Season 1 Episode 1

 Olá. Tudo bem?

This week I started my first week of virtual MTC! MTC stands for Missionary Training Center. The church has 10 MTCs in Utah, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, England, Ghana, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, and South Africa. I’ll do one more week virtual, then I leave for Brazil MTC for 4 more weeks of training. After that, I’ll leave for São Paulo Oeste, my assigned area where I’ll be serving for two years. São Paulo is basically the New York of Brazil only much bigger. During this time, my purpose as a missionary will be to help people build their faith in and relationship with Jesus Christ. Everything I do as a missionary must be focused on that purpose. As such, I won’t be able to date, watch movies, or do anything that doesn’t help me fulfill my purpose. If you want to truly understand a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I recommend you watch The Best Two Years. It’s available for free on YouTube and is a pretty dang accurate depiction of a mission. It’s also super funny. 

The way the MTC works is you have a pair(sometimes it’s a trio) of missionaries of the same gender called a Companionship. You study with your companion, you plan with your companion, you help your companion learn the language and you teach with your companion. I’ll have a companion throughout my mission. 

There’s also a District which is a group of Companionships. I do all my classes in the MTC with my District. My district has eight missionaries from the US and we’re all gonna serve in Brazil. There’s also a Zone which is a group of Districts. I attend devotionals and basic training with my Zone. My Zone is made up of my District, a Portuguese speaking District, and a Spanish speaking district. It has missionaries from all across South America and we’re all training to be Portuguese speaking missionaries. In our Zone meetings there’s a bunch of translators translating Portuguese to English, English to Portuguese, Portuguese to Spanish, Spanish to Portuguese, English to Spanish, and Spanish to English. The meetings are super fast paced and fun! 

My Companions are Elder Salden and Elder Schreiner. (All male missionaries are called Elders and all female missionaries are called Sisters). Elder Salden just finished college and is from California. His original assignment is São Paulo Oeste with me! Elder Schreiner is from Florida and has gone to one year of college at BYU. He plays tennis for BYU and is almost a foot taller than me! I try hard not to flex my own tennis accomplishments( I didn’t win a single match my senior year ). Elder Schreiner is assigned to serve in Florianópolis. 

My teachers are Irmão Zarza, Irmã Bueno, and Irmã Azlin. (Irmão means brother and Irmã means sister). Irmão Zarza is from São Paulo and he went to South Africa on his mission. Irmã Azlin is from Florianópolis and went to Venezuela on her mission. Irmã Bueno is also from São Paulo and she went to Argentina and Belem on her mission! That’s crazy because my sister went to Argentina on her mission and my brother is serving in Belem right now. I asked her if she knows Jeaux and she totally does! Such a small world! 

On Friday, we taught our first lesson in Portuguese to a Brazilian. The only critique our teacher had was we didn’t speak Portuguese well enough. We were all like well yeah we’ve been learning for one week! 

On Saturday, I learned the sad news that one of my companions, Elder Salden, is being permanently reassigned to Orlando, Florida because of problems with his visa. I know I’ve only known him for one week and I’ve never met him in person but I almost cried saying goodbye to him and I haven’t cried since I came out of the womb pretty much so it shows how awesome he was. He was super funny and broke the ice quick when we all first met each other. We also said we were gonna serve together in São Paulo Oeste and now we can’t! He’ll start the MTC over on Monday at Provo MTC. He’ll still be Portuguese speaking and his sister teaches Portuguese at Provo MTC so that’s pretty awesome! 

One thing I really loved that happened this week is in  our Zone meeting on Tuesday, they were teaching us all how to plan and told us when we plan our scripture study to not only plan to study what you’ll be teaching but also to pray to know what to study. They promised us the Lord would tell us what to study. This came true EVERY DAY. What I felt inspired to study in my personal study, came up in class EVERY DAY. Pretty crazy and it grew my faith that the Lord will be with me and help me on my mission. It reminds me of the promise the Lord makes to his servants in Doctrine and Covenants 84 verse 88. “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.“ 

I don’t have a lot of pictures this first week because I’ve just been sitting in front of the computer in class all week but the cool pictures will come eventually. 

1. My District 

2. My MTC poster 

3. Elder Salden made this meme and I guess you have to be in our language classes to fully understand how accurate this is . Elder Schreiner is fluent in French and he’s picking up Portuguese super fast.

Ate logo crocodilo! :)

The Elder Sant