Week 2 at Brazil CTM

The food is much better, but every breakfast we have cream-of-mystery. It's really good but only God and the people who made it know what's in it! 

I'm the District leader at the moment, and I cannot tell you how stressful that is! I'm trying to learn just as much as I can and still keep order in the room when we're on personal study time. Other than that, I'm doing really well at learning the language, but I'm really struggling with it because of the odd rules that don't exist in English. For example, em+ o osso= no osso. AHHH! where did the "n" come from?  (Please send a prayer for me learning the language!)

My experience here is 6:30 get up, get ready, 8:00 personal study in the sala de aula (class room) 9:45 dejejum (breakfast of pinine, cream of mystery and hot chocolet!) and after that study and teach an "investigator" (our teacher for that hour) study with companion, Lunch, repeat previous 2 steps, Dinner, actividade fisica (I don't need to explain that I hope), shower, planning for the next day, lanche (snack which as a district we decided not to bless it because, just like manna, it's a miracle!) and then we get ready for bed and must be quiet and luz off at 2230 (Everything here is military time). 

The temperature never falls below 65 F or rather the Celsius I don't know ... sorry. For fun, how many stories are there when the top floor says 6 in Brazil? I'll answer at the end.

I actually go to two [temples], and we don't know which one we go to until we get on the bus. [The other one outside of Sao Paulo is] Campinas [link to temple info], which is a hour and a half- two hour drive and is absolutely beautiful!! I wish I could send pictures of the interior! and Sao Paulo, which I love just as much! If we ever take a vacation here, we have to go to both! And I'm trying to do the sessions in Portuguese (speaking, not listening yet!) I had a real culture shock when I got in the bus and saw trash on the ground everywhere, people with make-shift-beds on the sidewalk, and vendors sitting with blankets on the grass. The poverty here is unreal. Almost everything is a first-world aplience with third-world economy.

I'm happy, I'm healthy, having fun, and [I'm getting] a really big support from D&C 31 at the moment. Love you all!

The answer is 7 floors.

NOTE: For anyone wanting to send a letter to Joel, he leaves the CTM on December 2, so it's too late to send a letter to him at the "Brazil MTC" address at this point, since it takes two weeks to arrive. You can use the mission home address now.