6 June 2016 Lots

Dear friends and family,

I never know how to start my email so I'll start with the word "bingo"

There, now that's done.

So yeah right to it. This week has been fun. Kinda the usual, lots of classes, lots of lessons, all sorts of jazz. Language is still progressing. Yesterday for sacrament meeting we had fast and testimony meeting as a branch. We're organized into branches according to our zone, so all the Portuguese speakers are in a Sunday meeting together. Our branch presidency all either served in Brazil, Portugal, or are from one of the two places, so the meetings are held in Portuguese entirely, well, american Portuguese. But it's still good practice. I got up and shared my testimony entirely in Portuguese.

Wednesday, 460 (give or take) new missionaries arrived and I got to host again. It was a great time. It's so fun watching the new missionaries arrive. A lot of the new ones are Elders who literally just graduated from high school. We would kinda play "spot the criers" and kinda have a, uh, solemn chuckle? Nah, but it's just great seeing so many fresh kids ready to serve. I hosted 4 new Elders this time, and one of them was from Australia, he was pretty cool.

So my district has 3 teachers, Br Workman (he's like yoda, he's only like 25, but he's short and he just spews wisdom), Sister Schill, and Br. Lemperle (I think I already mentioned he's in Vocal Point, he just got married too), anyways they're all great examples and leaders. They only speak to us in Portuguese, as I have mentioned before. Anyways, I got in trouble with 2 of them. Pause for a second, and see if you can guess why. Got and idea? ... I got in trouble for speaking too much Portuguese. Huh? No, I didn't really get in trouble (but I kinda did). Brother Workman said I am no longer allowed to translate anything for my companions. In lessons, I would often speak for 90% of it, well, because my other companions couldn't say what they wanted to. They kinda let me take over sometimes, and I didn't want to let our lessons slack, so if I had to I would take the reigns myself. So, when my companions would try to share something, they would turn to me to ask for every other word, often asking for the same word more than once. Br. Workman made a good point though, he said that they are developing a dependency on me, so from now on when my companions ask me how to say something, I have to shrug. It's a good idea though, it will make them start -- for lack of a better phrase -- to pull their own weight.
Then the next morning Sis. Schill pulled me aside and told me that I am only allowed to share my testimonies in lessons, I can no longer teach them, I can only share some thoughts at the end. This definitely puts some more pressure on my companions, which is a good thing.
So since these "punishments" have been placed upon me, our lessons have been... kinda rough, it's like watching a car crash is slow-motion, and I often can only sit there. But it's ok, actually a really good thing, because Elder Karthigeyan and Elder Francis are recognizing the need for their improvement, and making progress because of it.

Anyways, rewind a bit. A couple weeks ago, Elder Karthigeyan (my companion from India) and I received invitations to take a "field-trip" so to speak, to Salt Lake Temple Square. We went on Friday, it was a blast. We went with probably 20 other international missionaries, a Frenchman, a New Zealander (from Auckland, I asked if he knew you Chase, but he didn't, he was Elder Simpson), some Korean, Chinese, and Thai Elders too, and the rest were South Americans. It was entertaining. A really nice senior missionary couple led us on our little expedition, starting on a coach bus to the train station here in Provo. We took a 2-decker train ride for an hour to Salt Lake. While we were waiting for the train, I heard some shouting, and one of the South American Elders was goofing off on the tracks, and our leader guy was just confused and got him off, quite entertaining. The way to SL, I chatted with the NZ'er (he's never seen a desert before, fun fact), then we took a tram to temple square. We had a nice tour, saw the temple, Joseph Smith Memorial building thingy, other statues and buildings. We had a nice tour of the Conference Center too, man that thing is huge. The couple that showed us around busted out some home-made chocolate-chip cookies at the end, and all the foreign Elders and sisters devoured them.

While waiting for the tram to go home, (fyi there are lots of homeless in SL), a homeless man approached us asking for money, saying he was starving to death. We were previously advised to not give anything to the poor here, and I wondered why. He continued to walk by us, until our leader fella said "hey, I haven't got any money for you, but there's a homeless shelter down the street that gives 3 free meals a day, we can take you there" and just like that the homeless man turned around and walked away, showing us his his favorite digits as he left. So yeah, that was the situation. Guess he wasn't hungry. On the tram on the way home, there were a bunch of homeless on it, and our leader fella started chatting to them. One of them started going on about drugs, and the other about how Christ was a false prophet and a fool. Our leader guy (idk what to call him ok) immediately managed to steer the conversation in to a nice friendly one about sports. It was really cool. I bet it left a nice impression on them, instead of us being stingy and recluse marmins.

