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So I just found out where I’m going! I will be serving in Carregado for my first area (about 30 miles of Lisboa). I will be serving with Elder Barbosa from Cape Verde, Africa.

But that’s not the best part…. the best part is…..

HE KNOWS ABSOLUTELY NO ENGLISH!

Most people would think this is a bad thing. But I really am super excited! This is going to force me to learn the language now. It’s either I speak Portuguese or I don’t speak. How cool is that though?

I guess he already has 3 baptisms set up… so starting tomorrow afternoon, we are off to work! I hear he is an amazing missionary though. I will meet him tomorrow.

The address where you should send mail for now on is:

Apartado 40054
1500- Lisboa
Portugal

Send everything here for the next 2 years. This is the safest, and most reliable place to send it. It’s the missions PO Box. And since it takes a while for mail to get here, and we transfer often, that will be the only safe way of sending it.

I’m super excited and thought I’d hurry and let you know!

Once again, I love you! I’m doing great and loving Portugal. My language is about to become much much better haha.

Elder Porter

I have safely arrived here in Portugal. We are in the mission office right now, getting ready to interview with President Torgan.

The flights went well. We arrived in New York a little late, and literally had to sprint all the way to catch our flight to Paris. Luckily, we barely made it! However, our luggage did not. So we are all without luggage here in Lisboa, ha,ha. But it should come either tonight or tomorrow, so oh well. Luckily I packed a change of clothes in my carry on! Something weird I thought I´d let you know…. every single word I type on here has red underlines. That´s because I´m typing in English on a Portuguese computer… sweet!

It was so awesome flying over New York, Paris, and Lisbon! We saw so many amazing things! We met a ton of people along the way too! It was a blast. So far we have arrived here in Lisbon, went through a long process of trying to get our luggage sent here… came here to the Mission Office, ate pizza, and that´s really it. Lisbon is beautiful!

And now I have a bit of  a dilemma I need your help with. I left my camera on the plane in Paris. :( not good! There´s a chance they could have it in the lost items place of the Paris Degaulle airport. So I need someone to email or call to try and get my camera! I will give you the information right now:

If you could get on their website and email them somehow, or even call that would save me a camera. If not, I am out a brand new camera :(

All is well though! Its amazing here! Beautiful city. So please contact them as soon as you can! I don’t know my address yet, so just have it sent home to you guys if its possible. I just hope someone turned it in. I’m really bummed about that. Especially because that was a nice camera… and I no longer even have a camera.

I love you all! All is well here, and the flight went just fine! I will email you again with more details when I am able to (probably P Day).

Eu Amo Voces!

Elder Porter

Happy 4th of July!!! :)

How’s it going? You have slacked on writing me this week… I have gotten one letter this entire week and that was from Syd. So thank you Sydney, you are not a slacker. :)

So I have 4 more days here at the MTC. It’s such a crazy feeling! I can’t believe how quickly 2 months flew by! It’s crazy to think that next week at this time I will be living in Portugal!! So nuts! A quick heads up… don’t send me anymore Dear Elders. I won’t get them! We don’t get Dear Elders on Saturday or Sundays, and typically we would get them on Monday, but the mailroom isn’t open because of the 4th of July. So if you send me them, I won’t get them! So I would say your best bet is just to e-mail me back, and I will be able to read that when I get to Portugal. Also, I still have not heard when we will be able to call home. I’m assuming it will be when we are in the SLC Airport, because our layover in NYC is only like an hour and a half. So don’t silence your phone, because I will be calling like around 7am. I know it sucks that it’s early, but it’s better than nothing. And if you don’t hear from me in the morning, it will probably mean I’m calling from NYC… so just keep your phone close to you all day, because I don’t know a for sure time unfortunately! And if you don’t hear from me at all, it will probably mean for some reason we weren’t able to call. Hopefully that isn’t the case! I’ve heard from most of the missionaries we are able to call! So you better answer your phone! :) or I will just leave a voicemail or something ha.

So things have just been crazy getting ready to go and all that. It feels unreal that we are leaving on Tuesday! They called 6 new zone leaders on Wednesday, so we have to help teach them all what to do.

