September 9, 2015 - Arrived in Belo Horizonte!

So, I got my companion, but I´m guessing that you already received the picture. His name is Elder Barbosa. My first thought when I heard his name was the Pirates of the Caribbean. Our area is about 5 hours outside of Belo Horizonte by bus. I´m almost getting used to these long travel days. From what I can understand Barbosa is the district leader. He´s a pretty cool guy, a Brosilato and is trying to learn English. He is pretty good at some of it too. I hope my Portuguese overtakes his English soon, but it is nice that he can explain some things in English. 

New companion - Elder Barbosa!

 

We had a flight yesterday and met the President and his wife. The Fernandes´ are very young. Their oldest child is younger then me. That could be Nate in a few years. They fed us some really good food and Elder Barbosa and I ended up staying in a hotel overnight. We had a long commute time today and I lived off of a loaf of banana bread Sister Fernandes gave me. I ate the whole loaf!

 

I´ve met two people from the ward and they have a ward activity tonight. I guess it´s trial by fire. I can understand as long as people talk slowly and I can hear them clearly, so this is going to be interesting. I just need to remember that as long as I put my trust in the Lord I will be able to learn all I need.

 

Randoms:

*Sorry I don't have my camera, so I´ll give you pictures in my next letter

*This keyboard is in Portuguese so it underlines everything in red and it looks like I have horrible spelling

*After writing the last letter the guys from our district got 17 big cookies and 2 liters of ice cream and ate it all

*We had and in-field orientation and it was about 12 hours long and they spoke only Portuguese.

*They have a parrot at this computer lab

 

Elder Quain

 

Arrived in Belo Horizonte

At the mission home

 

The whole group with new companions.

 

Sister & President Fernandes

September 4, 2015 - São Paulo CTM

Well I´m down to less than one week in the CTM and I'm super excited and a little nervous, but I´m confident the Lord will strengthen me as I work on the language. I still don´t really have a personality in Portuguese, but I feel almost functional in the language, at least on gospel topics. We have the joke that we will be the most obedient missionaries ever because all we know how to talk about well is the gospel. 

My companion, Elder Nelson, and I had some of our best lessons ever this week. He already has a good grasp on the language, but I was able to talk a lot more and express some of my ideas. They decided to throw all three subjunctive tenses at us this week and I think I might understand maybe one. They don't exist in English, there's something like a hypothetical tense in there.

 

Some info on the district; everyone in the group loves to sing and we do it a lot. One of the frequently sung songs for the guys is "Let's Get Down to Business" from Mulan. We have four other people from Texas in our district and no one from Utah. Elder Bowcutt is our district lead and enjoys country music, fishing, and wants to go into medicine. His companion is Elder Freeze and he is really good at piano and likes the band 21 Pilots. Elder Karren is from Ogden and his main talent is knowing everybody. Elder Nelson is from Maryland and is a movie star. (made a movie in college and some how Elder Karren saw it) The favorite movie of our district is Nacho Libre. I have never seen it, but they quote it so much I have started to quote it also.

 

Me weekly randoms:

* I had a dream I went to Disneyland with my family and rode the haunted mansion, but I skipped the corpse bride room in my dream (guess my subconscious doesn´t like it)

* I started ironing this week and got my dry cleaning done.

* I talked with a Brasilato while at the temple and understood him, so there´s hope.

* The guys in the district got shakes and they were really good because I haven't had ice cream since the first day at Provo (July 29)

 

Elder Quain

Elder Hollingshauos & Me

 

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