Ola familia!

I can’t believe it is preparation day again already. Time goes by way too quickly here. I swear I was just writing a letter yesterday! :)

2 1/2 weeks until Portugal! We get our travel plans this upcoming week I believe. How crazy is that?! Although my Portuguese could be better, and I don’t understand everything yet… I am beyond excited! I would rather be trying to learn Portuguese in Portugal, than trying to learn it here haha. Don’t get me wrong though, I do love it here.

I got your package yesterday, thank you! I was just starting  to run low on treats, so it was great timing. :)

So this week for devotional, we had Donald L. Hallstrom come speak to us. He is part of the presidency of the quorum of the seventy. So that was pretty awesome! He talked all about keeping covenants, and excercising faith. It was an amazing talk. He talked about five things we need to do in order to be a successful missionary, they were:

1. Be a disciple
2. Be completely obedient
3. Be a loyal companion
4. Be optimistic
5. Be dilligent

It was an awesome talk, but since time doesn’t permit I will write more about it in a letter.

What is new back home? The weather here has been beautiful for the past few days. We have done all our personal, and companion study outside haha. It has been great!

Tell Brady that is awesome he gave the prayer! What a brave little kid! I’m proud of him. And that’s awesome to hear he is doing so well in baseball! I miss my baseball days! Why the heck is my room pink?! That’s a scary thought. I guess it really isn’t my room anymore… especially now that it is pink. Pink really isn’t my color :)

So life here has been great. The Portuguese is coming along just fine, it can be a bit frustrating still at times though. I think the hardest part is remembering how to conjugate everything. There is like 12 different conjugations we have to know. And since the English language doesn’t really work that way, it is hard to get used to. But I think it will come a lot faster when we get into Portugal. But we are able to communicate ourselves very simply. Which is pretty amazing for only being here 6 1/2 weeks. We taugh another lesson in Portuguese yesterday, and it went really well. The lady was hard to understand at times. She was a native from Brazil. Brazilian Portuguese is a bit different than Continental Portuguese too, so it took us longer to understand what she was saying sometimes. But we still were able to teach just fine. And there will be a lot of Brazilians in Portugal, so it’s good to get used to. The last week here in the MTC, Elder Graves and I are only going to speak Portuguese. NO ENGLISH. Scary.

There is an Elder here named Elder Kapata. He is from Lisboa. He is serving in Orlando. Kind of weird, we are switching places in a way haha. So he asks me all sorts of questions about Orlando, and it turn I get to ask a bunch about Lisboa. It’s a great trade off. He said the only things we have to worry about in Portugal are dogs, and girls. There are quite a bit of stray dogs, that will sometimes try to come bite you. He said you just kick them if they do this, or run faster than your companion haha. But it’s not usually much of a problem. And the girls love the elders there, so they will all try to come talk to us. If that’s all we have to worry about, that will be great. He said there is like no crime at all or anything. There are a lot of gypsies there (I hear that is why we can’t wear black suits), but they aren’t much of a problem. He said we will love it. Everyone there is really friendly. He said his church consisted of 40% Brazilians, 40% Africans, and only 20% of native Portuguese people haha. So we will have some diversity.

So what is Dad doing with the Andersons? How is the business coming along?

That stinks about the tennis matches! My teacher (Irmao Owen) loves tennis, and he said he got to play a few times while he was serving in Portugal. Mostly I will be playing soccer though. The world cup will be going on when I get there, so that might make teaching a bit hard haha. I want to get a rad jersey when I’m there!

I have had a few friends write me. Probably 6 or 7 of them. So tell them thank you! I love hearing from them. And I promise I will always write back! I would love to hear from some more friends though!

Well my time is quickly running out. I am going to write a letter home though there is a story I want to tell you about, as well as a few other things I want to write.

I am doing awesome though. Thanks everyone who has stayed in touch! It’s great hearing from everyone!

I love you all so much! Stay positive, enjoy life, and don’t waste a second of it. I see too many people caught up in the hustle and bustle of everything, and they forget just to enjoy themselves. Life is too short to let it pass by.

Eu amo-vos muito!

Tyler