Mom- I had to get a shot yesterday and it cost $97! How stupid is that? I hate how dependent on shots this world is. You already know my feelings about that :) But I put the money on the CC, so I was just warning you. Also, I will need you to call the bank and let them know I will be living in Portugal after Tuesday! Thank you :) are all my loan stuff taken care of? It feels weird not to know anything going on in the outside world haha.

I plan on sending my uke and stuff either today, or tomorrow. Either way, you will get it sometime next week I’m assuming. So tell Dad to check outside for a package. I’m really not looking forward to packing, I hate to pack! I’m really not looking forward to such a long plane ride either haha! I’m going to catch up on a lot of sleep. But unfortunately for me, I don’t fit in planes very well. And that is going to make for a very uncomfortable 12 hours from NYC to Paris. I’m so excited to see what area I get assigned to in Portugal though! I have heard so many amazing things about Portugal!

So after I find out the guidelines on music, I will want some CD’s sent to me! I have no music, and I will be in desperate need. So I will let you know after I e-mail from Portugal. I have no clue when P-Days or anything are, so I don’t know when it will be. I’m assuming it won’t be next week I get to e-mail, but probably the week after. We will see. One of my buddies who is in Portugal already, sent us some pictures. It looks sooo rad!

So tomorrow, they are doing some sort of 4th of July play/musical thing ha. I don’t really know what to expect, but I’m glad we get to do something for 4th of July atleast. And the rumor is that we get to watch some fireworks afterwards, which makes me very happy! :) I hope the rumors are true!

So this week we had Elaine S. Dalton come talk to us- she is the YW General President. It was such a great talk! She talked about faith, and always pressing forward. She talked about how faith is a principle of power. It is also a principle of action, we must act. We will have opposition at all times here on our mission, but we must push forward. We must exhort all our power, and have confidence and faith at all times. She talked a lot about not being afraid to open our mouths. Never make a decision to quit, or turn around, in the middle of a hill. We must make it to the top. We were not sent here to start a race, we were sent here to finish one. This is the greatest race we will ever run. But the Lord is here to help us every step of the way. It was such a great talk!

Speaking of which, last Friday was amazing. I forgot I hadn’t emailed about that yet. Jeffrey R. Holland, Dallin H. Oaks, Richard G. Scott, David A. Bednar, Russel M. Nelson, Quentin L. Cook, D. Todd Christofferson, and Neil A. Andersen were all in attendance. Dallin H. Oaks gave the talk. The Spirit was so strong! It was awesome to see all them sitting all in the same room. We were probably about 40 feet away! Great stuff. I wish I could type more about it, but I don’t have time!

So it’s time to start busting out those foreign stamps, because in 4 more days I will no longer be living in this country. It’s going to be so crazy. I’m really not that nervous, more anxious than anything. Some people in our zone/district are starting to get super nervous about leaving haha. It’s going to be the adventure of a lifetime though, I’m so stoked!

So like I said, DON’T send Dear Elders. I won’t get any of them, so there is no point. Just e-mail me back, or just wait to hear from me by phone hopefully. As soon as I’m able to e-mail from Portugal, I will send my address.

Eu amo-vos muito! Please keep sending the letters! All my friends- I don’t have a whole lot of time to e-mail so please send me a physical letter if you want to talk. I only have enough time to e-mail my family really. And if you do send me an e-mail include your mailing address with it. That will be the easiest thing for me. I wish I could take the time to e-mail everyone of you, but unfortunately I can’t. But I still want to hear from you.

Life is amazing. Smile every second of it. Enjoy every single breath. We are so lucky to have what we do. Don’t let yourself get discouraged, because when you are discouraged life passes you by. We must enjoy every second we have!

