Easter at the CTM

Feliz Pácoa! Easter at the CTM was wonderful. We had a great Sacrament Meeting filled with talks about the Atonement and how the Gospel Blesses Families. We then had a wonderful Sunday school about the gifts of the spirit, and then Relief Society was amazing! The meeting started with one of the Sisters singing " I know that My Redeemer Lives", it brought such a spirit to the room and everyone, all the Brazilian and American Sisters, were just in tears. Sister Woodward, the President's Wife gave a wonderful talk on how the Atonement has blessed her family. She then opened up the meeting to all the Sisters bearing their testimonies of how the Atonement has blessed their lives. It was so amazing to hear many of the sisters talk about their experiences in life and their testimonies of knowing that Christ is Our Savior and Redeemer and that through Him we can attain eternal glory and happiness. The Relief Society Presidency also made this amazing slide show of pictures of paintings of Christ put to " I Believe in Christ". There is this beautiful picture that was shown of Mary teaching Christ to pray as a child. What devotion and faith Mary had to raise and teach the Son of God, the Lord and Savior of this World! I was so uplifted by the Spirit and couldn´t have asked for a better day!When we entered the cafeteria for lunch, to our grand amazement, there were two tables full of Mounds of Chocolate Ice cream, Hazelnuts, Candy and other ridiculously empty-carb, sugar-filled noxiousness! All I can say is that I willingly and knowingly made myself ill from ice cream. Feliz Páscoa! Later that evening we met as a District and talked about how our Easters had been. Our District Leader suggest that we talk about family traditions, and everyone talked about typical easter festivities such as easter-egg hunts and eating a lot of candy and visiting family, and it made me really reflect on what Easter meant to me. I shared that I thought this was the best Easter I could have possibly had, because even though I was away from my family, I have the knowledge of the love that the Savior has for me, for each one of us, and that through His suffering, His Atonement, we can ALL be ressurrected, made whole and progress for the eternities. That brings me joy and happiness that is worth much more than chocolate ice cream and hazelnuts will ever amount to. Our district has gotten so close, and I am really going to miss my companions and all the elders in our district when we go to our seperate missions in a few weeks! The elders are just so wonderful, I couldn't have asked for a better group of ridiculously immature 19 year old boys that are going to be amazing representatives of the Lord! The Elders have found great joy in me teaching them yoga this week during gym time and I have found great joy in learning many things from them too, for instance learning how to conduct music. This past week I have gotten really caught up into studying the scriptures. I feel like I continue to thirst for answers that can be found in the scriptures and I want to keep learning more and more. I love knowing that the Book of Mormon addresses and answers many of the questions and concerns that we have in our days! I started studying Questions of the Soul from Preach My Gospel about how the Book of Mormon can answer many of the questions we have in life, and then I created some of my own questions and found answers to them as well. So I would like to share: Q: How can a belief in Jesus Christ Help Me? A: Alma 36, the whole chapter, the amazing conversion story of Alma Q: Is there Life After Death? A: Alma 40 Q: What is the purpose of Life?A: Alma 34:32 " This Life is the time for men to prepare to meet God. . ." Q: Why Does God allow there to be evil and suffering? A: 2 Nephi 2: 10, "opposition in all things. . .if not so righteousness would not be brought to pass"Alma 14: 9-11, 60:13 Q: Do children have to be baptized to be saved? A: Moroni 8 (Whole chapter, but see versus 12, 15, 22) Q: Does God know me individually? A: Alma 5:38, 58 Q: How can I ever be forgiven? What if I have struggled with God? A: Enos 1: 3-8, Enos struggled with God and through is Faith in Christ was forgiven Q: What about all the people that died before Christ, how are they saved? A: Mosiah 15:22-24 Q: I have many faults and weaknesses in my life, I can't ever do betterA: Ether 12 There are so many more questions and answers that I know many people have in their lives, but I also know that Heavenly Father wants each and every one of His children to be happy in this life, and many of answers to our questions are found in the Scriptures, all we have to do is seek out the answers for ourselves. I wanted to share one thought really quickly from Jesus the Christ that talks about the wonderful plan that Heavenly Father created for us and that Jesus Christ fulfilled! (pg. 18): " Let not ignorance and thoughtlessness lead us into the error of assuming that the Father´s foreknowledge as to what WOULD BE, under given conditions, determined that such MUST BE. It was not His design that the souls of mankind be lostç on the contrary it was and is His work and glory, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man". Nevertheless He saw the evil into which His children would assuredly fall; and with infinite love and mercy did He ordain means of averting the dire affect, provided the transgressor would elect to avail himself thereof. The offer of the firstborn Son to establish through His own ministry among men the gospel of salvation, and to sacrifice Himself, through labor, humiliation and suffering even unto death, was accepted and made the foreordained plan of man´s redemption from death, of his eventual salvation from the effects of sin, and of his possible exaltation through righteous achievement. " I love this Gospel so much, and don´t think my testimony could ever be clearly communicated through email, but I love my Savior Jesus Christ and so thankful for what He has done for me, and each and every one of us! Love,Sister Tittelfitz

