Week 3: Conferência Geral
Hello family and friends,
First off, I would like to apologise for not giving a title for the last email.
I don´t remember everything that happened this week. It was mostly more classes. One important thing we started this week was TRC. (That´s an abbreviation for something, but I don´t know what it is.) TRC is practice for actual events in the mission field: teaching people who are interested in learning about the church. We get to teach two people, one this week and next week, and the other for the last two weeks. (These are instructors acting like interested people, but they are pretty good actors.) My person for this week and next week is extremely excited about literally everything, particularly baptism. Teaching is sometimes difficult, but in our two visits on Tuesday and Thursday we managed to get through most of the points of The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the first lesson in Pregar Meu Evangelho (Preach My Gospel in English), which is our manual for everything about being a missionary, including lessons to teach and things to learn to prepare to teach effectively.
Another very important event this week was General Conference. This is a global event in which the prophet, apostles, and other leaders of the church teach members and friends of the church, mostly by way of live streaming on the internet. Because more than half of the missionaries here are from the United States and don´t quite understand Portuguese yet, we got to listen in English, with the native Brazilians listening to the Portuguese translation on headphones.
During General Conference, I was guided by the Spirit to read the entire Book of Mormon before I leave the MTC for the mission field. This requires me to read 620 pages in 23 days, or about 30 pages a day, in a language I am still learning. Three days in, I am less than a day behind. I have already read all of 1 Nephi, and the first two chapters of 2 Nephi. Also, for purposes of tracking my progress, I mapped out exactly where each book in the Book of Mormon starts and ends. Most of you knew that the book of Alma is the biggest book in the Book of Mormon, but did you know that it is almost exactly the middle third? If I follow the schedule, I will get to it about the eighth day, read it for six days, and finish by the start of the third week.
I can speak Portuguese pretty well now. My teachers (are supposed to) only speak Portuguese now, and while the rest of my district is still trying to figure out what they said, I can sometimes already have an answer, in Portuguese. TRC is entirely Portuguese for fifteen minutes. This is actually the most English I´ve said or written in several days. I even write in my journal in Portuguese. However, I got new roommates this week, and when they speak Portuguese, even slowly directly to me, I can´t always tell what they´re trying to say. They want to help me, though, which is very nice. (Also, one of them wants to marry my sister. He found out today that I have a sister and that she is serving in the São Paulo Sul mission and knows nothing else about her.)
Thank you,
Elder Hiatt
P.S. Last week I erroneously said Sister May was from Wheat Ridge. It is actually Wheatland. Sorry.
First off, I would like to apologise for not giving a title for the last email.
I don´t remember everything that happened this week. It was mostly more classes. One important thing we started this week was TRC. (That´s an abbreviation for something, but I don´t know what it is.) TRC is practice for actual events in the mission field: teaching people who are interested in learning about the church. We get to teach two people, one this week and next week, and the other for the last two weeks. (These are instructors acting like interested people, but they are pretty good actors.) My person for this week and next week is extremely excited about literally everything, particularly baptism. Teaching is sometimes difficult, but in our two visits on Tuesday and Thursday we managed to get through most of the points of The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the first lesson in Pregar Meu Evangelho (Preach My Gospel in English), which is our manual for everything about being a missionary, including lessons to teach and things to learn to prepare to teach effectively.
Another very important event this week was General Conference. This is a global event in which the prophet, apostles, and other leaders of the church teach members and friends of the church, mostly by way of live streaming on the internet. Because more than half of the missionaries here are from the United States and don´t quite understand Portuguese yet, we got to listen in English, with the native Brazilians listening to the Portuguese translation on headphones.
During General Conference, I was guided by the Spirit to read the entire Book of Mormon before I leave the MTC for the mission field. This requires me to read 620 pages in 23 days, or about 30 pages a day, in a language I am still learning. Three days in, I am less than a day behind. I have already read all of 1 Nephi, and the first two chapters of 2 Nephi. Also, for purposes of tracking my progress, I mapped out exactly where each book in the Book of Mormon starts and ends. Most of you knew that the book of Alma is the biggest book in the Book of Mormon, but did you know that it is almost exactly the middle third? If I follow the schedule, I will get to it about the eighth day, read it for six days, and finish by the start of the third week.
I can speak Portuguese pretty well now. My teachers (are supposed to) only speak Portuguese now, and while the rest of my district is still trying to figure out what they said, I can sometimes already have an answer, in Portuguese. TRC is entirely Portuguese for fifteen minutes. This is actually the most English I´ve said or written in several days. I even write in my journal in Portuguese. However, I got new roommates this week, and when they speak Portuguese, even slowly directly to me, I can´t always tell what they´re trying to say. They want to help me, though, which is very nice. (Also, one of them wants to marry my sister. He found out today that I have a sister and that she is serving in the São Paulo Sul mission and knows nothing else about her.)
Thank you,
Elder Hiatt
P.S. Last week I erroneously said Sister May was from Wheat Ridge. It is actually Wheatland. Sorry.
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