Week 7

Oi!

Thanks for the updates. It’s nice hearing from home. I’m glad that grandpa is improving! To quickly answer some of your questions, I leave here the 25th. So, I’m almost there!! I can’t wait! I will fly with 2 other Americans and 6 Brasileros. It will take about 4 hours, if it’s a direct flight. I’m so excited to get out there. I’ll miss a few guys in my district that have become pretty good friends.

Only family can email me while I’m in the CTM. Maybe, when I’m in the field, the rules will be different. I only have one more P-day here!!! I’ll find out in like 13 days or so! (If you can’t tell, I’m excited to leave the CTM...)

Let’s see...I go proselyting again this Friday. We get bussed to a different part of São Paulo and they let us loose. Should be fun. Portuguese is still coming along well. We are now spending a lot of class time teaching the 3rd lesson, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s fun. I can have pretty good conversations with Brasileros. We got new Brasilian roommates this week, they are both going to Manaus! They can’t speak any English, so we just talk to them in Portuguese. We can carry on a pretty good conversation. One of them is actually engaged...weird...We actually got a new district of Brasileros in our hall last week and 4 or 5 of them are engaged. Have rings and everything...so that’s kinda different. They are way cool guys though and think it’s cool that I’m going to Manaus with a bunch of them.

We are now the 2nd oldest district in the CTM! I try to help some of the new guys in our hall. We have designated times in our district when we try to only speak Portuguese, and we pretty much can for the most part. It’s way fun.

Oh! Before I forget (‘cuz I did last week) Mom, you know I already love you and think you are the greatest mom in the world. But, if you bought me a Mr. Cheney’s cookie, you would become that much better. I think you can buy them online and I can go pick it up. That would be amazing (I hear the cookie shakes are amazing...Just saying...)

Glad to hear Girls camp went well, and you guys are heading to NYC and Boston. That’s way cool. I’m ready for some warm weather. It’s technically winter here and sometimes gets a little chilly. I’m glad Manaus is warm all year long (well...I say that now...) My friends from Manaus left this week and gave me the addresses of their families in case I am ever in their area.

Oh, so here’s a funny story. We have meetings with all the Americans on Saturday nights and my district leader assigned me to conduct the music (mostly because he didn’t want to) so I thought, ”no big deal”. We were singing the hymn in English and I only had a Portuguese hymn book. They never told me what the song was and just went right into it. I had to hurry up front and just figured the song would be in 4/4. Too bad- it wasn’t. So, I finally figured out it was in 6/8. And then there was a time change, and then another! I had no idea what time the music was in. I was just waving my hand and looking ridiculous. My district was all cracking up. Once I even spelled my name in the air. It was terrible. Luckily, almost nobody else knew the hymn, so they were looking at the projectors off to the side and trying to figure it out. My district and some of my other friends were just dying laughing. I was cracking up, too. I probably should have been more embarrassed, but it was hilarious. Anyway, good times!

Time is running out. Hit me up with letters this week! Next week start sending letters to Manaus because they take an extra week to get there. Anybody can send me letters. They are like gold! Keep it real. Love you guys, have a good week. Gotta run. Tchao!!

-Elder Eric Stapley