August 28, 2012

My Portuguese sure is coming along well. I learn so much everyday. But then I get humbled when I talk to a native speaker and can barely get through a conversation without my brain exploding. I like learning the language though and practicing speaking with people. I have moments all of the time when I feel way awesome because I realize I am communicating with someone in a different language. It's a really cool feeling. Lots of my favorite Brazilians left this week. My friend Elder Leite from Capo Verde. I was getting really used to his accent of Portuguese, but now I'll have to get used to Brazilian accents. Haha. I want to go visit Capo Verde someday, he made it sound wonderful! Some other elders we were friends with left, we always feel like celebrities because when we are friends with some of the Brazilian elders, next thing we know they all want to practice talking with us and learn English from us and be our friends. It's great. They all try to get pictures with us and ask for our e-mail. My companion gets called Britney Spears and Barbie all the time. I'm not blonde so I don't get nicknamed as much.

There are about 150 American elders and 150 Brazilian elders here I think. So I'll for sure see Danny (my cousin) around. I'll be looking out my classroom window tomorrow to go greet him when their bus pulls up. I'm sure my teacher will let me as long as we're not in the middle of something. The mealtime is staggered so lots of missionaries overlap, but it's not a guarantee. We are getting one of the new districts into our branch though so maybe it will be his!

So this week I learned a lot. Like that Brazil is the perfect place for me to serve a mission because people really open their hearts here and are really energetic and accept you for who you are. Really, everyday I realize more and more that this is the perfect place for me to serve a mission. I had a few rough days this week because our teachers started only allowing Portuguese during classtime or we had to do a push-up for every English word we spoke. It was way frustrating not being able to express myself at all. I'm adjusting to it though. Well I'm adjusting and the push-up enforcing is fading. The schedule gets really repetitive here, but luckily I have regularly scheduled things to look forward to each week. For example, I love playing volleyball at gym on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Oh and this week might be a little rough because we are getting 14-17 new sisters (doubling in number) and I'm the official coordinating sister now that my roommate Sister Melo is in the field. So that will be a great challenge for me to make them all feel welcome and learn all their names. It's good to have a chance to push myself and stretch my limits. I'm learning a lot about relying on the Lord and asking for him to strengthen me to endure rather than asking him to take away my burdens. Mosiah 24 is a super good chapter in the Book of Mormon. I think that's the one I was reading anyways. I don't know, I read so many scriptures they all start to blur together a bit. I'm reading the BofM in Portuguese though. It's great. I'm getting better with every chapter. It's real slow though. Like I've been doing it for a few weeks and I'm still in 1 Nephi. Good thing I have 18 months!!

Ooh another great thing my comp. and I discovered this week is if we eat lunch fast we are able to go take a 15 minute nap in our room before class. It's wonderful. Just enough to re-energize us for the rest of the afternoon so I don't fall asleep in class and have my teacher say "Bon dia Sister Udy!" It's hard to stay awake in the afternoons.

Another really good thing I've been studying lately is D&C 121 and 122 and in verse 10 of 121 it talks about Job so I decided to read the book of Job. It's really good. His life was awful and makes me feel better about mine. Plus he was super faithful and endured really well so it's really inspiring. Because I like to think my life is difficult even though it really isn't. Like how right now so many of my friends are starting school and I'm not, it's sort of sad. I miss SUU. I like being in Brazil though. So I'll be fine. Oh and also I like to think my life is hard because I haven't gotten hardly any letters recently. They used to come so often I was almost embarrassed, but then I guess it became time for me to be humbled and they stopped coming.

That's all I've got for this week. Tell everyone I love them.

Oh also, don't send me packages here. I don't remember if I told you that. But they take like months to arrive and there is nothing worth sending that I can't buy here. So yeah, send me all the letters your heart desires, but packages are a big waste. Okay, great.

Ooh I forgot to tell you one more thing. We went to the Sao Paulo temple again today and I got to do initiatory instead of a sesssion. It was good. It was all Portuguese, but they gave me an English card with the words to read so I got to learn them really well as well as work on my Portuguese. I loved it.

Love you all!! Tchau

Sister Laurel Udy