Monday, September 30, 2013

A Long Letter!!!

We got a letter this weekend!!!  Oh how I love hearing from my missionary boy.  Here it is:

Hey everyone!  
How is everybody?  Thank you so much for your letters and for the pictures too!  I got yours and Haylee's letters a few days ago, but we have been extra busy lately and I haven't had time to reply!  
     For the yellow fever card, yes it is separate from my immunization card, the paper will be about the size of a passport and I think it is a tri-fold.  
     The missionaries in my district told me last night that my mom must really love me because she sent all of the football scores lol!  They're just jealous I think.  
      MTC life is still just as crazy as ever, we get our 8 hours of sleep every night, but you are still really tired when you get up!  We have two new investigators instead of our old one, they are both our portuguese teachers, but have assumed about 6 different personalities based on their own investigators. We are trying really hard to teach them what they want to know as well as what they need, but its really hard with the language barrier.  My district watches training videos every now and then and they are pretty cool.  Our teachers always ask what we learned and usually the first answer is,"Teaching the Gospel in English is way easier than in Portuguese!" But we do the best we can!
      Sometimes it also seems like we aren't focusing as much on the Gospel as we are on learning the language.  That's kind of a bummer, but we just make sure to study a lot during personal study. 
      Our favorite days of the week are Sunday, Tuesday and Friday!  Sunday is pretty much your day off and , outside of your meetings, you just read the scriptures all day.  Tuesday is our service day!  We get to dress down and don't have to really do anything until 9 (when our service starts).  We cleaned bathrooms last week and sang classic rock the whole time, it was awesome!  Friday is P-day so that's always a plus!
    Every Sunday and Tuesday we have devotional.  The Sunday ones have been good, but we look forward to the films they show afterwards!  The films are usually talks General Authorities gave here at the MTC.  We have seen Elder Bednar's and Elder Holland's talks so far!  Both were fantastic and it was really cool because both of them were really casual and joked a lot with the missionaries before giving two of the best talks I have ever heard!
     Elder Bednar have a very good Cookie Monster impression when he said the Cookie Monster is the natural man "I want a cookie! I want cookie now!"  He then told us "GET OVER YOURSELF! This mission isn't about you or how good or bad you think you are doing"  He said we need to turn our hearts outwards and stop being like the Cookie Monster.  
     Elder Holland, as usual, was fantastic!  His whole family was here and 4 of his grandchildren participated in some way.  He told us not to take for granted that we are here in this last dispensation.  Especially when you look at the history of the world.  Elder Holland also chastised us for saying things like, "When I get back to normal life..." He said very passionately, "Don't you dare think this is a two-year break or that its just something you owe the Lord.  THIS IS REAL LIFE.  Nothing you ever do will be more important than your mission.  Getting married and having a family are just as important, but they are never going to be more important.  These two years are the closest most of you will come to being an Apostle.  When you wake up in the morning, you are thinking 'How can I better the world? How can I save as many souls as possible?' Everything we (missionaries) do 24/7 is work to save the world, and that is the same work that God has done since the beginning.  We are the people who have been chosen to bring in the Latter-days we are the favored people." 
     He then wen ton to say, "All other dispensations, every prophet before Joseph Smith, knew they were going to lose the fight to save the world.  They knew that no matter how hard they worked, they were going to watch the world apostasize.  The reason they never gave up is because they knew that we (the favored people) would not let them die in vain.  We were going to save the world.  You are going to hit it out of the park.  They knew that you were destined to win."
     It brought tears to my eyes when I get to that last part.  I am so grateful for this opportunity. I know my Heavenly Father loves me.  I know that He has called me as a missionary at this exact moment in time so that I can do my pat to help save the world.  And I know that I'm never going to give up.  There are many souls who need to hear what the Lord would have me teach.  
        Eu se que meu Pai Celestial ama seu filhos.  Eu se que O Livro de Mórmon é verdadiero é Jesus Cristo é meu Salvador.  O evangelho é muito importante e é verdadeiro.  Eu ama meu familia.  Em nome de Jesus Cristo, Amen. 
       I love you guys, please share this letter on my blog and with Sarah (If you have time) because writing it out again would be really hard.  Tell her said thank you for her testimony and the example she is.  
            Thank you for everything!  I love you guys so much,
                                        Elder Sanderson

***Sorry for the change in font at the end I wanted to do the letters how he wrote them in Portuguese but I could not figure out how to do it on the keyboard so I copied and pasted it from another site.  :) ***** 
  

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