(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 got Elder Morgan last week...he came down from Provo. I've been hearing about him since my district got here, because he was their district leader up there. So anyway, he's finally here, and they put him in our district, which is awesome. Some of the Elders in my district have taken up writing poetry. They are really good! I have a small notebook with their poems in it, because I enjoy them so much! I also wrote a poem. Maybe I will send it to you some day. Anyway, so that's cool. Also, we have a very loving district. In the real world it probably seems gay when guys hug each other or stand together with their arms around each other...but in my district it's the norm. It's actually hilarious, especially because they are teenage guys! I love it though. I love my district! Oh yeah, and because Elder Morgan came, we got a new classroom, because ours was small even for 12 people. Hooray! Oh and on Sunday, our district did the musical number in church. It sounded pretty good. I played the piano, of course. :)
Teaching stuff...last weekend, we had a TRC. With real Brazilians. We taught them a 15-minute lesson, got a review about it from a teacher, and retaught for 10 minutes. We get to go proselyting again this Friday though!
So speaking of playing the piano and choir and all that, here's a good one. Saturday, someone handed me the program for the Sunday fireside. You only get the program if your name is on it. Apparently, I was scheduled to play the piano for choir. Well, no one had given me music, and no one knew who the chorister was. It was all really weird. So we got to choir on Sunday, and no one showed up except us missionaries. So...Sister Hallman (one of the other Sisters, who just left today) and I took charge. We just sang out of the hymnbook. I played, she led, and it was pretty decent for doing it on a whim. Irmão Lopez was very disappointed when we told him about it on Monday. Irmão Lopez is a dude here, I don't actually know what his job is, but he's always around and usually has all the answers. He's also in charge of the music for choir and such. So my companions have gotten pretty tight with him, because we always play and/or sing in choir, and we always see him. And we do stuff for him...like sort out all the choir music the MTC has. That was a fun day. So he was disappointed.
But the cool thing about Sunday fireside...the speaker was Presidente Moreira, my mission president! Now, he's from Portugal, so I knew he would have a different accent. His wife spoke first, and she was really hard to understand. Presidente Moreira, however, wasn't too hard. But i think he was trying to speak like halfway between Portugal and Brazilian Portuguese. Anyway, I met him afterwards, and I think I will like him a lot...he loves to joke around and make people laugh, and he's just a happy person! I'm stoked. I leave the CTM two weeks from today, and time is really flying by. I can hardly believe how long I've been here already, though in the grand scheme of things, it hasn't been that long. But the mission countdown began 7 weeks ago! Isn't that crazy?!
Last couple things. Today we went to the Temple, as we've been blessed to do every week we've been here. Sister Nielson mentioned to me that she wanted to see the Sealing Room. So after the session, we asked someone if we could, and she took us on a short tour of the Temple, starting in the Baptistry. In there, they have two HUGE mosaics, on either side of the font. It is beautiful! And the sealing room we went into was enormous. Dwarfed the one we were sealed in. And also very beautiful. I loved having the chance to see it, and think about our family. I sure love you guys! The Temple was really good today, for me. I've been starting to study about ancient temples, like Solomon's and those ones, and it is interesting. I have learned a lot already, and I feel like I haven't even read a ton about it yet! Something I've learned already while being out here is that you don't need all those kinds of books that are supposed to help you understand the gospel. It is all in the scriptures. You just have to be patient while you look for it, because you won't get all your answers right away.
Finally, my scripture for the day. Doctrine & Covenants 121:7-9. I've been thinking a lot about Joseph Smith the past couple days, because we watched the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration movie on Sunday. I love that movie. And I cannot wait to meet Joseph Smith in the next life. He is such a great example of diligence (going back to the scripture now), and even in the hardest part of his life, he stayed strong in the gospel and did all that Heavenly Father asked of him. We can learn from his example, and remain diligent in living the gospel, even when we feel like it isn't doing us any good. That is when we need to keep going more than anything.
I love you all, and I pray for you every day. I hope all is well up in NH. Have a great week!
