4th letter...time is flying by so fast!!!!

Hey!!! How is everyone doing? Good I hope!! Thank you so much for the letters!! I love getting letters and since I'm the district leader, I know the combination so i can get them whenever I want as long as it's not during a class:) The MTC is going super great!! Just so everyone knows, I was able to hear Elder Oaks speak at a devotional last week!! It was really great. I don't know if I told you about it in my last email or not.

Well the 4th of July was really fun!! It wasn't quite how it is back at home but it was still really enjoyable! We had a patriotic devotional Saturday the 3rd, and it talked about how important the Independence of this country was for the restoration of the gospel! It was really very interesting! After the devotional, they let all of us missionaries go out onto the front parking lot and watch the fireworks that were going on at the Stadium of Fire just down the street from the MTC!! It was really great! Everyone would just bust out singing patriotic songs here and there! I think every single one of us misses our music;) Other than that, everything else has been going good as well!! Yesterday was our day to go to the TRC. The TRC is a place where we as missionaries go and speak to teachers and teach them lessons. The teachers pretend to be investigators so it gets a little exciting. The first 10 minutes of it we are supposed to spend getting to know our investigator but we have to speak Portuguese, so it's pretty tough. Then after the first 10 minutes, we are allowed to speak English, but we have to teach them a lesson. So me and Elder Bell had confidence before we went, we had practiced the language and studied lesson 2 ( the lesson we were supposed to teach on the plan of salvation). However, much to our dismay when we got there, the teacher we were assigned to teach was a Brazilian convert and spoke ridiculously fast Portuguese. I'm sure it was hilarious for her to listen to us try and utter out words. So that was pretty rough... but wait, it gets better!!! After the language part, we could finally speak English so I was pretty relieved. Well, it turns out that the investigator she was pretending to be believed in reincarnation, and didn't believe in God, or that Jesus Christ could save the world from sin. It was tough tough tough trying to teach her. But I think we handled it well because at the end of the lesson, she said although it's hard for her to believe, it gave her a good feeling and she wanted to hear more. After we were done, she told us that she was assigned to be the most challenging investigator to teach in the TRC that day!!! Lucky us huh?;)

Everything else is going really well!! I learn something new everyday, both in the language, and in the doctrine. I love it here. I can feel the spirit everyday. I'm not going to lie, it's hard work learning the language and teaching these lessons. But it makes it all more worth it. Time here is really weird. I can't explain it. The days seem really long but the weeks fly past in the blink of an eye. It seriously feels like yesterday was my first day and I've been here for almost a month now... almost half way done with the MTC. I'm so excited to get over to Portugal, but at the same time, it reminds me of how much more I have to learn in so little of time!!! Crazy crazy crazy how much more I have to learn!! But it's all part of the experience!!:) I started re-reading the Book of Mormon when I first got here. I am in Alma Chapter 8 right now, 10 pages a night is my goal. I should be able to finish it again before I head over to Portugal. I have also started reading 10 pages a night in the New Testament as well!!! I'm loving it!! OH and the temple opens back up in about two weeks, so I'm pretty excited about that!! I can finally go to the temple with my district!! Well I better finish up considering we have such a ridiculously short amount of time on the computer to email!! But I love you all. Thanks for being such an awesome family!!! I love getting letters so keep the letters coming:)

Chao, Tem um bom semana. Eu amo voces.

Elder Coulton Willes