Server down!

Hey Everybody!
Jenelle's email server was down this week and so she wrote a hand-written letter, had it scanned and emailed to me through a local shop. So, I cannot copy and paste it here. Hopefully you got it via email, it just won't be archived here.....It is four hand-written pages, so I'm not going to transcribe it right now for you all. We're getting ready to leave for spring break.
Technology....can't live with it, can't live without it!

Any hoo, She's doing great and sends Easter blessings to everyone! She is feeling more confident and doing better with the language.

Cindy

Boa Semana!‏

Bom Dia from São Paulo!
This past week has been great. First off, I received the most adorable package from the Yorges family- so thanks so much to those sweet little girls! Which reminds me- please, if you are going to send any packages from this date forward please send them to the MISSION HOME (address to the right designated by "PACKAGES" in red text), not the CTM, because by the time they get here I will be in the field (yes, scary, I know!) and the CTM will not forward on packages to the mission home. They will forward any letters that get sent here though, so don´t worry about letters. Jane and Wes Morril arrived this week and I think are in my branch now! They were there on Sunday (Dad you should get a picture sent to you from their son in the ward, I don´t remember his name). It's such a small world! I have been learning so much this past week and have felt so incredibly blessed! This past week has been a week of learning more and more about the Atonement of Jesus Cristo! We had an incredible devocional Saturday night about the Atonement, and they showed a wonderful video of a devocional that Jeffrey R. Holland gave at the MTC in June 2000 (Mom, could you please look this up and send me a copy- I don´t know the name of it). He talked about how every truth that a missionary teaches is an appendage to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to the ATonement of Jesus Christ. He talked about how a mission is never easy because Salvation was never easy. How could we believe it woudl be easy for us in this life if it was never easy for our Savior Jesus Christ? He then talked about how the Atonement was an infinite and eternal price to be paid for the salvation of all men. Elder Packer said, "The Atonment has practical, personal, everyday value; apply it in your life. It can be activated with so simple a beginning as prayer!" oh I love that quote! I then proceeded that same night to study and read from "Jesus, The Christ" page 611-614 for those of you that have the 1981 edition. It says on page 613 "It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused Him to suffer such torture as to produced an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. No other man, however great his powers of physical or mental endurance, could have suffered so; for his human organism would have succumbed, and syncope would have produced unconsciousness and welcome oblivion. . . .From the terrible conflict in Gesthemane, Christ emerged a victor" My testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ has grown so incredibly strong this week. I am so thankful for the incredible knowledge that awaits us in the teachings of this Gospel, in the scriptures and in the words of our living Prophet and his apostles! I am so thankful to know that Christ's Atonment is infinite and eternal. That we all have the ability to repent, be baptized receive the Holy Ghost and endure to the end to one day be with our families again in the presence of God! Yesterday we decided as a companionship to only Speak Português. needless to say we didn´t speak as much, but it was such a good experience to apply all that we´ve learned. We were allowed to ask "How do you say. . ." but only one word, and then we had to apply that word. A Brazilian Sister put me through Baptism by Fire when she made me explain what "The Authority of God" is in Português. My goodness, I though I could get off easy but just saying that it's the power of God, but she wanted a real explanation in Portuguese. Yikes! We also did our first TRC experience this past Saturday where we went into a room and were recorded teaching a member, a Brazilian we had never met before. I think we did relatively well. I can give my entire portion of the lesson in Portuguese without notes, and I know the entire first vision in Portuguese! When it came time to pray at the end I got called on and completely forgot how to say anything and so basically prayed that our investigator would bless us with health, instead of God blessing us with health! whoops! I know that I will get better and better as the weeks come, and my goal is to be fluent by Mother´s Day! So you all better hold me to that! For great reading this week I suggest everyone read^:Chapter 5 of Jesus the ChristEther 12- a great chapter about Faith, and the attributes of Christ!Helaman 13-15, D&C 20, and the entire book of John!! Com Amor! Sister Tittelfitz

