Friday, October 8, 2010

Oct 8, 2010 - MTC Week 4 - Mission Week 4

From: Phillip Larsen phillip.larsen@myldsmail.net
Date: Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 2:48 PM
Subject: Week 3?

Oi minha Familia!

Yesterday (Friday Oct 7th) 30 visas came in for Brazilian missionaries and they left this morning. We are not sure yet if this is just a random occurance or if it means more in the future but thought I'd let you know. When we get our visas I heard that we are allowed to call home too and tell about when we're leaving so I could call again if my visa comes. I don't want my visa to come yet if the rest of my district's don't come as well, but since I am the only one from out East I think it might turn out that I get mine first.

I accidently cut a small hole in my pants, but mom, don't worry I sat for 30 minutes and mended it and the mending job seems to be holding!

They give us so much food here at the MTC, it is kind of crazy. A lot of times it is too much. I really like the icecream they have here, but it isn't the same as at home. They had salmon here for the Missionaries, I didn't take it though because I am not a big fan of fish but I did try some of it.

Yesterday we had a pretty crazy hailstorm, and this whole past week has been overcast.. Bleargh... I liked it more when it was sunny but oh well.

To answer your question about temple attendance mom, yes we go every week. I went today just before typing this email and it was good but I was really drowsy. We get enough sleep here, I guess, but we are working so hard. I don't know what the schedule would be when we go to Brasil's MTC.

Portuguese is going well. Our teachers are speaking more Portuguese to us, and we are getting a hang of the language and replacing the different words we learn with the Portuguese words. We are also having English fasts during lunch where we only speak Portuguese to each other which really helps. It's surprising how much we have retained and how much we are getting in the language. A funny thing about portuguese to english translation, the scripture James 1:5 in portuguese directly translates to "If any of you lack knowledge, let him ask God, that give to all liberally, and he won't throw it in your face, and it shall be given him." Some silly things we find while studying the language!

I have really enjoyed learning different tricks from Elder's in my district. I have taught 2 how to solve the Rubick's cube already, and I've learned several magic tricks which are fun to do.
General Conference here at the MTC was nice, although it was a lot of sitting. We would go to a session, sit, go to eat, sit, go back to a session, and sit some more and that was pretty much the entire schedule that we had, so not much working out!

One thing that I have started recently that is kind of insane is called the Elder Brown Workout. It is where you do 1 pushup, wait a second then do 2, then 1 pull up, then 3 push ups, then wait a second, then 4 pushups, and then 2 pullups. In total, if you go up to 10 pushups in one set, you do about 110 pushups total, and 15 pullups. In the past 2 days I've done 280ish pushups because after the workout you burnout with the most pushups you can do. Doing this makes my arms really sore but it is supposed to wear off after a while. So that has been something that was pretty fun :P

I met another Elder Larsen who is from Denmark! Could he be related to us? I remember hearing about that email we got from Denmark, that would be cool if I met a distant cousin!

I love you all, and miss you. I'll keep you posted on the Visa stuff as well.
The counter is blinking now so I'll talk to you later! Hope to hear from you soon!

-Elder Phillip Larsen

No comments:

Post a Comment