I love you all so much. Portugal here I come :)

Elder Porter

I have SO much to write about and only 29 minutes to do so! I will try to get everything in this e-mail! So this week has been like the best so far here in the MTC! As you know, we received a ton of new elders in our zone last Wednesday. We now have 117 missionaries in our zone. This makes it the largest zone in any MTC in the world. How crazy is that?! So we walk into sacrament meeting on Sunday, and one of the counselors in our Branch Presidency (Brother Hodges) immediately asks Elder Graves and I to come talk to him in the hall. I really didn’t know what to expect! He told us that because we have so many missionaries in the zone, they need 2 additional zone leaders. And you guessed it, Elder Graves and I are the new zone leaders! How crazy is that?! We are in charge of 5 districts in our zone. We now have 6 zone leaders, because we have so many missionaries. It makes our life a lot busier, but I love it. Ps… the computers here at the MTC are messed up (they are PC’s) and no computer is letting us use the enter key. Hence the reason this is one big paragraph. So bear with me, please. So we received our travel plans today! We leave 8:30am July 6th, fly into New York, then into Paris, then into Lisbon. We arrive in Lisbon at 8:50am on July 7th. Ha it is going to be a LOOONG day. I’m so excited though! I don’t know how the phone call thing works, or when we get to call home, or if we really even get to, so if I hear anything about it I will let you know. But for now, I have no clue how it works. I got your package today (the picture book). It is awesome! I love it. It turned out really nice. Thank you so much! :) So yesterday we were able to experience one of the coolest things ever. Right now, all the new mission presidents are here at the MTC. They are training to get ready to go out into the field. It makes the MTC a little crazy, but it is awesome. A lot of buildings are closed down because of the training. Pretty much every Apostle will be coming here through out the week until Wednesday. So back to yesterday (thought I’d give a little background). One of the teachers in our zone came running into our classroom out of breath, and pointed to Elder Graves and I, and also another companionship in our district (Elder Peck, Kofford, and Ashby) and told us to come outside. She then told us they needed some of the best Portuguese speakers (I was honored to say the least), to come help the Mission Presidents going to Portuguese speaking missions for a little bit. The Mission Presidents knew no english, so we could only communicate with them by Portuguese. This was a bit nerve-racking, but I was super stoked. So we walk into the building, and start walking down the hall…. and we look to our left, and boom, there is Jeffrey R. Holland standing right by us. I could’ve reached out and touched him we were so close. We promised to be completely professional though, so we just smiled and walked by. So we get to the room with all the Mission Presidents, and sitting in the room with the Presidents and their wives is Russel M. Nelson. He was just sitting there with his wife observing all that was going on. AMAZING. So we start talking to the president and his wife, and he tells us he will be a president in Brazil (can’t remember where). We tell him where we are going, and he gets super excited and told us he served in Lisbon as well! He served from 76-78 I believe. So we were there so he could practice teaching to us. He taught us a lesson, and Elder Graves and I pretty much understood every word he said. We communicated back with no problem as well. He told us he was super impressed with our Portuguese, and he understood us completely. That made me so excited to know I could communicate to a native Portuguese speaker, who knows absolutely no english, and be able to communicate affectively.. That really gave me a boost before heading to Portugal. There is such a great spirit when you are around those types of people, especially with an Apostle sitting 10 feet away from you in a room. So we were really really lucky to be able to participate in that.. Only 8 of us (out of a zone of 117 missionaries) were able to do so! So tonight, we have a special devotional. Usually devotionals are only on Tuesday nights, but they called a special one for tonight. So more than likely we are hearing from one of the First Presidency (and more Apostles will be there as well sitting on the stand). How amazing is that! I’ll wait to send my hand written letter, so I can let you know who came! Word on the street has it that it will be Uchtdorf (I don’t think that is spelled correctly). That would be so awesome to hear from him! We are at the MTC at the best time of the year. This kind of stuff only happens once every year. So as you can tell, life is amazing! This has been a really eventful week for me. I have some more (a little more personal, for the family) stuff I will write to you about in a letter as well. But things are so awesome here! The language is coming along, and I feel more confident to walk the streets of Portugal. 1 week from this Wednesday, I will be doing exactly that. It is a weird feeling, but I am sooo excited. :) Mom, I think I have everything I need before I leave so no need to worry. I can get most necessities here at the book store, so that isn’t a problem. I’ll be sending home a package next week so look out for that. I hope everyone else is doing awesome though, from the sounds of it they are! I will write some more in a letter, so you will get that early next week. Once again, sorry about the lack of paragraphs. This computer is really messed up, but oh well. Eu-amo vos muito! Take care :) can’t wait to hear from you all! :) —– Elder Porter

