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| Elder Perry in front of the Sao Paulo Temple |
This past Friday was President Nelson’s address to the missionaries of Brazil. He counseled all of us to help our investigators begin reading ô Livro de Mormon at 3rd Nephi, chapter 11 when Christ travels to the Nephites in America following His resurrection. This is because most people know about Jesus’ life and his ministry, but his visit to the Americas is unique and specific to the Book of Mormon. Anyway, it was pretty cool and I felt the spirit strongly.
On Sunday evening, we got to see another devotional from President Nelson, addressing the members of the church in Brazil. We were able to listen to Elder Cook from the Quorum of the Twelve as well. President Nelson didn’t have a talk prepared, and didn’t even bring his scriptures to the pulpit with him. That was a super cool testament that his words were directly from God. His main point of the night was about eternal families. He counseled us to have pictures of our families, and the temple hanging in our homes. He also talked about making our homes “laboratories of love.” It was a cool message, because if God thinks it is significant for members to hear, it is going to be important for me to share that with the people I will be teaching. It was also cool when he left the building, the choir was singing “We thank thee o God for a prophet” in Portuguese while the congregation waved white handkerchiefs in the air. All of the people the camera showed were crying. The spirit was so strong. I know that man is a prophet.
On a sour note, everyone in my district got sick this week. Basically everyone in the MTC came down with some kind of strep throat, which was awful. On Sunday, my companionship trio was sitting in our classroom with two other elders, doing personal study. All of a sudden, one of the elders got a really bad bloody nose. I took him into the bathroom to start cleaning him up. It didn’t stop so I ran down to the bottom floor to find a medical person. Someone who spoke English and Portuguese helped me to find a doctor and we ran back up to the elder. At that point, the bleeding was out of control so we took him into our classroom for a minute. While he was in there, Elder Gunn anointed his head with oil for a blessing, and I sealed and gave the blessing to him. It was really quick, because people had to take care of him. We took him to the CTM lobby, because someone had called a taxi to take him to the hospital. He left with his roommate who speaks both Portuguese and English, and we went back to sacrament meeting. He came back during lunch looking much better. The doctors had put him on a ton of painkillers and an IV (eek!) and they cauterized his nose. He’s doing alright now and we just made sure he went to bed really early. Everyone else seems to be doing really well.
NOW, ABOUT THE CTM…
The CTM (MTC) is not always super easy for us, so we need to find ways to entertain ourselves.
Most days during our lunch and dinner of rice, beans, and unidentified meat, there is a small pot of hot sauce with this bright red pepper next to it. One day I decided to grab the pepper and eat it. That was probably the spiciest thing I have ever eaten in my life. We now have a form of initiation where someone eats the pepper every meal when it’s there.
Every breakfast we are given a roll, or two if we want, and some meat and cheese. If you really want, you can stand in line for 30 minutes to make it into a panini. One time, I made a butter poptart by just panini-ing a roll full of butter. It was honestly kind of gross.
I was able to find the best shower on our floor. It is the farthest one in the left corner. It has the best pressure, and if I wake up early enough the water is actually pretty warm. Plus, that shower doesn’t have mold or bugs. It is worth waking up 30 minutes early before everyone else.
Like 4 times a week, our district gets to go outside and play basketball, or some other physical activity. But first, we all have to run 5 laps on this tiny track that is probably 100 meters long. And while playing basketball or volleyball, we’re not allowed to jump. At all. Or keep score. So as you can probably tell, our games get pretty intense.
Every day, we are given 7.5 reais, (pronounced aye-eyes) to spend on the vending machines. Sometimes, if you are super lucky, there is a candy or something that is on the outside of the shelf, and if you select it, that one falls down as well as the one behind it. That’s a legendary moment. Elder Gunn once got two packets of Skittles from doing this. All of the Skittles were gone from the machine in less than 10 minutes.
But, life is great here in the MTC. Our district has bonded really well, and even though our Portuguese is not always where it needs to be, we are all doing our best.
Love, Elder Perry
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| The "tiny track" at the Sao Paulo CTM (photo courtesy of churchofjesuschrist.org) |
