Weekly Email

My district in front of the Provo Temple

Dear fam bam

My Zone

Soo first week in the MTC is pretty sweet. I love the language and my district is SOO SICK. So its me and Elder B and in our room is Elder L and Elder T who are both phenomenal guys. Then in our district we have us and a three-some of Elder H, Elder W (DL) and Elder B. They are by far the coolest people here and I love every hour I spend with them which is pretty much all day from 7am-9:30pm. I got a magnetic name tag!! haha so thats cool. I'm gonna buy some more and send one to you guys later. so expect that. soo I've already taught 3 lessons in Portuguese which is sick and they all went fairly well expect for the understanding part ahha but the spirit was there and we did read scriptures in portuguese so that's awesome. Our (fake) investigator Zito is so awesome and even though he's fake I still love him. Elder T and Elder L get the hardest questions from him, and NO ONE KNOWS WHY. the other day Zito asked them, Como de Deus? which means, how is god? hahaha and then the other day he asked, where's hell? Our hardest question was, what is the tongues of angels which we told him we didn't know how to say it in Portuguese so well tell him next time haha. 

So funny story, the other day we were teaching Zito about A Expiacau (sorry I can't do the little squiggles on the words. look up atonement) or the atonement. so we got a Tide to go pen, a towel, and a plum. I said the towel represents Zito, at which point he said he was a cafe color not white. So I said, but for this object lesson you are white. He was satisfied. Then I said the plum represents sins. So I put a nickle size stain on it, at which point Zito said Mais. which means more. I told him that's enough and he said Mais, I have a lot of sins. At which point I pretended not to understand, call it, lost in translation. haha So then I pulled out the tide to go pen (which I wrapped in paper and wrote Expiacau on) and said this represents the atonement and I wrote Da fe on my hand representing through faith, and thats when it kind of all went down hill....  I was trying to remove the stain, which was not coming out, so being quick on my feet and witty I asked my comp to hold my notebook for me so I could have two hands. My comp is literally about to lose his resolve. I tell him to hold it rightttt there, which was right in the way of Zitos view. Zito was smiling and trying to see around it and by then my comp had completely lost it. I quickly used my sly hands and flip the towel around and say, all clean! Zito wasn't buying it. He said "nao es limpo," he said laughing, "the atonement didn't work." I said of course it did! my comp is literally crying by now and Zito understood. He said he understood the principle i was trying to show. So all in all plum does not come out of cheap towels and the atonement still works even if our object lesson did not. 

For those of you who don't know Zito actually is a Returned Missionary from Brazil and he is playing the part of an investigator that he had in Brazil. Who the real Zito is or if he got baptized, we'll never know. 

Well the work is great I love my district, we all work really hard and I can't wait to understand more of the language and start teaching the people of Brazil. 

Love you guys! miss you 

the harder working ;)

Elder Hamm