Week Four - Tom's MTC Schedule

Hello Everyone!

I´m glad to finally hear from you guys again today, on this nice, but wet, p-day. Just so you know, about the p-day picture and me not in p-day clothes, we are not allowed to go outside the MTC without missionary clothes, and I don´t think we can go anywhere other than the gym or the floor we sleep on in p-day clothes, but that doesn´t bother me. I´m glad to hear that the jazz are doing as good as usual... So oregano oil is distilled from oregano and i guess it helps a lot with sore throats. You put one drop on your tongue and swallow it and it is supposed to cure it really quickly, but it hurts like crazy. The elder who has it, elder Barton, got some Brazilians to take it and I don´t think any of them handled it well at all. It was pretty funny.

I´m not sure if I already told you, but we can´t send pictures through e-mail so I will have to print them out and send them to you next p-day through regular mail, or I think I can get the people at Mr. Cheney´s to scan and send them for me. I will try that first, next week. And poor Toby :(

So this past week was a bit of a roller coaster. There were times I felt good about my progress and confident about teaching lessons to our instructors, but then there were times where I felt I made no progress and my confidence was killed... Portuguese can be so confusing! but hopefully this next week will be better. We are in class from 1-4:30 with our first instructor, then we have dinner for a half our, followed by an hour of preparation/free time, and back to class from 6-9:30. Then we go to bed. But during our hour of free time after dinner, my district usually just talks/has story time and a couple days ago, they predicted everyone´s future callings in the church, which was pretty funny. One of them is going to be inactive (hah!), another is going to be the mission pres. of north karea, my companion is going to be like a permanent, expert, scout master. They decided I was going to be a patriarch! which came to a surprise to me, because everyone seems so much more... in tune with the spirit than I do, but that would be pretty cool if I did become one! On Sundays, besides church, we usually have a devotional, a speaker who usually doesn´t speak English so we have a translator most of the time. This week was the MTC presidents last week and he´s speaking one more time tonight, I think. I´ll try to get a picture of me with him and send it home. Him and his wife were very nice.

We have not been anywhere outside of the MTC except for the immediate area outside and the temple. Some missionaries are getting really sick of the MTC but i´m still okay here. I´m not sure if time is flying by or dragging along, it kinda seems like both. I have to go now though, sorry :( TCHAU!