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

So guess what! We had ANOTHER apostle again this week! That is 3 apostles in 5 weeks! How rad is that?! This week we had Robert D. Hales. It was so awesome! I’ll write a letter about his talk more in detail, but I’ll give you a few quotes I loved from it. His talk was mostly about obedience, and having the light of Christ. It was such a great talk. If I could’ve, I would have written down every word he said! It was that good. One quote I loved was, “The perfect day is when we can stand in front of God, and our light will be bright enough to stand in His presence.”
“There is nothing that you gave up, that is of greater importance than what you will be doing over the next two years.”
“Everyone has the light of Christ in them, because we are all children of God. We were all born with it. Some may not be aware of it, but they have it. You have to help them discover this light.”
It was such a great talk. And like I said, I will write more about it in a letter!

Tell Brian Willis congrats as well! That’s such good news! I bet he’s super happy about that one.

It has been a great week overall. We had to teach the first lesson in Portuguese yesterday. It went surprisingly well actually. I’m able to understand most of what people are saying. Speaking it is a little more difficult, but we did really well. Our classes are 100% in Portuguese now. We aren’t allowed to speak English while we are in the classroom. It can make things a bit tough to understand, and speak sometimes. But it is definitely helping a lot. We also have a district goal that we go on “english fasts” every single day. Usually we do it between lunch and dinner. So it’s usually about a 4 hour fast.

Just when you think the language is coming along… we will watch a video, or listen to a clip of a native Portuguese speaker. They speak very fast… that’s all I have to say haha. But I think once we get into Portugal, and we start getting used to how they speak, we will pick it up pretty quick. I feel like it is coming along pretty well. I think I know more in Portuguese after a month of learning it, than I knew spanish after taking it for 4 years ha. So that’s awesome.

This week we are getting a group of 7 (I believe?) who also will be serving in Lisboa. So that’s pretty cool! Supposedly we are getting 40 something more in our zone, which is nuts. Our zone was only about 35-40 people when I came in… now we are close to 80… and that’s about to go even higher. Most of them are going to Brazil, and their visas haven’t gone through. Brazil has bad visa problems. Some of them are having to be re-assigned here in the states until their visas go through. They get assigned somewhere they speak Portuguese though (Atlanta, Boston, New Jersey typically) so at least they can keep working on the language until the visas go through. Luckily for us, Portugal doesn’t have visa problems at all.

So life is good here! I’m loving it. 3 more weeks until we are off to Portugal. I’m very excited! I’m so ready to get out there! Ha the plane ride will be rough though. All we will be able to do is read, and read, and read. And maybe convert a few people while we are at it :)

Tell some more friends to write! Send some letters. Post my mailing address for them. And thank my friends who have written me already! I love getting letters and hearing from everyone!

Eu amo-vos muito! Eu estou ter o tempo de minha vida.

Take care! And write!

paz e amor,

Elder Porter

How have things been lately?
 
Things here are great as always. I do have a little bit of bummer news. I had to go talk to the MTC president earlier this week about my uke… and he said I can’t play it here. Which is lame, because I know of at least 5 other people that have uke’s here as well. There’s just a certain someone in my district who is a bit power hungry, and I think he has something against music as well ha. Elder Tanner and I were a bit bummed out about that one. So I’ll probably just send it home here eventually. But that’s alright. Thank you for sending it though! We did get a few good days of jamming in. So it was worth it. Now, all of us just meet up in the vending machine room and sing at night.There’s a bunch of Polynesian kids here, that join us as well. It’s a good time. It’s not possible to completely take music away from me :)
 
Did you get my package? I hope so. If not, tell dad happy birthday. But it should’ve gotten there by his birthday, I would imagine. I sent it last Saturday.
 
