Reassignment!

Hello everyone, took me a while to get to it, but here’s my second email "back" haha. Today is Saturday June, 27, and it's been a busy week. Two weeks actually, since I wrote my last email. First and foremost, my reassignment came! I’m headed to Boston Massachusetts where I’ll have the opportunity to continue speaking Portuguese; Boston has a large group of Brazilian immigrants. My mission president is President Mavromatis from Recife Brazil. I’m so excited to have a Brazilian mission president even before I’m in Brazil, haha. I leave July 14th; just a couple weeks away.

I’ve been spending most of my time in Bountiful with the occasional run up to Heber City with my family; that’s actually where I am right now. It’s super pretty up here, and it’s a great environment for the MTC online. We’ve been watching the safety videos this weekend, and I’m working on completing some other online courses for my mission.

Elder Bailey and I have had a lot of fun together. Last p-day (each week there is a preparation day built into our schedule) we officially met up for a hike along with Elder Hemming, another elder in my district who was already friends with Elder Bailey. We hiked about 15 miles halfway uphill halfway down and by the time we finished my hamstrings were killing me, haha. Speaking of hamstrings, I was doing some Romanian deadlifts today to stretch and heard a very large pop. Not like anything I’ve ever felt before while working out. I’m not sure if it’s a minor tear or just a strain but it’s my fault for stretching cold, haha. We’ve been watching all the videos about being careful on your p-day, so it doesn’t keep you from doing missionary work. I thought I was being careful. At least with online MTC, I can give it plenty of rest. If stretching is the thing that ends my mission, I’m gonna be mad ;). Just kidding haha. I’m fine; I just like the attention. 

So far in the MTC we’ve been continuing on strong at a great pace. I’m so impressed with the quantity the other missionaries are already speaking. Elder Bailey is arguably at the point I was at the end of my second year in Brazil, haha. We had a laugh yesterday about the fact that he can conjugate verbs for the future and past tense but isn’t quite sure what the word for “woman” is. I’ve been finding myself taking over the lessons lately, and so I’m trying to teach myself right now to be patient and give other people a chance to speak. We have a lesson in TRC (teaching resource center) with a guy named Nathan. This time, Elder Bailey is gonna lead the lesson and most of the interactions. Isn’t that so cool? Three weeks in the MTC, and he’s already having a 30 minute conversation with someone fluent in the language! 

Just in case I haven’t explained it, the TRC is a program where missionaries in the MTC make teaching appointments with people who are roleplaying as someone interested in learning more. I think it is not only realistic but also extremely effective. In our last lesson, we invited Nathan to be baptized, and he said he would think about it. So, we invited him to pray and ask God. That was something that was hard for me, because I always thought of baptism as something you ask about after you’ve taught the lessons, but now I’m learning that it is a topic discussed early on, and the time you spend in the lessons is focusing on preparing people for that goal. That will take some getting used to. The other thing I think will be hard for me is talking about the law of the tithe, because though I know it’s important; I don’t know how I’m going to express that to people who may or may not be impoverished and in need of every dollar of their wage. But I do have a testimony that as we make sacrifices for God in our lives, He will bless us in ways we cannot even understand. I have seen that firsthand as I’ve asked God to help me be willing to give up the things in my life that are not sustainable on a mission.