finally, blogspot access!

This is Jenelle's mom, Cindy. Jenelle had set up this blogspot before she left but I didn't have access to it to post her letters home. Hopefully you have been getting them so far, but this is a good venue to catch up on the old ones if you didn't get a chance to read them before. We have not received any photos yet, but will post them as soon as we do. If you ever have any questions, you can email me at ctittelfitz@hotmail.com Thanks for your support!

March 5, 2008 Proselyting!

So this past week was when we went Proselyting! What an experience! We were all so excited to go, and very nervous. I tried to keep my cool and told myself that I was so excited to get out onto the street and that I could handle myself. Then BAM, all of a sudden I´m standing there with my two companions in the middle of São Paulo with a Book of Mormon in my hands, some pass-along cards and my teacher telling me we have an hour and 15 minutes to talk to people and give away everything we have in our hands. I felt like my world had suddenly caved in on me and my mind went completely blank. Then all of a sudden Sister Todd says, "okay, I think I'm nervous" NO!! Sister Todd, our saving grace, our speaker of the foreign language is nervous!? So we stand around for like three minutes trying to decide who will go first, and then all of a sudden Sister Martin springs forward out of no where and stops this lady on the street and is like "we´re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" and proceeds to talk to her! I was so amazed by how brave she was! I completely lost most to all of my Portuguese just out of nervousness and pretty much this is what came out of my mouth to everyone I talked to "My name is Sister Tittelfitz, I´m a representative of Jesus Christ. God loves us. He calls prophets. This is a Book of Mormon. I know that it is true. Call this number?" Oh man, it was horrible! We stopped a whole lot of people and everyone listened to me, I think mostly because they thought I was mentally handicapped and they were like 'oh, this poor girl, sure i'll take her book, maybe then she'll stop talking to me in horrible portuguese'. It was truely an amazing experience though. Irmã Valéria realized that as a threesome we were somewhat daunting and overbearing to the audience we were stopping, as we would corner single people that would get a terrified look on their faces, and came over to us and broke us off into twosomes for a few minutes while she took one of us with her. She is awesome, she is a great example of how to talk to people on the street. She saw this man taking a picture of a building and she says to me "Sister Tittelfitz, let's go give that man the best gift he could ever get" and then we go up and I gave my special education style speech about the Book of Mormon and then he gets a big grin on his face and proceeds to ask questions about it. I wasn´t able to answer any, but Irmã Valeria took full reign and did awesome! At one point we were back together as a companionship at the very end and I hadn't given away my Book of Mormon yet. We were told not to give them to just anyone, because apparently there have been a lot of copies that end up in the trash can. I was really nervous, and just thought 'no, I will just have to be the only one that doesn´t give mine away´. Then all of a sudden Sister Martin stops this young woman dressed up really nice and looking like she´s in a hurry. We start to talk to her and Sister Todd is doing an awesome job explaining our message. I gave her a pass-along card and then we started talking about how the Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ. She was like ´well, I´m Catholic, but sure I´ll call and ask for a copy´and then Sister Todd was telling her how she should read the introduction and 3 Nephi 11, and then I just had this feeling, ´just give the lady the book´ and I did and then we showed her where to read and Sister Todd talked about the promise given in Moroni 10:3-5. She was like ´well, i´m only interested in it as literature, but i´ll take a look´. We got so excited, and as we were walking away, I saw her thumb through it and then put it in her purse! She has no idea what she´s in for when she reads it! I´m so excited! The whole proselyting experience was a little confusing too. It was hard to be out on the street and realize what we look like to most of the world. Some crazy Americans that come to a country where we don´t even know the language to talk to people about a religion, A Book, A Prophet of God. A few people looked at us, pointed to our name tags and said óh, Mormons', and it was a total reality check. What does the world think of us? Yes we are a very peculiar people when you think about it. Sister