watermelon in winter

(NOTE:  Received on April 27, 2010) I have no time today, pretty much. So...here goes a lot of randomness. Last Tuesday, after emailing, my comps and I went to a grocery store, just to check it out. Observations: They have an aisle for rice and beans, just like we do for cereal. I didn't know there were that many different kinds of rice and beans. And cereal is basically none. And I was pretty excited to see they have pints of Haagen-daas ice cream...except not really, after I checked out the price, because it costs R$17.90 for a pint, which is like a little more than half that in American dollars. They also had Kinder eggs and Kinder chocolates...yes, of course I bought and enjoyed some!!! Last Tuesday night, we went out in the dark after gym time, and cleaned the streets. Because Elder Nelson was coming on Thursday, and apparently we wanted the street around the CTM to be trash-free. Wishful thinking, if you ask me! But it was pretty fun. It was great. :) Also, Tuesday, I. Lo...

(NOTE:  Received April 20, 2010) Parabéns, família! So...here's the big news first. Thursday will be a BIG day for us here...because Elder Russell M. Nelson is coming! We are going to have a devotional with him, and guess who gets to play the piano for choir!!! Yeah, if you guessed Sister Ogden, you're correct. I'm so excited! I need to think of questions to ask him, because we are probably all going to get a chance to meet him, and there will´probably be a question and answer section of the meeting. There's a slight chance the Elder Holland will come with him, which would be AMAZING. No one really knows either way though. So that's the big news. :) So let me just get started on the rest of this email. My English has gotten weird sometimes. :) My goal is to get home fluent in Portuguese and having a rough time with English. Yup. So let me start with stuff about my amazing district. We are the biggest district at the CTM right now, with 13 missionaries. We just...

(NOTE:  Received April 13, 2010) Hello! Guess what!  It's Pday!  Hooray!  And I got three letters on the same day last week...all from the Snyders!  Cool, huh!  They love me.  So first, about this email.  I decided to stay at the MTC today to email, so that I can try sending pictures again. I think it will work this time, actually. First of all...Last Tuesday, I was walking around after gym with my district, and we were looking at the pictures on the wall here.  They have pictures from a bunch of the Brazil missions, as well as the Provo and Chicago missions.  So whenever I look at them, there is always a part of me that wonders if maybe I know someone.  This time... I did!  And you do too!  I found a picture of Michael Orr on his mission!  I took a picture of the picture.  Funny.  But it was awesome.  I got so excited, my district probably thought I was even crazier than they already think I a...

(NOTE:  Received April 6, 2010) Hello family, and friends too! So this week has fewer stories than the usual. We get to go proselyting in a few days, so we've been a lot more focused lately. In some ways. I'm really pushing myself harder than usual this week, that's for sure. I've only got 4 weeks left here, and have so much yet to learn! A few days ago, we were teaching some lessons, and we asked one of the Zone Leaders if we could practice teaching him. We ended up throwing away our original plan, and we sat with him for over an hour, while he helped us learn how to be better missionaries and answer tough questions. He was really encouraging while we were discouraged. He told us that the language is not our problem, because every time we figure out how to say something in English we translate it quickly and easily to Portuguese. So my problem right now is know how to be a missionary, really. I need to learn how to better answer questions and how to connect bette...