident in Portuguese after one week then I was in Spanish after two years. Our teacher is awesome. His name is Irmao Lemprele and he is part of Vocal Point. He is super helpful and patient with us. Which is great because he uses it a lot with me. An average day includes at least 9 hours of language study and probably 3 to 4 hours of doctrine study. We have also already done three mock investigator lessons in Portuguese. They never had us teach a single lesson in English and our first lesson was on day three. 
 

The first Sunday was a Fast Sunday. I thought that fasting was hard at home, it's nothing compared to here. They have you fast and expect you to continue studying. Everyone said that you just had to make it to Sunday, then it got easier. Correction, make it to Sunday dinner. After that we had devotional and Sheri Dew spoke. What I got from it was that we need three basic things. 1 - To know that Christ is true, 2 - To know that the Holy Ghost is real and, 3 - To have a testimony of the actuality of the administering of angels. After that we got to watch a movie. It was a talk by David A Bednar and it was called the characteristics of Christ. It was all about turning out to others in our difficulties and not focusing inward. It was an awesome talk. I'd recommend that everyone watch it, but for some reason it is only shown at the MTC.

 

Our branch counselor, Brother Nilson, taught our District lesson on Sunday all about cor, or the Culture of righteousness. He taught about how we need not only have a testimony but we need to be converted. He also taught about the rules. Everyone here says that we need exact obedience, but he said that we need to be so much into the culture of righteousness and on Christ's side that we should never even come close to breaking the rules. The next day he came in and took our district on a special field trip to the room he had studied Spanish in and bore his testimony that only through God is all of this possible.

The main focus of the MTC has been to prepare to serve others and as I have strived to do this I have found that my love for all has increased, especially for my Family and Friends. I don't think that I ever truly appreciated what I had been given. I have literally been blessed beyond measure and way beyond what I deserve. What I find amazing is that I feel love for the people I will serve in Belo Horizonte and I haven't even met them! I'm doing everything better in the MTC. I am praying better, bearing my testimony better, learning better. There is one exception to the rule though, I am definitely not sleeping better. I have a slightly red, sleep deprived look in my eyes, but apparently its all the rage here.  I don't think I would trade this experience for anything. I have felt the spirit so strong here.

 

In companionship study me and my companion were talking about the power of the atonement and he started telling a story. There was a man walking in the sand and when he died he looked back and saw two sets of foot prints, Christ turned to him and said that's when I walked beside you. The man then noticed that one of the sets of foot prints disappeared. He turned to Christ and asked him what happened. He said, That is when I carried you. That story was just amazing and so true. I wish you could all feel the spirit I felt when he said it. Rarely has it been stronger.

 

From,

Elder Quain

 Arriving at the MTC

 

Elder Quain-Karren-Nelson-Hollingshaws

 

 

Elders Hollingshaws & Neilson