11/1/2010

I´ve finally got a few photos to send you. we took these last night.

Halloween was pretty fun. We all dressed up like missionaries and went to church. We have 3 investigators ready for baptism, but none of them came today. With any luck we´ll baptize Nildinho, Rafael, and Maria José this next week. I hope so anyway. We´ve been trying with Nildinho for more than a month now. He just needs to show up for his own baptism, but he keeps blowing us off. I need to find out what his problem is. I feel like the missionaries in my area aren´t very good at finding people's problems and solving them. Instead, if an investigator has a problem they get dropped because we have a lot of other people here who will hear our message. Right now our messages are really rehearsed. Partially because of the language barrier, but even the Brazilians just spew out rehearsed messages. That´s not preaching my gospel at all, and I´ll work on changing that. Lessons are supposed to be personal to the investigator, unique to their situation. I was talking to Elder Jay about this. Elder Jay spent 2 months in Texas waiting for a visa, so he knows a lot more about what teaching by the spirit means. He doesn´t know the language yet though, so when I had to go on a split with him it was kinda tough. All of the leaders had training, so I was left with Elder Jay who only has 3 weeks in Brazil. It was fun though. I learned a lot from him. We taught by the spirit, even though we weren´t great at the language.

Yesterday was the end of presidential elections here. There were huge parties in the streets, so we came home 30 minutes early. The elections here are nuts.

Lost in translation: here are just a few things that are a little weird about the language:

when they say push (puxe), they really mean pull
assistir=attend
attender=assist...more or less confusing.

I´d like to thank the family for the things they sent this week. I liked the pictures from the baptism, and of Halloween. Dad´s grouch costume was great :) I can´t believe a term of school is already over.... I haven´t been on a mission that long yet. I still feel like I´m the new guy here, having problems with the language and all. I guess I have been here a while though. Estou pensando en Portugues já, and I´m starting to dream in Portuguese a little bit, but I can´t tell when I am because Portuguese doesn´t feel like a foreign language anymore. It just feels like an accent. It´s weird to describe. I never thought learning a language would feel like this. Sometimes it´s a little strange after a day of only Portuguese to speak a little English, because a lot of little filler words from Portuguese slip into the English, like ainda (still/yet), and já (already), and sempre(always), and assim (likewise? it doesn´t translate directly all the time). Yeah, so just so you know the language is coming along. Most of the people I talk to say they weren´t as far along as me after one transfer, but still it´s tough and frustrating. I just want to be fluent already.

Elder Cook is a goob. I like him a lot as a companion and a friend. He´s from Idaho, but he only speaks Portuguese :) because of this I've been learning a lot faster, and I´m thankful. He´s a drummer like me, and he was on a pro jump rope team. He´s the blondie in the pics. We talk a lot in the streets, and work really hard. I wish my trainer would have been more like Elder Cook, but things happen for a reason. I feel like here every problem is literally a test from our heavenly father. When I´m done with one problem I move on to another, and from every problem I lean something new, and adjust my personality a little bit to be more like Christ. I love being able to take all my worldly problems and see the spiritual side of them.

Sorry if I´m starting to ramble a little bit. I feel like I had a little extra time today to write. Maybe this computer wasn´t as slow as my others. I love you guys, and I hope if you have any questions for me that you will ask. I´ve almost hit the 4 month mark of my mission! That means I´m 1/6 of the way done. I don´t know how it is at home, but for me things are going by really fast. I love you all!

Love, Elder Forsyth