Todd put things back into perspective though. She was talking last night after devotional to our district and said, " I realized that we look crazy to most of the world, but then I also realized that it doesn´t matter what we look like to the world, only to God!" The field is ripe and ready to harvest, there are people that are out there waiting to hear about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it made me realize that I don´t really care how many people I look crazy or foolish to, because to one person I´m going to have a message that they´ve been waiting to hear, and the Spirit is going to bear witness of it to them. We had a wonderful Fast Sunday this past week. We met as a whole CTM for a two hour Missionary Conference and then had sacrament meeting as a branch afterwards. The mission President, President Woodward gave this amazing talk about our transformations as missionaries. I know this transformation occurs for anyone that comes unto Christ and accepts His Gospel as well. He told a story that came from a book from C.S. Lewis (I´m not sure which one, because he didn´t say). But it talks about how we are all houses. We have created our homes according to our liking, furnished it, decorated it, and made it comfortable for ourselves. But once we invite the Lord in we discover that there is some repair work needed on the sinks, on the walls, and the Lord begins to remodel. Pretty soon our houses have been gutted, everything that was comfortable to us has been removed and initially we are confused and frightened, we have never felt like this before, we have never done this before! But what we don´t realize is that the Lord is rebuilding our homes into Castles, if only we let Him. Let us all be built into Castles, that through the workings of the Lord we may become better than we once were! I just thought it was one of the most wonderful messages I have heard! We have also been studying Chapter 6 from Preach My Gospel about having Christlike Attributes. We have talked about faith, hope, charity and virtue. What incredible attributes that we all stand in need of! Whenever I think I am doing well, being kind, and trying my hardest, I just think of Christ and the attributes He had, and I realize how much further I have to go! I know though that by praying for those attributes and by doing all that we can to consistently strive to be like Christ, we will be blessed for our efforts! I have also been reading "Jesus, the Christ" this week. What an amazing book! I had read select chapters of it a few years ago when I was in Ethiopia, but now I am reading it cover to cover and just feel so blessed to know that God has created this wonderful plan for each one of us to return to live in His presence and become like Him. Jesus Christ is central to this plan and through His amazing atonement, EACH and EVERY ONE of us can be forgiven of those things that we struggle with, that we are imperfect of, and enjoy eternal happiness with our families and with God forever!In case you were wondering, the language continues to be a struggle for me, but I got some great advise from my Branch President this week after I bawled my eyes out to him in my interview, "Don´t compare yourself to everyone else that is speaking this language. Compare yourself only to yourself yesterday, that is the true measure of your success". Sister Todd also continues to be a great help. I don´t know what I would do without her. I know the Lord was looking out for me when we were paired together in our companionship! If any of you care enough about me, you will send a letter to Sister Todd thanking her for keeping me sane! The time here as literally just flown by. I can´t believe I will have been out a month tomorrow! It also scared me that we only have 5 more weeks left here at the CTM before I am speaking Portuguese 24 hours 7 days a week and teaching people! All I can say at this point is that I´m proud of each and every missionary that has ever served! The devotion you put into it, the way you put your faith in the Lord that He would guide you, and how you returned home with honor! Congratulations all you returned missionaries, you devoted an incredible amount of time to be self-less and deliver a message to the world about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ that you know is true! Elder Ballard said an amazing quote, I can´t remember if I read this or watched it on a video, but to sum it up it says "The message we have about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is either true or it's not. If it´s not then we are a people engaged in lying to people. But we are not, we know that this Gospel is true, and we are willing to share it with the world!" Tchau! Sister Tittelfitz

