The CTM has been great so far. It feels like I have been here for way more than a week and a half, I already don´t really remember what life was like before this. Portuguese is coming along great! Knowing spanish really helps in a lot of ways but it does hinder in some too. But I can actually hold conversations with the Brazileiros here that don´t speak any English. But they laugh a lot at the things I say. My companion´s parents are Mexican so she speaks fluent spanish and her Portuguese is already so good that everyone asks her if she is Brazilian. My goal is to one day have that happen to me too. I will have to get some sun first.
We have Brazilian roommates that are the best and so nice. They talk really fast so I have a hard time understanding them but they help me learn a lot and I can measure my progress by how well I understand them. I like my district a lot and they sometimes call me Sister Homie because Romney in Portuguese is pronounced ``Homay´´. Last week there was a HUGE torrential downpour with thunder louder than I have ever heard and the streets don´t have drainage so there was at least a foot of water rushing down the street. And it made the power go out and ever since then the power goes out like 5 times a day. It´s scary when it´s dark and you can´t see anything and you just hear voices like ``....Companiero...?´´ But then it only lasts like a minute because the generator goes on so it´s all good. Oh and Carnival is going on here right now so sometimes we hear music in the streets and driving to the CTM we saw a bunch of giant floats.
Today is P-day (obviously) and it feels like Christmas!! We got up at 5:40 this morning to go to the Sao Paulo Temple and it was so beautiful. The temple is just surrounded by palm trees, cool plants, and green grass and inside is gorgeous. The session was in english but I think in 2 weeks we have to do Portuguese. Then we took pictures at the temple, but we can´t send photos from the CTM unfortunately. But, my companion can send photos to an email straight from her camera if she has wifi and there is wifi at the temple so maybe next P-day she could send some. After this we get to go explore the area and I am excited. There is a cookie shop across the street that everyone talks about and they do BOGO for new missionaries. And the owner I think is LDS and does some kind of business for sending and receiving letters and photos from families and printing and delivering them to the missionaries, but I do not really know how it works yet. Also, I don´t know my CTM mailbox right now but I can check for next week. But I didn´t know anything about the CTM president wanting us to send and get letters but I am really just fine with emails.
Every day this past week we taught an impostigator named Maria and it was good. We spend out days studying and planning lessons to teach her and its helping me learn a lot about teaching investigators. Now Maria is one of our instructors and tomorrow we get 2 new impostigators. By the end we will have 4+ to teach every day. I love my companion, Sister Gonzalez, we get along great. I feel like we help motivate each other to learn the language faster and strengthen our testimonies. I love the CTM because the spirit is so strong here. When we first got here someone said, the temple is the house of the Lord, but the CTM is the house of the Holy Ghost and it is true. On fast Sunday I bore my testimony in Portuguese! By having a limited vocabulary, I have learned how important and powerful just a short, simple testimony of the gospel is. One of my instructors shared a story of how someone who struggled with Portuguese shared only one sentence by the spirit and it changed someone´s whole life.
Oh and I almost forgot, some older man who works here as like a medical director or something is related to us! His name is Elder Romney Burke and he explained how we must be related but I didn´t know any of the relatives he mentioned and it was kind of confusing.... but cool I guess! Oh and the food! Most of the time I have no idea what I am eating and the dessert is never solid, usually some kind of liquidy thing. The flavors here are different but it mostly tastes good! Ok I am out of time. Hope you all have a good week
Tchau!
Love,
Sarah
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