I had to give a talk on Sunday in Portuguese ha. It was weird, I woke up in the morning and all through breakfast and before our Sacrament meeting started (at 8am), I just had a feeling I was going to have to give a talk. I kept telling my companion that I was giving the talk that day…. he didn’t believe me. Needless to say, I was right. They don’t announce who is giving the talks until after we partake of the sacrament either. So everyone is usually on the edge of their seats haha. I’m glad I got mine out of the way though. Chances are slim that I will have to give another one. It went really well though. Afterwards, in Priesthood meeting, I had to demonstrate to everyone how to consecrate the oil. So it was quite the eventful Sunday.
 
My classes are now 100% Portuguese. We never speak English. It can be a bit tough/frustrating at times. Well more like most of the time. But it is definitely helping. It forces us to speak the language. The only way you can speak English is if you walk out of the classroom, and talk from the hallway ha. So far it hasn’t been too bad though. I can usually understand most of what is going on in class.
 
How has the weather been there this week? The weather here has been amazing. We played sand volleyball a couple times this week during our gym time. It was a lot of fun for sure! I miss the times when we would play sand volleyball in Florida though, and be able to just jump in the pool after-wards. Or play on the actual beach, and jump in the ocean after. But I’ll take what I can get! :)
  
That’s awesome to hear about Brian! I’m glad things are working out for him! I’ll keep him in my prayers for sure!
 
This week for our devotional, one of the second quorum of the seventy came to talk to us. His name was Elder Foster (can’t remember his first name). It was an awesome talk. It was really an eye opener. He started by showing some videos from NASA. It was talking about the universe and how much is out there. There is something like 10 billion galaxies out there that they know of! That is amazing, I had no clue. It was just amazing to see how much is out there, and how little we know about it. How small we are in this never ending universe. It talked about how everything about our earth just happens to be right. It spins at the exact speed it needs to, it is the perfect distance from the sun, etc. It just really makes you realize how there is no way everything just “happens” to be perfect for our planet to sustain life. We are so small in this universe, yet we are so big in our Heavenly Father’s eyes. He hears and answers everyone one of our prayers. He loves each and everyone of us individually. He knows us by name. He knows the problems we have, the pain we have, and the happiness we experience. He knows all. There is so much out there, but he cares about every single one of us. So truly, we aren’t as small as we seem to be. That is really amazing to me. After, we sang the hymn from the Children’s hymn book, Child’s Prayer. It was really cool and powerful. I never realized how rad that song truly is. It has some great lyrics. I love it.
 
32 more days until I leave for Portugal. That is so crazy! If we take the same route as my buddies who just left did (which more than likely we will), we will fly into Paris, and then into Lisbon. That will be way awesome!
 
After we go to the temple on P-Days, we do service work at the temple. We started doing this as a district last week. It is really cool, and the workers there really appreciate it. Today I just folded tons of towels for the baptistry. It was nothing major, but it really helps them out. I love doing service!
 
So tell me what has been going on in all of your lives. Is school out? I feel so out of the loop of everything. I don’t have a clue what is going on in the outside world. It is actually pretty refreshing ha,ha. It’s nice not to have any worries in the world. It’s so stress free here. I say it all the time, but I truly mean it. I have never been so happy in my life! I know I am making the right decision by serving the Lord for the next two years. It’s a great feeling. We owe Him so much, and will never be able to re-pay him. But we can definitely try. However, the more we serve Him- the more blessings we get- and the more in debt we are. So it’s a never ending cycle ha,ha.
 
How’s the new store? Has dad been super busy with that? I would imagine so.
 
Tell everyone thanks for the letters. I love reading them. Keep writing! I promise I will write you all back. It might not be super fast, but I will get it done! I have plenty of time just sitting in the laundry room to write letters ha,ha.
 
I love you all so much! I truly have the best family in the world. I miss you all! You are amazing! I’m doing great, and you have nothing to worry about!
 
Love you!
 
 
Elder Porter

Ola familia! Tudo bem?

