Elder Karthigeyan usually gives me a funny random word to start my email, but he left last night, so I guess I gotta pick one today: "twinkletoes"
So, now has passed my last week of training here at the MTC. It has been such an amazing experience. I have learned and grown so much in so many ways. I leave the MTC in about 16 hours (at 4am with about 8 of us total that will be travelling to our mission, all of us Lisbon-bound. It will be fun, but I'm sure just like all the other times I've flown early in the morning before, I will just be exhausted all day, and travelling days are long days, especially when you have to cross a continent and an ocean.
(As I said earlier) Elder Karthigeyan left last night, so he's off for his mission in Porto. I'm sure he'll do really great. Him and some other Elders stayed up really late with him playing cards and chess (shhhhh) and apparently they were really loud, but I guess I was out cold because they didn't wake me up from my hibernation.
I'm still with Elder Francis until I get to Portugal, then I get a new companion, which is exciting.
So this week was kinda the usual. We had a Pday, then all sorts of class and study time throughout the week. Once again, I just learned so much each time. Our teachers really just provide such amazing insight and help with both the language and learning the gospel. On my own language study time, I memorized all the conjugations for all the irregular verbs in portuguese. So, some odd 10-12 verbs, each with 6 forms, in present, preterit, imperfect, present subjunctive, past subjunctive, and future subjunctive. So, like 10*6*6 right? So yeah 360 ways to say the same 10 or so verbs. Lovely.
Admittedly, my memorization wasn't perfect, but I basically got them down. There are some patterns in the irregularity, in other words, there's a method to the madness. At least I'm not learning English, man.
On Tuesday night, Elder Soares, from the presidency of the Seventy spoke at the MTC. It was a really good talk, but the coolest part was the fact that him and his wife are Brazilian. So, Sister Soares didn't speak, but bore her testimony at the beginning of the meeting in Portuguese. Her husband translated after every sentence or so, but I understood virtually everything she said! But, I'm sure in the field I will have to definitely train my ears for not only native Portuguese and their speed, but also expand my vocabulary greatly. Either way, it was pretty cool!
So last week I was sick and didn't get to do TRC (teaching recent converts I think, but it's actually teaching members while we're here) because I was sick. I had done it earlier weeks, but it was with RM's who knew portuguese, and they were in person. We did teach a brazilian though in person, it was really cool. But this week and last were Skype TRC's, in other words, we skype call a member who has volunteered to participate, and we teach them. On Thursday we called a lovely lady who lives in Portugal now named Delila, and it was really cool! Unfortunately the call quality was pretty bad, and because of that it was often hard for us to understand her, but when it did work I understood her pretty decently haha! I'm just super excited to get to portugal because I hear that not even my mission president speaks english so I'll just be chucked right into the deep end, which is great (no sarcasm intended). Maybe I'll even get a Brazilian companion or something like that! That would be sick! (too many exclamation points, I'm starting to sound like a teenage girl)
One of the last activities we did with our teachers was really cool. Normally we teach investigators (teachers role-playing as such), but this activity was different. We were assigned to teach our companions. Me, being in a trio, obviously made a problem, so I was paired with Br. Workman (the super smart and spiritual yoda-level teacher). We had 5 minutes to talk with our companions, to figure out what they need, and how we can help them, 10 minutes to study and plan what we would share with them, and then 15 minutes to teach them. I was pretty intimidated, Br. Workman has been teaching me so much since I got here, and now it was my turn to teach him. Oh, and all of this was to be done in Portuguese. So, I was kinda nervous. I thought that I couldn't possibly teach Br. Workman, an RM and spiritual giant, something he doesn't already know.
I made a decision. I put all that away, and told myself "I'm a missionary, and if I'm doing my part and follow the Spirit, then nothing can go wrong, and the Spirit will teach Br. Workman something, even if I know not what it is."
So, with that new gumption, I studied, found some scriptures to share with him according to his needs, and taught him. It was really cool. It was crazy because he actually did learn. He said stuff like "I've never thought of it that way before", or "I've never noticed that part/word before" and it was great. He then taught me, and I learned a lot to. But I honestly learned more when I taught him.
I learned not to doubt myself and to just put my trust in Christ for help, and welp, it just worked, the end. The church is true guys.
So yeah.
I wish I would've kept better track of what happened this week, hope you guys aren't disappointed. I often keep a little journal with all sorts of little bullets I want to share, but I forgot to do that this week. I don't want to imply that this week was lame or boring, in fact it was probably my best week here. I just learned and grew so much this week. I was put to the test quite a bit in lessons and in teaching, it was really leaps and bounds.
But I guess that's all I've got to share! I've got a ton of packing to do today.
Ciao,
Elder Ward
Thanks for the donuts from DearElder mom! they were great!
Here's my district posing with one of our teachers, Sister Schill (white name tag)
Here's us with our other two teachers, Brother Lemperle (back left), and Brother Workman (middle). Then there's Brother Mason, a MTC teacher in-training who is just great too (back right)
Brutally cheesy, sorry.
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