Feb 28, 2008 Sister Dragao

Bom Dia from São Paulo. It has been another week full of learning and growing here at the CTM!! Our two favorite Brazilian sisters left for the field yesterday, and we have a new roommate, Sister Erickson. She just arrived today and was supposed to be in another trio, but her two companions did not get their visas in time, so she will be rooming with us for a week until her companions come. She will, however, be the only sister in her District for a week. We look forward to getting to know her better!The language continues to get a little bit better each week. I think I can understand the best from people speaking, as I can pick up context clues and basically understand enough, plus I always have Sister Todd and Sister Martin at my side to pick up the slack and translate. We also found a copy of the Friend, or "O Amigo" and have been working on translating the stories out of the magazine to practice our português since they are written for children. Sister Todd has also been reading the Book of Mormon out loud each night to Sister Martin and I while we follow along in Português. An interesting word that I came across this week was "Holocausto" in the Book of Mormon. Translated to English it literally means "Burnt Offerings". Chew on that for a minute. This Saturday I just about had a melt down. It can be very stressful here at the CTM knowing that in about two months you are trained to speak a language you have never heard before, and teach lessons about the Gospel that you respect and love to strangers in a language you dont know. Anyways, Saturday night comes along and we have to write letters to our Branch President about how our week has gone. I wrote the most depressing letter about how much I feel like I am struggling. That night as we were all saying our personal prayers I could hear each one of us crying. But our rule is to not talk once the lights go out at 10:30, so we didnt talk about what was going on. The next morning was Sunday and we were rushed to get to breakfast and then to Sacrament meeting on time and did not talk to each other about it. After our meetings we went up to our room and unanimously sighed and agreed that the Branch President would pull us in for an interview because we had gone clinically insane! Haha, we had all been feeling the stress of the week! It was so nice as a companionship to talk to each other about our concerns and worries and to support one another. We reevaluated our goals for the week and set new ones, that we would devote at least half of our free study time to language, and the other half to studying gospel principles. We have put it into effect, and the last two days seem to be relatively smooth and stress-free. We will be proselyting in two days, and we are so excited, yet so stressed about the event! Expect a great email next week!So our district has had some quite entertaining experiences in the past few days! Irmã Valéria taught us a lesson the other day on how to correctly pluralize various words. Unlike English you cannot just add a -s to most words. Instead you either add -s, -es, delete an -l, add an -is, -éis, -áis, or change ãos to ões, etc. The list goes on. So for a fun learning experience she has us play charades of animals where we had to correctly guess the animal and then pluralize the name of the animal. Yeah, guess animal I got. "Dragão". I bet you can guess what that is without translating it. So I proceeded to flail my arms in the arm and make a hissing/screaching sound as to immitate fire-breathing capabilities of dragons. Instead of guesses made by my fellow district members I got hysterical fits of laughter. Irmã Valéria couldnt stop laughing, she had to actually leave the room, I was afraid she might wet her pants. So some Elders from my district have taken it upon themselves to only grant me access into the room after I have imitated my previous charade skills. I also caught Irmã Valéria in the hall yesterday laughing and giggling and imitating me to another coworker. At the rate I'm going I think my name will be Sister Dragão by the time I leave the CTM. We have had some wonderful speakers/talks this week that I want to share with you before I run out of time on the computer. We had a wonderful talk about Faith in Christ and why we should have faith in Christ. My new motivational scripture comes from Ether 12:6 which talks about how we will only receive a witness of our faith AFTER the trial of our faith. In other words, we have to work, struggle and experience the trial exercising faith the entire time and THEN we will receive a witness of our faith. Faith is not simply knowing God could do something, but knowing that He WILL. Part of this message was also about knowing that Faith is the true converter to people that we will teach. Faith will be the teacher. If we put our faith in Jesus Christ, faith that the seed will swell in the hearts of those we teach, it will. But only after we have exercised that faith.Sunday nights Fireside was very good too. We had a darling family come Sister and Elder Maheiro. They brought their six year old son and he stood in front of hundreds of missionaries and in a cute little voice bore his testimony in Português and said how excited he was to one day be a missionary! The scripture that both speakers used was from 2 Timothy 4:7- Combatei o bom combate, acabei a carreira, guardei a fé. May we take advantage of the time we have, fight a good fight, work hard and keep our faith the entire time!Tchao!Sister Tittelfitz