Things here are going great. How are things back at home? The weather went a little crazy on us earlier this week, and we had a total snow storm. A huge tree right outside of the bookstore fell. It’s a good thing no missionaries were walking that way at the time, or they might be serving their mission in heaven. :)

On Tuesday, we were lucky enough to have another Apostle come visit us for devotional. This week D. Todd Christofferson came to talk to us. He talked all about repentance and the importance of teaching about it. He said if there were no repentance, there would be no Christ. I had never really thought of it this way. It was a great talk, and it was very spiritual. I love hearing the Apostles talk. At the MTC in June, they train all the new mission presidents that are called. June is the best time to be in the MTC, because all the First Presidency, the Apostles and General Authorities all come to the MTC to train these new mission presidents. So June we are pretty much guaranteed to hear from at least one or two more apostles! That should be awesome.

This week was mine and Elder Graves first time teaching the second lesson. We taught it to an older guy named Gene. The lesson went so well. Elder Graves and I teach really well together. It’s nice knowing that I can count on him! We teach the second lesson one more time in English. In two weeks, we start teaching in only Portuguese. We will go back to the first lesson, and teach that twice in Portuguese. And then teach the second lesson twice in Portuguese. After that, we are off to Portugal!

A couple of our good friends headed out for their missions on Tuesday. Their names are Elder Wilder and Elder De Hoyos. Elder De Hoyos dad is actually in the first quorum of the seventy. They are super rad kids! They are also serving in Lisbon, so I’m sure we will run into them again while in Portugal. I can’t wait to get out there!

On Wednesday we received 50 or so new missionaries in our zone. Our zone is huge now! Before they came I think we had around 30 altogether. Now we have like 70 something. Church is going to be packed now. Elder Graves and I are in charge of sacrament meeting every week. We have to assign people to pass, set up, bless, and all that.

I have a cool story I’ll share with you.

On Monday an international missionary from Mexico arrived at the MTC. His name is Elder Morales. He is going to Mozambique (one of two African missions that speak Portuguese). Since he arrived two days earlier than the rest of the missionaries that were coming into the zone, he spent those two days with our district. After the devotional on Tuesday night, we had our district meeting. We just go over the things we liked in the devotional, and just share what we enjoyed about the talk. We went around the room and we all shared something we enjoyed. Elder Morales then began to talk about what he liked about the talk. His english isn’t perfect, but we are still able to understand most of what he says. He said he loved how Elder Christofferson talked about miracles in his talk. He then told us a story about when he was growing up. He told us that it was just his mom, his brother, and himself that were living together. His mom could barely afford enough food to feed her kids. One night the missionaries came over, and asked if they could eat over. His mom knew she didn’t have enough food for everyone, and this would mean they couldn’t eat the next day. But she put her faith in Heavenly Father, and invited the missionaries in to eat. Elder Morales was already in tears by this point. He then told us about how all of them ate that night. Miraculously they still had food for the next day as well. She had no clue how this was possible. Elder Morales then said that he knew they were blessed that night for putting their faith in the Lord. Although it shouldn’t have been possible, they all ate enough to where they were full. They had food the next day. Elder Morales was barely able to finish the story he was crying so much. The Lord is so amazing, and can work miracles in our lives if we just show faith. You could feel the love Elder Morales had for our Heavenly Father, and it was a very spiritual time. Although his english wasn’t perfect, the spirit was so strong when he told that story. It goes to show even if you can’t speak the language perfect, the Spirit can talk to anyone. That is the most important part of our missionary work.

I love the MTC so much! I have seen and heard so many amazing things in just three weeks. I already know these next two years will be the best of my life. I’ve already graduated high school, I have my bachelors degree, but never in my life have I felt so happy as I do now. This truly is the happiest I’ve ever been.

Speaking of which- the first counselor of our branch said I’m the first person that has ever had their bachelors degree that has come through this zone since he has been a part of it. Pretty crazy!

My time is winding down, but I will also write a letter while I’m doing my laundry. Ps… my district leader (Elder Peck) just told me I received a package. So I’ll pick that up after I send this. I’m assuming you sent it, so thank you! :)

I love you guys so much! Never forget it! I love this gospel, and I love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I’ve never been so blessed. I’m so glad I made the decision to come on a mission, it is the best decision I’ve ever made. It is going to change my life. Although I’m not home sick, I do miss you guys. I can’t wait for Brittain, Landon, and Brady to have this opportunity as well.

