Sao Paulo, Brazil- Another Week in the CTM

I am going to try and load as much as I can in this email. Little time. 

PLEASE TELL DAD HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM ME AND THAT I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. 

Things these past week have been amazing!! I am praying in Portuguese and teaching 30 minutes lessons and bearing my testimony all in Portuguese. It has been an incredible experience. I have been studying a lot however. Flash card practice constant. Memorizing phrases and scriptures all day. Days feel like weeks and weeks feel like days. Next Tuesday, will be my half way point. That is the day that new missionaries come every week, which makes it a very exciting day.

Last P-day, we got to go out and walk around the CTM. We bought candy and Brazilian food. It is a very different world done here. I would not say that everyone loves the missionaries but people are friendly. It is definetly a warm feeling however. It is nice to get out. It can feel cramp in here sometimes. 

Today, we went to the Sao Paulo temple. Very pretty despsite the scaffolding they had around the Angel Moroni. The session was in Portuguese!!! I didn't have any difficulties understanding, however, because they gave us headphones to translate. I could understand most of it in Portuguese without. 

I had an amazing experience with a practice investigator this week. We were teaching and the investigator brought up questions about the Book of Mormon. My compainion and I were not expecting it.  We had not practice talking about it and honestly did not know what to say, but we were able to answer his question and bear testimony and the spirit was so strong! We were really blessed for all the work we have been doing. 

I hope you have been able to see the pictures of my district I sent. They are awesome, most of the are going to Curitiba and are from Utah. We really get a long well. I still have the reputation of being the strict and tense one in the group but I have been able to get more friendly with them. It is wierd. I had not really expected to be making friends on my mission, but I am figuring it out. 

We had an area authority come this week. His name was Elder Basset. Very cool for the CTM. Before the devotrional started he shook hands with every single missionary and there are a couple hundred of us. It was a cool experience and he gave a very good devotional. 

We also did exchanges this week. I got paired with an elder who is on his last week of the CTM. He was a really nice guy. We didn't however get to teach any lessons because of some Elders being late but we hopefully get to teach at our next exchange. 

Saturday, we go out on the street to talk to real people. I will get to do this Staurday and on my fifth week. It is a very nerve wracking idea that soon we will have to actually talk to real Portuguese people with our three weeks of Portuguese. 

Everything is going really well here. Miss you guys a lot and I hope the first week of school went well for everyone. 

Love,

Elder Pinkney