Love,
Karen
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 got Elder Morgan last week...he came down from Provo. I've been hearing about him since my district got here, because he was their district leader up there. So anyway, he's finally here, and they put him in our district, which is awesome. Some of the Elders in my district have taken up writing poetry. They are really good! I have a small notebook with their poems in it, because I enjoy them so much! I also wrote a poem. Maybe I will send it to you some day. Anyway, so that's cool. Also, we have a very loving district. In the real world it probably seems gay when guys hug each other or stand together with their arms around each other...but in my district it's the norm. It's actually hilarious, especially because they are teenage guys! I love it though. I love my district! Oh yeah, and because Elder Morgan came, we got a new classroom, because ours was small even for 12 people. Hooray! Oh and on Sunday, our district did the musical number in church. It sounded pretty good. I played the piano, of course. :)
Teaching stuff...last weekend, we had a TRC. With real Brazilians. We taught them a 15-minute lesson, got a review about it from a teacher, and retaught for 10 minutes. We get to go proselyting again this Friday though!
So speaking of playing the piano and choir and all that, here's a good one. Saturday, someone handed me the program for the Sunday fireside. You only get the program if your name is on it. Apparently, I was scheduled to play the piano for choir. Well, no one had given me music, and no one knew who the chorister was. It was all really weird. So we got to choir on Sunday, and no one showed up except us missionaries. So...Sister Hallman (one of the other Sisters, who just left today) and I took charge. We just sang out of the hymnbook. I played, she led, and it was pretty decent for doing it on a whim. Irmão Lopez was very disappointed when we told him about it on Monday. Irmão Lopez is a dude here, I don't actually know what his job is, but he's always around and usually has all the answers. He's also in charge of the music for choir and such. So my companions have gotten pretty tight with him, because we always play and/or sing in choir, and we always see him. And we do stuff for him...like sort out all the choir music the MTC has. That was a fun day. So he was disappointed.
But the cool thing about Sunday fireside...the speaker was Presidente Moreira, my mission president! Now, he's from Portugal, so I knew he would have a different accent. His wife spoke first, and she was really hard to understand. Presidente Moreira, however, wasn't too hard. But i think he was trying to speak like halfway between Portugal and Brazilian Portuguese. Anyway, I met him afterwards, and I think I will like him a lot...he loves to joke around and make people laugh, and he's just a happy person! I'm stoked. I leave the CTM two weeks from today, and time is really flying by. I can hardly believe how long I've been here already, though in the grand scheme of things, it hasn't been that long. But the mission countdown began 7 weeks ago! Isn't that crazy?!
Last couple things. Today we went to the Temple, as we've been blessed to do every week we've been here. Sister Nielson mentioned to me that she wanted to see the Sealing Room. So after the session, we asked someone if we could, and she took us on a short tour of the Temple, starting in the Baptistry. In there, they have two HUGE mosaics, on either side of the font. It is beautiful! And the sealing room we went into was enormous. Dwarfed the one we were sealed in. And also very beautiful. I loved having the chance to see it, and think about our family. I sure love you guys! The Temple was really good today, for me. I've been starting to study about ancient temples, like Solomon's and those ones, and it is interesting. I have learned a lot already, and I feel like I haven't even read a ton about it yet! Something I've learned already while being out here is that you don't need all those kinds of books that are supposed to help you understand the gospel. It is all in the scriptures. You just have to be patient while you look for it, because you won't get all your answers right away.
Finally, my scripture for the day. Doctrine & Covenants 121:7-9. I've been thinking a lot about Joseph Smith the past couple days, because we watched the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration movie on Sunday. I love that movie. And I cannot wait to meet Joseph Smith in the next life. He is such a great example of diligence (going back to the scripture now), and even in the hardest part of his life, he stayed strong in the gospel and did all that Heavenly Father asked of him. We can learn from his example, and remain diligent in living the gospel, even when we feel like it isn't doing us any good. That is when we need to keep going more than anything.
I love you all, and I pray for you every day. I hope all is well up in NH. Have a great week!
Love,
Karen
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