Feb 20, 2008 Que horas sao

the work here is going well. It is difficult at times, and I am still struggling to get the language down, it has been quite difficult for me, but i keep getting great advise from all the devotionals here at the CTM and from our great reading materials, aka the scriptures and church publications. it never ceases to amaze me that my doubts and fears about the mission are ALWAYS addressed by the messages given in talks, when I read my scriptures and through the many supportive teachers and leaders here at the CTM. we had a wonderful fireside last night. i was getting pretty frustrated that i havent been able to memorize all the verbs on our verb cards and was getting down on myself for not being as fast or as quick as i would like to be in learning this language. then our fireside speaker talked about how our mission is our golden opportunity to serve the lord, to completely forget about ourselves, our downfalls or the things we think are not as good at as other missionaries, because we are all servants of the lord, and as vessels for his work we will be extremely blessed! my companions and i are doing so well. we get along so great, i swear the companionships here are planned, because all the sister companionships seem to fit each other to a ´t´´. though we are all so different, our differences help each other out. sister martin and i are very scared though because the teachers have ´threatened´ to move sister todd into a different district because she is so far ahead in the language, so basically they want to get her into the field earlier. She says she would like to stay because she wants the time to learn how to teach all the lessons, but really its not up to us or her for that matter. if shes ready, shes ready. i listened to a great quote this week from bruce r. mcconkie, it is "never be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those who preach the gospel are to do so boldly, without timidity or trepeditation, not fearing the face of man but with the courage of their convictions and in the fervor of their testimonies"! the scripture he quoted afterwards was 2 Nephi 2: 8-9, which is part of the scripture that i chose for my placard, i just love that scripture!! We were able to go to the temple in campinas again today, it was such a wonderful experience. they did not have any english speaking temple workers today, so it was quite an exciting time. Sister todd also accidentally threw her wallet down the laundry shoot with her clothes, so we got to see the laundry room in the campinas temple! This gospel is so true, and i am so excited to give this amazing gift to our heavenly fathers children, my brothers and sisters! Please write letters, i would love to hear from each and everyone of you! Love, Sister Jenelle Tittelfitz

