First Email

I've now been the MTC for 3 days. The schedule our first week is really weird, but next week will be our regular permanent schedule. P-days will be on fridays. 252 missionaries reported the day I reported. My companion's name is Elder Toala. He wasn't there on the first day, so I was going around with a few other elders from my district. I lost them at dinner, and instead of trying to look for them, I decided to just sit down. I walked over to 3 elders and introduced myself. One of them pulled out his information packet and my name was listed as his companion. We found each other when we weren't even looking. Elder Toala is from Seattle, Washington. He's a tall, skinny Samoan. We are getting along really well.

Most of the missionaries going to Brazil are from Washington, California, or Oregon. Visas going through other places just aren't getting through. People are started to get their visas quicker and a lot of missionaries are going to Brazil next week. They had been reasigned to other missions, but their visas just showed up so they get to go straight to Sao Paulo. I think I might be able to go to Sao Paulo because most of the visas come through after about 4 or 5 weeks after they are submitted electronically. I sent mine in 3.5 weeks ago, so I might get mine. Most of the missionaries here didn't submit their visas until after they arrived at the MTC.

Portuguese classes are pretty intense. Irmao (brother) Kunzler and Irmao Allred are our instructors. They speak only portuguese while teaching portuguese. They only speak English when we are discussing other aspects of missionary work. How to get to know investigators and such. After the second day, all our prayers in class have had to be in Portuguese. We are trying to learn very fast. Portuguese is actually a fairly easy language to learn. I think I will survive.

We have 14 people in our district. 3 of them are sisters. Elder Lott was called to be our first district leader and after a very careful process of picking the people on the left side of the page, I was selected as Senior companion. We all get to take turns being senior companion, so it is not a very big deal. Our district gets a long really well.

The food is good, and yes Ty, the tiolet seats are very comfortable. I've stayed away from all the dessert and soda, because we sit all day. It is very easy to gain weight here at the MTC.

That's pretty much it for now. We only get 30 minutes for email in the MTC. We are very very busy all day. One of the Elders in our district has renamed hours to eternities. I've been doing pretty well with being productive with my time. You get so much thrown at you the first few days, it's hard to keep track of everything. I guess I'll talk to everyone later.

Elder Siemers