I'M ALIVE!!

Hey guys. I don't know how I did it, but I somehow survived week 4 in the CTM!! I had the opportunity to go do another session at the Sao Paulo Temple and it was "lit" as usual. The Celestial Room is always a great chance for me to forget about the CTM and outside world. It actually gives me a chance to thank the Lord for everything I have and to ask for help in the next coming week. I love the chandeliers as well as the cool pillars found on the walls. I also loved seeing the golden leaves painted on the really dark wood of the temple. I went down to the baptistry and got to see the amazing murals. There is one on both the East wall and the West wall in the baptistry. There is one that is the main painting of Alma when he was baptizing people and the other one is John baptizing Jesus. Both were made entirely of colored tiles!

    

After the temple, I went with my district to a Brazilian BBQ buffet…IN BRAZIL! I've never been to Tucano’s, but all of the guys were going crazy about how it makes them think of home and that it was soo much better than in America. I also got a ginormous cookie from the Hunters - so that was a great way to end my time out on the town. I took a nap before dinner and when I woke up, I felt sicker than a dog. Needless to say that when I went to bed that night, I had a 102 degree fever again. I was super sick throughout the week and I could truly see the hand of the Lord take my pain away as I would pray to him continually.

I did a bunch of TRC's (where we practice teaching the discussions to the teachers) throughout the week and I was an absolute beast. I can finally start to teach in Portuguese now - so that’s pretty great! On Saturday, I got to actually go out and PROSELYTE! I went out and met sooo many great people as well as sooo many crazy people. All I’m gonna touch on with the weird people is I saw a bunch of homeless guys sucking each others toes…Yummy. Besides that, I ended up talking to about 7 people and got 5 of their contact information! So Teresina better look out - LOL. One old lady we talked to tried to give us like 100 Reals (about $25). We said, "no" but she was like, "you are servants of God so you need this". We explained that we had plenty of money and that she should keep it. The first two people that we spoke to were from El Salvador, so I did a great job using my "Sportuguese". Haha. I’ve watched a bunch of church talks like “We are all Enlisted” and would suggest that all of you watch that one.

All of the older groups left this week and it was heartbreaking because they were my closest friends here ;( I also got to read my patriarchal blessing this week and got something out of it…Turns out I’m gonna die young or something because it says I’m gonna be dead before the second coming, so yeahhhh. Love you guys!

Elder "gonna die young" Durante