First email - Feb 13, 2008

I am so excited to be here in Brazil!! It has been one of the most difficult weeks of my life, but it has been great, nevertheless. I flew to Brazil just fine. I flew with only one other missionary, but later that day about 20 others missionaries flew in on another flight from Dallas. I have been put in a trio of Sisters/ I have two companions!! My companions are Sister Martin from Houston, Texas, going to the Campinas Mission. She is hilarious!! Her personality keeps me very entertained!! Sister Todd is our other companion and is from Fairfax, Virginia, going to the São Paulo Sul mission as well. She is doing awesome at keeping Sister Martin and I together. The hardest struggle has been Portuguese!! We are working so hard to learn this language, and it´s scary to think that we will be semi-lingual in about eight weeks! Sister Todd was fluent in Spanish upon arriving and just sucks in the Portuguese so quickly. She is tossing out Portuguese sentences all irregularly conjugated in past tense verbs and our teachers are like áre you sure you didn´t learn Portuguese before coming?´ So yes, Sister Todd is doing very well with the language, but she is also being extremely, extremely patient with Sister Martin and I! The most I know how to say is Oi! Bom Dia! Tudo Bom?´´ We have also learned this week how to say prayers in Portuguese, which I have been struggling with. Basically the way the language program works here is that you learn how to say really long and complicated sentences that are already contracted to the noun/subject and you have no idea what you are saying, and then slowely you work backwards and learn specific words, and then you´re like oh, that´s what I was saying!´ We have also been working on Lesson 1 out of Preach My Gospel, and how to teach investigators about the Restoration of the Gospel. It has been so amazing! I am scared to death though because in just two weeks, we go out proselyting in São Paulo in Portuguese! I know no one will understand a word of what I say, and it´s going to be a very scary experience, but good learning experience, so look forward to a great/entertaining email in a few weeks! Our district is great too! Us three sisters have been paired with 6 Elders, all but one are from Utah. They are so great! They all always refer to us as wise, old and smart, none of which are true, but we enjoy the compliments, other than the being 'old' one. We also have a couple of favorite Brazilian sisters that we try to sit with at meals as much as possible! They are the cutest girls and I only wish they were going to my same mission so we could be companions sometime soon! They are so good at helping us with our Portuguese, although Sister Todd is really the only one that can communicate with them! I found out why my name tag did/does not say "Hermana/Irmã". The Sisters are not called Irmãs here in Brazil. The reason is that the word Irmã is what the Catholic nuns are called, and the church has decided to respect that sacred name for them, so all the sisters go by ´Sisteres´ except for when you refer to members, then they are Irmã. . . .So our teachers are Irmã Valéria and Irmão Alexandre. Sister Valéria is a great teacher. She pushes us so hard in class, and she is really keeping us on track with our lessons. Irmão Alexandre just finished his mission 3 months ago, so he is pretty young, and it makes a big difference in our class. He easily gets distracted by the Elders questions and we end up talking about Brazilian soccer or politics for about an hour of class. It´s fun at the time to take a mental break from learning, but then it stresses me out even more because we have to make up for all the curriculum in our spare time! It feels like we move so fast everyday, we cram in 8 hours of language study and Gospel study, get loads of things to work on and only have about 2 hours of MDST (Missionary Directed Study Time) to get it all done. We as a companionship have made it a goal to get to bed on time everynight with lights out at 10:30 and no talking because a few nights last week we stayed up until about 11 or 11:30 studying and trying to finish assignments and reading our scriptures just to feel on top of things. However, Saturday we pushed ourselves a little too hard. I just about broke down crying because I was feeling like I was working so hard and retaining absolutely nothing of this language. People kept trying to tell me to relax, that it was only my third day, but I just couldn´t do it, I feel like I have to master this language as much as possible! That night, we decided as a companionship to balance our time more equally and spend our MDST time doing vocabulary as well as Gospel, and not just all on language, because it obviously was stressing me out!! But I know as a companionship we have been blessed so much those nights we held strictly to the rules and got in bed on time. It has been amazing though, because I have been able to get out of bed at 6:30 every morning this past week without any problems!! I am pretty proud of myself! This morning we woke up at 5:45 so we could catch the bus from the CTM and go to the Campinas temple with our district. It was such an amazing experience. They did an English session for us, and there were some Brazilians in the room that listened in Portuguese on head phones. I sat next to this adorable 80~something year old woman who needed some assistance, and she kept squeezing my hand and saying "obrigada, obrigada" (thank you). As a companionship it was great to be together and to sit together in the temple and talk. It is so wonderful so see the amazing spirits and testimonies of my componhieras! It was so amazing to also get out of the CTM. We have seriously been so excited to get out of the building today and practice our Portuguese. Yeah, I did horrible, but it's been fun! The sisters and I watched a great short video this week on a talk given by our beloved former Prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley. In the video he quotes a great scripture from 2 Timothy 1: 7-8, about God not giving us the gift of fear, but rather joy, and to press forward! I have to keep reminding myself to not have fear of this language, or of preaching the beloved Gospel of Jesus Christ that I know and love!! We also had a great fireside/devotional last night and afterwards talked as a District about developing Christlike attitudes, namely Faith. It was so wonderful to talk with one another about exercising faith, especially faith in our calling as missionaries to serve in the country of Brazil! I cannot have fear, nor doubt about my divine calling as a missionary to the country of Brazil! This language will be difficult to learn, but I know that if I do all I can to diligently study and learn, the Spirit will bless and guide me, and I will make it! I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father for this wonderful opportunity to serve, and I know that there could be no better time for me to be a missionary!! Happy Valentines Day tomorrow for everyone! I love you all!!
Love,Sister Tittelfitz