Monday, January 2, 2012

Feliz Ano Novo (Happy New Year!)

Because our teacher was out of town, we've been having substitutes. We had six different teachers over four days! It made it a little difficult. But one of the teachers spoke Portugal Portuguese to us (our normal teacher served in Brazil) and it was practically a different language. We couldn't really understand anything he said. So we've been practicing it with the proper pronunciation, and hopefully we'll pick it up in Portugal as well. One of the substitutes also told me and my companion that we needed to stop using our little red handbooks, that have lesson outlines and sentances and things written in both English and Portuguese. So we were terrified, because that's how we get through the lessons! But we decided it would be good to try. And the first lesson was a complete disaster, we didn't know what our investigator was asking about, let alone how to answer him. But the second lesson went SO WELL, the Spirit was so strong and the investigator went from thinking the Book of Mormon was evil (because of our bad lesson the day before) to agreeing to get baptized (but not really, because he's just a pretend investigator). For the first time I felt like I was really teaching and really saying what I was feeling and not just trying to say Portuguese words. But it was really cool, I feel like our Portuguese has gotten so much better just in the past few days. I carry a little notebook with a few Portuguese words that sometimes I forget, but that's it. And of course our Portuguese scriptures. It is good because before, sometimes we didn't really know what we were saying. Now we are saying much simpler sentences, but it is okay.

I hope all of you had a good New Year! We celebrated a little at around 9:30/10:00, Sister Palmer's friend had sent some sparkling juice and noise makers. It was pretty fun. It's strange thinking that it is already 2012.

I love you all! Thank you so much for all of your letters, I really appreciate them! Have a great week,

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