Bonding with the District in the MTC, 8/18/2011

Hey Mom,

                I got your letters through dear elder and they were great.  Tell dad that he is probably right about needing to spend more time with Dan.  I don’t think he will ever regret it. :)

                I have been a bit sick the last few days.  Just some sort of cold, it’s not too bad though I went to the doctor and got some medicine for it and it helped a lot. 

                We worked with a mock investigator today (this was our fifth visit and it went well (all in Portuguese).  We talked about the importance of being baptized and following the example of Christ.  Our investigator had a question about infant baptism and I tried to find a scripture on it but I only had my Portuguese triple with me so I had her read Moroni 7: 6-10 instead of the infant baptism scripture in Moroni 8:13-14.  Bummer, but it still seemed to get the point across.  We challenged her to be baptized and she said yes!!!  It’s role playing so who knows whether that would have worked in real life, but we still felt good about it!

                The Portuguese is going pretty well.  I am getting the hang of it.  We are the first missionaries to use the new language teaching program.  It is supposed to help us learn way faster than the old way.  Some of our books still have stickers on them that say “Draft.”  We also spend about an hour a day on a computer program called TALL.  It is a program similar to Rosetta Stone that lets you record yourself and listen to it to compare to the native speakers pronunciation.  It is working pretty well.

                I’m starting to like my district more and more.  We play soccer together, and have really great conversations.  We all like a lot of the same things too, like music, movies, being outdoors and most have great senses of humor.  Elder Klem has a ukulele and in the evenings during our personal time we like to hang out in their room and play music, talk, and unwind. 

                Care package: 

·         I don’t want those shoes.  I don’t think I will be able to get them to Brazil.

·         C, G, D Harmonica for use during personal time only (district bonding). 

·         Pump for a soccer ball. 

·         Some more pictures of the family and any others I would put on the bulletin board at my desk (friends, mountains). 

·         Some more stamps and envelopes.

·         Whatever goodies you can think of.

·         Shaving cream, the can I left should be fine. 

Thanks.  I’ll write again soon!

Love, Ben