Week 6 - Last email from the Brazil MTC!!

Boa Tarde!!! Hope everyone is doing great! I love the pictures y'all sent me. It was great seeing all those cute little kids! I sure do miss them, but none of them like me anyway so its all good. Haha! 

So not much has happened this week. I am SOOO ready to leave the MTC on Tuesday! I feel like I am pretty well prepared and lets be honest, being in the same building for 6 weeks straight isn't the easiest thing. But I'm thankful for my time here. My district is the oldest one now, in terms of being in the MTC. I feel very comfortable here. I can go around and talk with Brazilians without even thinking about it now. There are tons of Hispanics here too! We are supposed to sit with natives at meals so we can practice language and it seems like I end up sitting with Spanish-speakers more than Brazilians! One day I sat next to some fresh Guatemalan missionaries and their Portuguese wasn't all that good so that was interesting. 

We had a really good devotional on Tuesday. The entire Brazil Area Presidency came and spoke so it was crazy good! It was broadcast to all of Brazil so there were cameras everywhere. They filmed us eating and walking up some stairs. I felt like a movie star! And one of the Sao Paulo missions came too so there were tons of missionaries! We all sang Called to Serve at the end so that was awesome! 

I got a haircut Wednesday and I don't know what I said to the man but it must have made him angry because he gave me a 3 cut. I look like a prisoner. Lets just say I've been made fun of quite a bit! 

It was Brazil independence day on Monday so the lunch ladies fixed up the cafeteria with flags and stuff hanging everywhere. President Swensen wore a Brazil hat so that was fun! Sunday was Fast Sunday so that was nice. We had a broadcast devotional by Elder Oaks and it was SOOOO good. So that's pretty much all things exciting for this week. 

On a spiritual note, we learned a lot about how important it is to always have the spirit with you AND how to make that happen. Having the spirit affects your thoughts, words, and actions. So Elder Oaks talked a lot about how important it was and then told us how we can make sure we have the spirit and that we keep it with us. He said the answer is to take the sacrament! That caught me off guard a little because it seemed so simple. Then I thought about it and in the sacrament prayer the Lord promises that we will ALWAYS have His spirit with us. So I started studying and thinking more about the sacrament and I learned more about how important it is. It means a lot more to me now. 

Mom asked about my travel plans for Belem. We have a big meeting all day on Monday where I'll get my flight plans and what not. I'm not sure if we get to email from the mission home or not. It might be the next Monday before I get to email you again.

I heard about Alabama! That's great! Elder Vick has his pday on Wednesday so he found out then and told me we won!

Well that's just about all I got for this week. I love you all and I love hearing from you all.      

Elder Green

Pictures from Area Conference

Note from Betsy - These pictures were taken after he got his 'prisoner-style' haircut.