Week #1

Hello everyone!

The MTC is amazing! I love it here. I only have 45 minutes to email each Wednesday here, so I'll try to fill this post with as much information as I can while also responding to all the emails.

The flight down here went well! I sat next to a lady from Recife, Brazil and was able to speak a little bit of Portguese which was fun. It was a 10 hour flight, and I slept for 5 or 6. There were six other elders and two sisters on the plane. When arrived we went through customs and piled into a big van. The MTC was about 40 minutes away. The roads here are crazy! Motorcycles fly down the dotted white lines to escape traffic. I'm surprised I haven't seen a wreck yet. Once we got to the MTC (or CTM, in Portuguese), we unloaded our stuff and got our nametags, companionships, and districts.

The schedule here is pretty similar everyday and goes something like this: wake up at 6:30, personal study, breakfast (desjujem), language study, exercise time, study, lunch (almoço), 3 hours with our instructor, Irmã Silva, study, dinner (jantar), teaching practice with a role-playing investigator, more study and practice time, planning, snack, bed. The first few days weren't as fun because we sat in the classroom for about 10+ hours a day, but since exercise time started on Monday, it's been great, not that it was even that bad before. Sundays here are great. We have a branch sacrament meeting with all 40ish Americans here, then other meeting afterwards with breaks in between. President Swensen taught a great doctrine class this Sunday about the Book of Mormon, and we had a devotional that night with the director of all international MTCs. Devotionals are each Sunday and Tuesday night.

The food here is pretty awesome! Brazilians really do eat a ton of meat. There's two big portions for both lunch and dinner. There's rice and beans available for almost every lunch and dinner, and they're great! They have a ton of really good fruit juices here, most of which aren't in America. The desserts here are kind of weird, but some of them are good. I've been eating a lot, so hopefully I've been gaining some weight haha.

Our district is cool. All of us are from America except one sister from Canada, and we've been adjusting pretty well. I was called to be district leader the night we got here, and I've been trying to do my best to lead in meetings, study time, and setting goals. My companion is Elder Hull from Texas. He's a great companion and is a lot like me.

Our second night we taught a lesson to our pretend investigator in Portuguese. We had to write almost everything down because we hardly knew how to say anything, but for a first lesson in a foreign language it went pretty well. Elder Hull and I have taught 3 lessons since then, and they're getting better.

Learning Portuguese is going well. I can communicate pretty decently with a lot of the Brazilians here now, but most the time whatever they're saying flies right over me haha. So far I can say a basic prayer, introduce myself to some extent, and talk about gospel topics. Also, I've memorized the Missionary Purpose in Portuguese. I feel like I'm progressing everyday, and I know I'll keep getting better! We went to the temple today, the Campinas one, it was great!

 I hope everyone's doing well in the US. It is crazy being thousands of miles away, being a minority, and not understanding a lot of things people are saying, but I love it!

Have a great week!

Elder Anderson

(Scott is still not able to send pictures...until he leaves the missionary training center I guess, but I've pasted above a picture of the beautiful Temple in Campinas, Brazil, that he was able to attend this morning. Also, the above picture is he and his companion, Elder Hull from Texas. There is a FB page, MissionTies.com, which is a little company at a cookie shop across from the MTC. They took this picture and posted it today! So grateful!)