Tell all my friends who have written me thank you. And if they haven’t yet, tell them to get a move on it. I love hearing from everyone. Friday is the only day I can write though. And if you e-mail me, leave a physical mailing address. I won’t have time to e-mail back but I will send a letter, I promise.

I love you so much! Eu amo-vos! I hope you have a great week. You are in my prayers.

Love,

Ty

Ola! Tudo bem?
 
Things here are super! I’m loving life, and enjoying every second here at the MTC. All we do is work, work, work. And usually I’d say that is a bad thing, but in this case it is really good. We are pretty much in the classroom all day, learning about the gospel and learning Portuguese. I love my teachers though, and they make it quite enjoyable. They have made learning so simple!
 
How are things back home? I’m glad you are killing it in tennis Mom, you make me proud. My teacher said he played tennis a few times while serving in Portugal, so that’s good news. Has Dad opened the new store yet? Fill me in about that! And tell him thank you for the NBA Playoffs update, a few of us in the district really appreciated that. So is school coming close to an end?
 
I hate that I only get 30 minutes to write e-mails! Anyways, we had a devotional this week about the importance of the Book of Mormon. It was awesome! My companion and I have made it a goal to read 100 pgs a week, and so far so good. It always makes my day better when I start off by reading. We have been playing a bunch of beach volleyball lately, the weather has been great!
 
There’s a bunch of kids shipping out from our zone on Tuesday (heading out to their missions). So we will be getting a bunch of newbies on Wednesday, and we will be the oldest in our zone ha, ha. This week I have to bless the sacrament in Portuguese… kind of scary. The language is definitely coming along great though. I can’t believe how much I’ve already learned in just two weeks! All of us can already carry a basic conversation, which is nuts. We are definitely being blessed. Yesterday, Elder Graves and I had to teach another “mock” investigator. That went really well! We teach really well together, and we are always on the same page. Teaching just seems to come natural for me, I haven’t found it too hard at all.
 
Every Thursday night we have Oreo Thursday. It consists of milk and Oreos and chilling in our room. This was started by Elder Tanner. It has pretty much become a hit in our zone. Our room is where everyone comes and hangs out at night. It’s the place to be.
 
Before I forget, could you send my uke?! I’ve been jamming with a couple kids lately, but they’re leaving Tuesday. So now I’m dying for mine! Maybe before sending it check out Chesbros, and see if they have a cheap carrying case for it. I would love you forever! Elder Tanner and I are going insane without music, so that would be a blessing.
 
I got your package today, thank you so much! Those treats will last me forever. I’m sure my companion and the other Elders in the district will love them as well. I can’t get on the regular internet, so I won’t be able to upload photos. I will have to send my SD card. That will change in Portugal though, since we will just be using like internet cafes. I don’t know if I will have the time when I’m there though. I think it will just be easiest for me to send the card. But here we just have a link we click on that allows us to check our e-mail. We don’t actually log on to the internet. It’s kind of like how entourage works or whatever.
 
How is everyone at home? Anything new and exciting? How are all the kids doing? Let them know they can write whenever they want. Tell Brit that I got his message, and I will write him a letter back. He will get it early next week.
 
I miss you guys, but know that I’m doing so well. There’s no where in the world I’d rather be right now. I love this so much, and I can’t wait for the next two years. This gospel is amazing, and I’m so lucky to be part of it. I’m so blessed, and so lucky. I can’t wait to spread my happiness to the people of Portugal. Even though I haven’t even been there yet, I already love them so much! I have grown up so much in just two weeks of being here, and I know that things will keep getting better and better.
 
Please keep writing, I love hearing from you guys! Even if you don’t have a lot to say, I don’t care. I just love to hear from you. I hope all is well! I love you guys more than you could ever imagine. I’m so lucky to be part of such an amazing family. I have been so blessed in my life, I don’t know how I managed to get so lucky.
 
Eu amo-vos!
 
 
Elder Porter