On the long ride home, I chatted with a sister who is going to Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese, supposedly one of the hardest languages to learn, an Asian language similar to Chinese, from what I understand. Anyways, I asked her how the language worked, and she told me a lot about it. Cantonese has this concept called "tones". Words in Cantonese are said in one of 7 (or 8, forgot) tones. These tones are determined by how you say the word. She said the word "gouh" in cantonese in all it's forms. It was almost like your singing. If you say "gouh" with a high voice, it means one thing, with a low voice, another. If you say "goUH" with emphasis on either the beginning or end of the word, those are also different tones. If you change the pitch of the word, it's a different tone. If you emphasize the first half in a low tone, it's another type of tone. Anyways, it's just stupid complicated. She said there was a sentence (which she didn't remember) that consisted of 1 word, being said in all the tones, making a legible and understandable sentence. So if I said gouh gouh gouh gouh gouh gouh gouh in different specific ways for each word, it would be a sentence, kinda like in english "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." Anyways, it sounds really weird and I probably didn't explain it in a sensible way, but I found it intriguing, I like learning how other languages work.

Then we got back and it was straight to class haha. It was a cool trip, but it was also weird, because I felt like a tourist in my own country...

So we have exercise time 6 days a week (guess which one we don't, super hard). We go play in the field just outside the MTC, literally the front lawn of the temple. You can toss a frisbee, throw a softball, soccer, etc. I would always jog out there, only about a 1/3rd of a mile, not really hard at all. But this week, I know not why, my joints just started to kill me. Maybe the whole "fish out of water" thing is catching up to me, because now when I run -- at all -- my ankles, knees, and hips all hurt. So, I'm taking it easy for a week or so, no big deal really.

We were playing kickball earlier this week, and one of the Elders in our zone did a tuck-and-role type thing, nothing major, to dodge getting tagged. His shoulder was a little sore, but he was fine he kept playing for a few minutes. Later, he got it checked and it turns out he broke his collarbone into 3 pieces (I saw the X-rays). It was funny though because he seemed totally fine. A few days ago he got surgery (luckily he didn't get sent home) and got 7 screws and a plate. How nice. He's had a miraculous recovery though, he can already use his arm again almost to the fullest, and it hasn't even been a week.

I also chat with those Italian twin Elder's when I can. It's always so fun speaking and hearing Italian again. I met an Italian sister too, who's going to Temple Square. They are a great bunch. I asked them if they new the Fossa twins, and whaddya know they do haha. Also, on Wednesday, about 30 missionaries arrived that are going to Italy, which is super cool. Whenever I see a tag with "Anziano" or "Sorella" on it I just walk up to them and start speaking Italian to them. They go wide eyed and freak out, it's hilarious.

In other news, I got called to be a Zone leader along with Elder Karthigeyan. Our zone is 35 people, soon to get 7 new mishies, it's a big, but fun responsibility. I'll be ZL for 3 weeks.
Last Wed we got 9 new missionaries who are going to brazil in our zone, and we retried our joke from last week, in which I pretended to be italian. Hear me out, I know I don't look it, but I can speak it so it turns out that most of them bought it. Once they caught me speaking English they went "WAIT I thought you were Italian!" It was a good laugh. But now I'm the zone leader, so I guess I'll cut it out for the next batch of missionaries.

As for my companions, Elder Karthigeyan is still doing good, working hard and that's all that matters. But once again, not necessarily the same news for Elder Francis, unfortunately he hasn't made much progress. We learned to pray in Portuguese the first week, and he still can't do that, at week 4. He still dozes in class, I'm not sure how I can help him more, he still greatly lacks motivation. But he is still a good guy and I hope he will do better, we still encourage and uplift him.

Anyways I think that's everything. I'm just about out of time so yeah. I love your guys' emails, and the DearElders are really nice to get during the week to.

Tchau,
Elder Ward

ps I get to see elder Bednar tomarra hehe
oh and I got like 20 compliments on my suit this week, italians man

I thought that was funny ok, it's a Utah thing